[GOAL] Almost-OA: "Frictional Access"

[Stevan Harnad]

Richard Poynder<http://poynder.blogspot.com/2013/08/ieees-anthony-durniak-on-state-of-open.html?showComment=1375604957818#c2917828799361319791>
is
absolutely right on every point in his reply to my commentary. (Except
possibly one [trivial] one: Richard seems to imply that IEEE has
*already* embargoed
the author's final refereed draft. It has
not<http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/search.php?id=38&fIDnum=%7C&mode=simple&la=en>.
Richard's is only a speculation that they might, given that some other
publishers have done so. Richard is quite right that some other publishers
have done so. And his speculation about IEEE may prove correct. But it
should be noted that it is still just a prediction…!)

Now to what Richard says about "friction." ("[The request-sprint
Button] introduces
a different kind of friction into the system, including presumably a time
delay...")

The request-eprint
Button<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html>
was
created for both
EPrints<https://secure.ecs.soton.ac.uk/notices/publicnotices.php?notice=902>
 and DSpace repositories<https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/RequestCopy>
in
2006 with six very specific objectives:

1. to make it possible for all institutions and funders to mandate OA
without being held back by considerations of copyright renegotiation or
embargo length

2. to make it possible for all institutions and funders to mandate the
deposit component (if not the OA component nor the copyright retention
component) of any OA policy without the need of an opt-out option

3. to make it possible for authors to provide almost-immediate access
("Almost-OA") to their articles during any OA embargo almost as effectively
as by making them immediately OA, thereby maximizing uptake, usage and
impact and minimizing losses to research and researchers during any OA
embargo period

4. to make it possible for the date of deposit (if not the date of OA) to
be dictated by institutions and funders, not by publishers

5. to make it possible for all authors to comply with OA mandates at a
fixed, natural, determinate date in their publication cycle and work-flow,
and to begin providing OA (or Almost-OA) to their (refereed) findings as
early as possible.

6. to make it possible, once all or most institutions and funders worldwide
have mandated immediate-deposit, to hasten the inevitable, natural and
well-deserved death of all OA embargoes, under the mounting global pressure
of OA and its benefits (and author fatigue with the "friction" of having to
keep clicking the Button to provide Almost-OA!).

So what the Button introduces is not a delay (the publisher embargoes
introduce the delay) but a way to provide access during the delay -- with
some "friction" (extra keystrokes for authors) -- but that friction may
well help put an end to such gratuitous delays sooner rather than later:
Read on...

Publishers embargo (Green) OA in order to prevent their subscription
revenue streams from being reduced by the revolutionary technical potential
opened up by the online medium for as long as they possibly can, at the
cost of research access and impact. The Almost-OA Button and the
immediate-deposit mandate were jointly designed long before the Finch
Fiasco<http://poynder.blogspot.ca/2012/07/oa-advocate-stevan-harnad-withdraws_26.html>
of
2012, to cover the journals that already had OA embargoes, and any journals
that might adopt OA embargoes in the future. It is a prophylactic against
OA embargoes.

The perverse (but predictable) effect of Finch/RCUK's reckless new OA
policy (of preferring to pay for Gold OA instead of reinforcing the
requirement to provide cost-free Green OA) has been to give publishers a
much stronger incentive to adopt and lengthen Green OA embargoes beyond
RCUK's allowable length limit, and to offer hybrid Gold OA (i.e., keep
charging institutions for subscriptions, but allow authors to pay them
extra to make their individual article Gold OA) instead, so as to ensure
that mandated UK authors are obliged to pay them extra for Gold OA rather
than just providing cost-free Green OA.

Immediate-deposit plus the Almost-OA Button will be an antidote to this
perverse effect of the Finch/RCUK mandate -- which is why it is so
important to adopt HEFCE's
proposal<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1025-.html>
to
make immediate-deposit mandatory in order to make articles eligible for
REF2020.

There is a profound conflict of interest between, on the one side,
research, researchers, their institutions, their funders, the vast R&D
industry, students, teachers, journalists, and the tax-paying public that
funds the research, and, on the other, the publishing industry. Publishing
is a service industry that had been performing an essential service to
research during the Gutenberg era of print on paper, but is now blocking
the natural evolution of research communication in the print-free online
era by trying to embargo making refereed research freely accessible to all
online.

Publishers will not stop trying to delay the optimal and inevitable for
research for as long as possible by embargoing Green OA. OA mandates are
the way for the research community to overcome the publishing industry's
delay tactics -- and the immediate-deposit mandate plus the Button are
their key components.

Harvard/MIT/UC-style copyright-reservation mandates are fine, and welcome,
but, as noted, they require opt-out options or authors will not comply. The
opt-out is invariably needed because the author's journal of choice insists
on embargoing OA beyond the allowable limit and the author (rightly)
insists on their journal of choice.

But all that the Harvard/MIT/UC-style copyright-reservation mandates need
in order to make them work,
optimally<http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#lr=&c2coff=1&safe=active&hl=en&tbm=blg&sclient=psy-ab&q=Harvard+mandate+immediate++blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&oq=Harvard+mandate+immediate++blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&gs_l=serp.12...10002.15451.3.17353.11.11.0.0.0.0.108.977.9j2.11.0....0...1c.1.23.psy-ab..83.0.0.4k35R91TIVA&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.r_qf.&bvm=bv.50165853%2Cd.dmg%2Cpv.xjs.s.en_US.seW1cfrvSKg.O&fp=bdfd25bec7b32e29&biw=1372&bih=790>,
is to add an immediate-deposit requirement (whether or not the article is
embargoed), without opt-out. Authors who opt out can then rely on their
repository's eprint-request to provide Almost-OA during the embargo.

Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2012) Open
Access Mandates and the "Fair Dealing"
Button<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/>.
In: *Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture
Online<http://www.utppublishing.com/Dynamic-Fair-Dealing-Creating-Canadian-Culture-Online.html>
* (Rosemary J. Coombe & Darren Wershler, Eds.)
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