[GOAL] Re: Harnad Comments on Proposed HEFCE/REF Green Open Access Mandate

[l.hurtado at ed.ac.uk]

Thanks to Steven Harnad for giving us his enthusiastic view on the  
HEFCE prooposd policy for REF and OA.  Among my concerns that he  
doesn't address, however, is one that will be shared by many/all in  
the Humanities (almost always the Cinderella at the OA ball):  What  
about books?
Though scientists especially use journal articles as THE mode of  
publication of original research, the nature of work in the Humanities  
(which is often more integrative and discoursive, involving/requiring  
extended analysis and argumentation) often requires a book-length  
treatment.  Indeed, in Humanities field, typically the most  
high-impact work appears as/in single-author books.

Moreover, these include often (perhaps dominantly), not only technical  
"monographs" (which are often revised PhD theses), but (especially  
among more seasoned scholars) "free-standing" books, and these  
published by various university presses but also "trade" publishers.   
Many of these aren't based in the UK.

It will be difficult (and unlikely) to get all these publishers to  
allow the immediate deposit of the page-proofs in an OA desository.   
So, will this mean that what has been heretofore the most respected  
form of research-publication in the Humanities will be disallowed in  
the next REF?  There is a short paragraph on "monographs" in the HEFCE  
consultation paper, but it only reflects the inadequate understanding  
of the place of *books* in the Humanities.

We urgently need HEFCE to bring Humanities scholars more into the  
magic circle of policy/practice makers.

Larry Hurtado

Quoting Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com> on Thu, 14 Mar 2013  
08:40:12 -0400:

