[GOAL] Re: Question (Re: Caltech announces Open Access policy)

[Rick Anderson]

With the ID/OA mandate, immediate-deposi<https://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#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=%22immediate+deposit%22+blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbm=blg>t is mandatory, but access-setting (immediate OA or embargo, with the copy-request Button) is up to the author.

In other words, a policy that actually makes deposit mandatory is a mandate. No argument here. But it appears that many of the institutional policies listed on the ROARMAP site—all of which are presented on that site as "mandates"—actually require no deposit at all. A few examples would be those of MIT ("The Provost or Provost's designate will waive application of the policy for a particular article upon written notification by the author"), the University of Oregon library ("The Dean of the Libraries will waive application of the policy for a particular article upon written notification by the author"), and the University of Glasgow ("Staff are asked to deposit a copy of peer-reviewed, published journal articles and conference proceedings into Enlighten, where copyright allows, as soon as possible after publication.") To be clear, these are not offers of indefinite embargo upon request following mandatory deposit—they are policies that require no deposit.

So my question remains: why the insistence on calling such policies "mandates"? If they make no action mandatory, then why not simply call them policies? (ROARAP is a less snappy acronym, I'll grant you.)

---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Scholarly Resources & Collections
Marriott Library, University of Utah
Desk: (801) 587-9989
Cell: (801) 721-1687
rick.anderson at utah.edu
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/attachments/20131213/b8dee9ec/attachment.html