[GOAL] Re: R Poynder Interviews I Gibson About 2004 UK Select Committee Green OA Mandate Recommendation

Mon Oct 29 21:48:18 GMT 2012

Open Repository is just one repository service. 

The numbers for total growth of open repositories in total are much more relevant. Since 2006, the numbers of open repositories around the world have increased from just over 800 to over 2,200 (nearly tripling in numbers), as illustrated in this growth chart in the most recent Dramatic Growth of Open Access:
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2012/10/thank-you-open-access-movement.html

The repository numbers per se are only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Some of the repositories up and running in 2004 were in early pilot phases. It takes time to get such a service up and running, develop and find support for an institutional open access policy, educate faculty and students about this new service, and fill the repository. In the past 8 years or so, we have gone from a point where a very few institutions had early repositories to a point where I would argue that an IR is a "must-have" to be taken seriously as a research institution.

The situation in British Columbia (where I work) very much reflects this. In 2004, only the largest institutions either had pilot IRs or IRs in the planning stages. Today, there are a number of very actively promoted IRs. Currently, what we are discussing at BC Electronic Library Network is a collaborative approach to ensure that all BC post-secondaries have access to this important service.

best,

Heather Morrison
pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/

On 2012-10-29, at 12:53 PM, Jan Velterop wrote:

> Richard,
> 
> The best person to ask about Open Repository would be Matt Cockerill, director at BMC.
> 
> I think you use the right term when you say that publishers 'allow' self-archiving. Too often I see that interpreted as 'endorse', but that is a very different thing in my view (and theirs, too, I guess).
> 
> Jan
> 
> On 29 Oct 2012, at 13:40, Richard Poynder wrote:
> 
>> Thanks for the clarification Jan.
>>  
>> I wonder if anyone from BMC could update the list on how popular the Open Repository service has proved, whether users are currently growing or decreasing, and how many users there are at the moment etc.?
>>  
>> By the way, this is what BMC founder Vitek Tracz said to me in December 2004 (http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2006/05/interview-with-vitek-tracz.html).
>>  
>> RP: One further complication that could perhaps retard progress is that the OA movement has forked, with advocates disagreeing over the best way forward. While OA publishers like you advocate OA publishing (the so-called “Gold Road” to OA) supporters of the “Green Road” like Stevan Harnad argue that it is sufficient for authors to continue publishing in traditional subscription-based journals, but to then self-archive their papers. Does Harnad have a point?
>>  
>> VT: I do not think so. Self-archiving is of course very desirable, but the issue is quite simple: publishers are not really going to allow authors to self-archive in an easy way, and authors are not going to do it unless it is completely painless.
>>  
>> RP: I’m told that around 93% of journals currently do allow self-archiving? 
>>  
>> VT: They say they allow it, but publishers have merely created the pretence of allowing it. They don’t really. They say they allow self-archiving, but authors can’t just take their published papers and archive them: they have to use their original manuscript, without any of the corrections and changes made by the publisher. They have to mark it up themselves, and they cannot use the illustrations created or amended by the publisher. In practice it is really quite difficult to reproduce the published paper. 
>>  
>> If self-archiving were so easy why isn’t it happening? Because in practice self-archiving is impractical. That said, for those who want it BioMed Central supports self-archiving by offering to help institutions create repositories for their researchers’ papers.
>>  
>> Richard Poynder
>>  
>>  
>> From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Jan Velterop
>> Sent: 29 October 2012 11:07
>> To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
>> Subject: [GOAL] Re: R Poynder Interviews I Gibson About 2004 UK Select Committee Green OA Mandate Recommendation
>>  
>> In response to what we heard in the market, Richard. That our offering was launched so quickly after the Select Committee Report came out was more like a happy coincidence. 
>>  
>> Besides, should we have realised the importance of repositories as a result of the Inquiry, would there be a problem with actually offering concrete assistance to repositories some time *after* we realised the importance of repositories' role? Well, in our case the realisation came quite some time before we offered the service. These things take preparation, you know. Extraordinary, isn't it?
>>  
>> You may recall that we were convinced of the potential importance of repositories as evidenced already at the BOAI, and the Bethesda Statement on Open Access, both of which I signed on behalf of BMC.
>>  
>> The point I tried to make is that we argued for OA. And yes, we did try to convince authors to publish in the fully and immediately open BMC journals. Calling that "Lobbying for giving up authors' preferred journals in favour of Gold OA journals" is spin. Were I to use similar spin, I could say something like "the Green OA advocates are lobbying for authors to be mandated to deposit their manuscripts in repositories, and be forced to accept sub-optimal OA, with access delays, technical and usage limitations, and problematic financing of publishing via subscriptions." 
>>  
>> But spin is not doing Open Access justice. It is Open Access I advocate. Immediate and with full re-use rights. If 'green' achieves that, too, great. Most repositories do have final, published, OA articles in their collections as well. Open from day one. With CC-BY licences. 'Gold' is not antithetical to repositories. I don't think it is good, though, to be satisfied with sub-optimal solutions just for reasons of expediency. 
>>  
>> Jan
>>  
>> On 29 Oct 2012, at 10:34, Richard Poynder wrote:
>> 
>> 
>>  
>> On 28 Oct 2012, at 23:07, Stevan Harnad wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Giving up authors' preferred journals in favour of pure Gold OA journals was what (I think) BMC's Vitek Tracz and Jan Velterop had been lobbying for at the time 
>>  
>> Stevan may think so, but that doesn't make it correct or accurate. What we advocated (lobbied for in Stevan's words) at the time, and what I still advocate now, is open access. Period. We argued that a system of open access publishing at source is better than a subscription system, and we realised that repositories would likely play an important role in achieving open access. That's why BMC offered assistance with establishing repositories, and the company still does: http://www.openrepository.com
>>  
>> I think it would be true to say that BioMed Central launched its repository service in response to the Select Committee Inquiry?
>>  
>> http://www.biomedcentral.com/presscenter/pressreleases/20040913
>>  
>>  
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