[GOAL] HEFCE Open Access Mandate Not Narrower: Better Focused

[Stevan Harnad]

*"The UK funding councils have narrowed the scope of their proposed open
access mandate for the post-2014 research excellence framework."* -- (Paul
Jump, "Open access mandate narrowed in formal
proposals<http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/open-access-mandate-narrowed-in-formal-proposals/2006022.article>
" *Times Higher Education*)

*1. Model*. The HEFCE proposal to mandate immediate (not retrospective)
deposit of journal articles in the author's institutional repository in
order to make them eligible for evaluation in the next Research Excellence
Framework (REF) is wise and timely, and. if adopted, will serve as a model
for the rest of the world. It will also complement the Green
(self-archiving) component of the RCUK Open Access (OA) mandate, providing
it with an all-important mechanism for monitoring and ensuring compliance.

*2. Monographs*. Exempting monographs for now was a good decision. The
HEFCE mandate, like the RCUK mandate, applies only to peer-reviewed journal
articles. These are all author giveaways, written solely for research
impact, not royalty income. This is not true of all monographs. (But a
simple compromise is possible: recommend -- but don't require -- monograph
deposit too, but with access set as Closed Access rather than Open Access,
with no limit on the length of the OA embargo. Author choice.)

*3. Data*. Ditto for open data: It's good judgment not to force it on
researchers. Researchers must be allowed a fair period of first-expoitation
rights on the data they have gathered. If it's immediately open to all, why
bother to gather data data all? Just analyze the data of others immediately
after they take the time and trouble to gather it. (But here too, a simple
compromise would be to recommend -- but not require -- Closed Access
deposit. Eventually, fair embargo length limits can be decided, on a
discipline by discipline and project by project basis.)

*4. Exceptions*. The required compliance rate has not been reduced from
100% to 60-75% (and should not be). HEFCE is merely asking in the
consultation, whether the research community prefers a reduced target
percentage or case-by-case consideration of exceptions. The latter is a far
better way of making the policy realistic and successful. Most of the
notional reasons for non-compliance (e.g., publisher embargoes) are based
on misunderstandings anyway. (Articles can be deposited immediately, even
if there is a publisher OA embargo: the deposit can be Closed Access
instead of OA during the embargo.) Percentage-targets would simply ensure
that compliance rates were no higher than the allowable percentages.

*5. Embargoes*. The HEFCE mandate moots OA embargoes because it requires
immediate deposit, whether or not access is immediately OA. This is the
core reason the HEFCE mandate is so very important and provides an optimal
mandate model for the rest of the world: Publisher OA embargoes no longer
determine whether and when an article is deposited. And the institutional
repositories have an eprint request Button with which individual users
wordlwide can request a single copy of a Closed Access article for research
purposes with one click; and the author can choose to comply or not comply
with one click. This tides over research needs during any allowable OA
embargo with "Almost-OA."

*6. Licenses*. Once the allowable embargo (if any) elapses, any OA deposit
can be accessed, read, searched, linked, downloaded, stored, printed off
and locally data-mined by any user webwide. It will also be harvested and
indexed for Boolean full text search by engines like Google. No further
license is needed for any of this. Further re-use rights will come once
effective Green OA mandates on the combined HEFCE/RCUK model are globally
globally by funders and institutions worldwide. Universal Green OA will
also hasten the inevitable natural demise of all remaining OA embargoes.

*7. Start-Date*. The HEFCE consultation also inquires about when the
mandate should start, and contemplates a grace period of two years, from
2014-2016. But there is really no reason why an immediate-deposit mandate
should not start immediately after REF 2014 for authors at UK institutions,
for any article accepted after that date: Everyone begins preparing for the
new REF the day after the old REF anyway.

*8. Date-Stamp*: Only one of the consultation quiestions is critical for
the success of the HEFCE mandate model, and that is whether the requirement
that the deposit be "immediate" refers to the date of publication or the
date of acceptance for publication. It is crucially important that the date
should be acceptance, not publication. Acceptance date is marked by a
determinate date-stamped acceptance letter and is a natural point for
deposit in the author's workflow. Authors usually don't even know when
their accepted article will appear, or has appeared; the lag may be months
or even years from acceptance. Nor is the date on the journal issue a
marker, because issues often appear long after their calendar dates.
Publication lags can be even longer than OA embargoes! Meanwhile, precious
access and impact are being lost. The HEFCE immediate-deposit mandate will
only succeed if it is pegged to the determinate acceptance date rather than
the indeterminate publication date.

*Stevan Harnad*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/attachments/20130725/d4d2737b/attachment.html