[GOAL] Re: House of Lords open access enquiry: my response

[Heather Morrison]

With apologies for blasting lists yet again with my opinions - I'd like to correct a potential misinterpretation of my submission on the question of embargoes as soon as possible. Thanks very much to friends who pointed out the strong potential for mis-reading. I'll be preparing a revised submission, but wanted to share this right away for the benefit of others working on their own submissions.

Corrected statement on maximum embargoes. 

On maximum embargoes: an industry norm of free back issues to scholarly society journals about a year after publication appears to be emerging. For this reason, I recommend that a year's embargo be considered as the absolute maximum across the disciplines. The current 6-month embargo in STM should be retained, and all advice to publishers should clearly indicate that the practice of allowing embargoes is to facilitate a transition to full open access, and that the eventual goal is to gradually reduce and then eliminate embargoes. Embargoes are a concession to existing publishers; the public has a right to access the results of publicly funded research with no delay. (added Jan. 17, 2013).

best,

Heather Morrison

On 2013-01-16, at 10:21 PM, Heather Morrison wrote:

> My response is posted here:
> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2013/01/uk-house-of-lords-short-enquiry-into.html
> 
> Highlights
> 
> The long-term leadership of the UK and the House of Lords in open  
> access is acknowledged and applauded. It is recommended that  
> researchers always be required to deposit work in UK based  
> repositories, even when publishing work in open access venues, to  
> ensure that UK funded research never becomes unavailable or  
> unaffordable to people in the UK.
> 
> My research delves into mapping open access with the Creative Commons  
> licenses, finding that, despite superficial similarities, the CC  
> licenses are useful tools but no CC license is synonymous with open  
> access and each license element has both useful and negative  
> implications for scholarship. For example, allowing derivatives and  
> commercial uses to anyone downstream will not always be compatible  
> with research ethics requirements. A participant in a weight loss  
> study giving permission to use a photo for a scholarly journal cannot  
> be assumed to have granted permission for anyone to use this photo in  
> a commercial advertisement. I recommend replacing the requirement that  
> funded articles use the CC-BY license with a statement that when RCUK  
> funds for open access publishing are used, there should be no  
> restrictions placed on educational or research uses of the works.
> 
> As an open access advocate, I recommend against block funding for open  
> access article processing fees, as this will interfere with the  
> market, raising prices that will result in loss of support for this  
> approach outside the UK, disadvantaging the very publishers who think  
> that this approach will benefit them. Instead, I recommend that the UK  
> follow the policies of the U.S. National Institutes of Health and  
> Canada’s Canadian Institutes of Health Research in allowing  
> researchers to use their research grants to pay open access article  
> processing fees.
> 
> I suggest providing some funding to provide infrastructure and support  
> and/or subsidies to assist scholarly society publishers, a common  
> practice at university libraries throughout North America, and I  
> further recommend that the UK set aside some seed funding to fund the  
> future, that is, the next generation of scholarly communication,  
> overlay journals built on institutional repositories, an area where  
> the UK is well positioned to play a leadership role.
> 
> Finally, I present some data of relevance to the question of maximum  
> permissible embargoes before works can be made open access. It can be  
> argued that a new norm of scholarly journals providing free back  
> issues on a voluntary basis, typically within a year of publication,  
> has emerged in the past ten years. This is such a widespread and  
> growing practice that the lack of evidence of harm to these journals  
> is in itself evidence that a one-year’s embargo causes no harm to  
> journals relying on subscriptions, even when all articles in the  
> journal are made freely available. Therefore I suggest that it would  
> be quite appropriate to set a maximum embargo of no more than one year  
> regardless of discipline. Thank you very much for the opportunity to  
> participate in this consultation.
> 
> best,
> 
> Heather Morrison, PhD
> Freedom for scholarship in the internet age
> https://theses.lib.sfu.ca/thesis/etd7530
> _______________________________________________
> GOAL mailing list
> GOAL at eprints.org
> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal