[GOAL] Re: University of California Faculty Senate Passes Open Access Policy

[Stevan Harnad]

Yes, there's a flaw in the University of California Open Access (OA)
mandate ["Open Contradictions<http://www.dailycal.org/2013/08/12/open-contradictions/>,"
Editorial, *The Daily Californian*, 12 Aug 2013], and, yes, it has to do
with the fact that U of C authors can opt out of compliance with the
mandate.

But, no, the flaw is *not* that the U of C policy

"allows [authors] to pick and choose where their research goes, thereby
creating a divide between those who can afford access to a private academic
journal and those who cannot."

That researchers retain their right to choose the most suitable journal for
their research is not a flaw but a virtue of any OA mandate. (In the UK, some
OA mandates <http://j.mp/Jchoaice> are trying to force authors to choose
(and pay) to publish in journals based on the journal's OA policy instead
of its quality (peer-review) standards, and that's very bad for both
research and researchers -- and certainly unnecessary for OA.)

Nor does the U of C's mandate flaw have anything to do with whether the
journal is "private" or "academic." Journals differ in their subject matter
and quality standards; there are non-profit and for-profit journals at all
quality levels, and that in turn has next to nothing to do with the
journal's OA policy -- except that there is a new breed of junk journals
that has lately been created on the cheap to provide pay-to-publish OA with
low or no peer review quality standards. (See Beall's
list<http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/>
.)

There are two ways for authors to provide OA: (1) publish in an OA journal
that makes the article OA, often for a fee (this is called "Gold OA") or
(2) publish in any journal, but also deposit the final, peer-reviewed draft
in the author's institutional repository -- U of C's is called
eScholarship<http://roar.eprints.org/3612/> --
and set access to the deposit as OA (this is called "Green OA") rather than
Closed Access.

U of C has (wisely) mandated Green OA, not (like the UK) Gold OA. Hence
journal choice is not at issue for U of C authors: They retain their right
to choose to publish in the journal most suitable for their work. What is
at issue is *whether and when they can make their article OA*: Some
journals' copyright agreements require authors to embargo OA for 6 months,
12 months, or even longer.

Now we come to the real flaw of the U of C policy: *If authors can opt out
of the U of C mandate whenever a publisher embargoes OA, this nullifies the
mandate and simply allows publishers to continue to determine whether and
when articles are made OA*.

But there is a very simple and natural solution that moots the publisher OA
embargo: U of C needs to add an *immediate-deposit clause with no
opt-out<http://j.mp/NOAPTout>
*. This means all authors must deposit their peer-reviewed final drafts in
eScholarship immediately upon acceptance for publication *whether or not
the journal embargoes OA*. But in addition, eScholarship should implement
the automated Request-Copy
Button<https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/RequestCopy>
.

The repository's Button can email one copy of an embargoed deposit to an
individual user on request: All it takes is one click from the user to
request and one click from the author to fulfill the request. (This is not
OA but "Almost-OA <http://j.mp/AlmostOA>.")

Authors retain journal choice, as well as the choice to provide individual
access even for embargoed deposits -- but *they cannot opt out of
immediate-deposit requirement itself*: All articles, regardless of journal
or journal policy, must be deposited in eScholarship immediately. The
author can then either set access to the article as OA immediately, or can
use the Button to provide "Almost-OA" during any publisher OA embargo.

Once the one-size-fits-all immediate-deposit
mandate<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1030-.html>
(with
no opt-out) is adopted by universities and research funders worldwide, not
only will it close the "divide between those who can afford access... and
those who cannot), but it will help hasten publisher OA embargoes toward
their natural, inevitable and well-deserved deaths under the mounting
worldwide pressure and demand for immediate OA -- by mandating that all
articles must be immediately deposited in repositories and taking
publishers out of the loop completely, insofar as mandate compliance is
concerned.

None of this can happen if universities continue to allow publishers to
decide whether and when authors deposit and provide access, by allowing
opt-out from OA mandates.
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