> On Thu, Mar 14, 2013 at 5:12 AM, Andy Powell  
> <andy.powell at eduserv.org.uk>wrote:
>
>
>> Supposing this Proposed HEFCE/REF Green Open Access Mandate leads to a
>> situation where we achieve 100% immediate deposit of the final
>> peer-reviewed draft of journal articles to an institutional repository but
>> where we also see a ?publisher norm? emerging of a 12-month embargo period?
>> ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Firstly, is that an unrealistic expectation of where this policy might get
>> us?****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> If so, would we consider this situation to have significantly advanced the
>> OA cause?****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> I agree that the separation of ?immediate deposit? from ?embargo period?
>> is important but I also worry that doing so effectively becomes a way for
>> publishers to stifle progress towards true OA but setting lengthy embargo
>> periods? Further, there seems to be nothing in this policy that mitigates
>> against this happening?****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Or am I misunderstanding the situation?
>>
>
> Please read the comments, not just the Executive Summary, as they
> explicitly answer your question.
>
> Meanwhile, here is the answer to your question, put in a different way, in
> response to: *RCUK fails to end ?green? embargo
> confusion*<http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/rcuk-fails-to-end-green-embargo-confusion/2002538.article>
> " *THE* 14 March 2013:
>
> *
> KEYSTROKE MANDATES
> *
>
> What a mess! With publishers eagerly pawing at the Golden Door, and RCUK
> hopelessly waffling at Green embargo limits and their enforcement.
>
> But relief is on the way! HEFCE has meanwhile quietly and gently proposed a
> solution that will moot all this relentless cupidity and stupidity.
>
> HEFCE has proposed to mandate that in order to be eligible for the Research
> Excellence Framework
> (REF)<http://www.hefce.ac.uk/media/hefce/content/news/news/2013/open_access_letter.pdf>,
> the final, peer-reviewed drafts of all papers published as of 2014 will
> have to be deposited in the author's institutional
> repository<http://roar.eprints.org/> immediately
> upon publication: no delays, no embargoes, no exceptions -- irrespective of
> whether the paper is published in a Gold OA journal or a subscription
> journal, and irrespective of the allowable length of the embargo on making
> the deposit OA: The deposit itself must be immediate.
>
> This has the immense benefit that while the haggling continues about how
> much will be paid for Gold OA and how long Green OA may be embargoed, all
> papers will be faithfully deposited -- and deposited in institutional
> repositories, which means that all UK universities will thereby be
> recruited, as of 2014, to monitor and ensure that the deposits are made,
> and made immediately. (Institutions have an excellent track record for
> making sure that everything necessary for REF is done, and done reliably,
> because a lot of money and prestige is at stake for them.)
>
> And one of the ingenious features of the proposed HEFCE/REF Green OA
> mandate is the stipulation that deposit may not be delayed: Authors cannot
> wait till just before the next REF, six years later, to do it. If the
> deposit was not immediate, the paper is ineligible for REF.
>
> And, most brilliant stroke of all, this ensures that it is not just the 4
> papers that are ultimately chosen for submission to REF that are deposited
> immediately -- for that choice is always a retrospective one, made after
> looking over the past 6 years' work, to pick the four best papers. Rarely
> will this be known in advance. So the safest policy will be to deposit all
> papers immediately, just in case.
>
> This is precisely the compliance assurance mechanism the RCUK mandate so
> desperately needs in order to succeed, but the RCUK policy-makers have not
> yet had the wit to conceive and adopt. Well, HEFCE/REF have done it for
> them, bless them.
>
> But immediate-deposit is not immediate-OA you say? Indeed it is not. It
> does, however, overcome OA's most formidable hurdle, which is getting all
> those papers into the institutional repositories, and right away:
> keystrokes. It is just those keystrokes that have stood between the
> research world and OA for over over two decades now.
>
> Once the institutional repositories are reliably being filled to 100%, does
> anyone with the slightest imagination doubt what will follow, as nature
> (and human nature) takes its course?
>
> First, the repositories will facilitate sending reprints to those who
> request a single copy for research purposes, with one click each. Sending
> reprints is not OA; researchers have been doing it for a half century. But
> they used to have to do it by reading *Current Contents* or scanning
> journals' contents lists, mailing reprint requests, and then waiting and
> hoping that authors would take the time and trouble and expense to mail
> them a reprint, as requested (and many did). But now the whole transaction
> is just one click each, and almost immediate, if the papers have been
> deposited and both parties are at the wheel.
>
> But that's still just Almost-OA. Once immediate-deposit is mandated,
> however, about 60% of those deposits can be made immediately OA, because
> about 60% of journals already endorse immediate, unembargoed Green OA.
> (RCUK has already succeeded is dragging down that figure to somewhat closer
> to 50/50 with its perverse preference for Gold, inspiring hybrid Gold
> publishers to offer Gold and increase Green embargo lengths to try to force
> UK authors to pick paid Gold over cost-free Green).
>
> Now that's about half immediate-OA plus half Almost-OA to tide over
> researcher needs during the embargo. But does anyone have any doubt about
> what will happen next? As OA and Almost-OA grow, and the research community
> tastes more and more of what it's like to have half immediate-OA and half
> Almost-OA, all the disciplines that have not yet had the sense to do it
> will begin to do what almost 100% of physicists have already been doing for
> 20 years now without so much as a moment's hesitation or a "by your leave":
>
> That last remaining keystroke, once a paper is written, revised, accepted
> and deposited -- the keystroke that makes the paper OA -- will be done
> sooner and sooner, more and more, until the embargoes with which publishers
> are trying to hold research hostage will all die their natural and
> well-deserved deaths as the research community learns to do the obvious,
> optimal and inevitable, in the online era.
>
> (Nor will peer-reviewed journal publishing die, as publishers keep warning
> menacingly: It will simply convert to Gold OA -- but only after the
> pressure from Green OA has forced journals to phase out all obsolete
> products and services and their costs: that means phasing out the print
> version and the online version, and offloading all access-providing and
> archiving onto the global network of Green OA institutional repositories.
> Then, instead of double-paying for Gold OA, as Finch folly and RCUK
> recklessness would have us do -- subscriptions plus Gold OA fees --
> post-Green Gold OA will just be a fee for the peer review service, at a
> fair, affordable and sustainable price, paid for out of a fraction of
> institutions' annual savings from subscription cancellations instead of out
> of scarce research funds, over and above subscriptions, as now. Pre-Green
> Gold is Fool's Gold: Post-Green Gold is Fair Gold.)
>



L. W. Hurtado, PhD, FRSE
Emeritus Professor of New Testament Language, Literature & Theology
Honorary Professorial Fellow
New College (School of Divinity)
University of Edinburgh
Mound Place
Edinburgh, UK. EH1 2LX
Office Phone:  (0)131 650 8920. FAX:  (0)131 650 7952
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/divinity/staff-profiles/hurtado
www.larryhurtado.wordpress.com

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