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

Fri Mar 22 01:41:47 GMT 2013

Sorry Stevan. My recent reply to Tim answers most of these points. Please
remember than I am an ICT professional.

The ones that are not refuted by that reply (or require emphasis) are:

.       All author deposits must be audited. They may be in error and may
even be fraudulent. There is plenty of incentive for the latter, given the
lax controls. I could even see phishing repositories developing. Even author
identity can be hacked, perhaps by students.

.       There may not ever have been an AM (refereed draft in your
terminology) as a single file. To deliberately make one up for the local
repository is extra effort (aka work) by the author, or imposes extra work
on the reader if that the integration is not done or not possible.

.       Physicists produce pretty simple papers in ICT terms. Few
animations, 3D models, videos, audio, etc. In other words physicists produce
clunky pdf-reducible objects, whether in astronomy or particle physics.
That's why they were and are good candidates for OA. Computer scientists
were, but no longer are as much.

.       The request-a-copy button is not perfect. Especially with the
direction that scholarly publication is likely to go. For example, sending
50 files by the button is not catered for. I can provide advice if wanted.

If we preface your mantras by [if convenient] or [if immediately possible],
they are perhaps barely acceptable.  Frankly, I think that academics are
cleverer than you give them credit for. In reading your comments, I have
mentally deleted the perjorative 'sensible', 'cautious', 'timid' and
'foolish'. For your information, I do (1) when I can [not always]; (2)
almost never since I don't know the publication date in advance, (3) I never
ask the publisher for a date for reasons in (2), (4) I've never actioned
this, because I am an OA advocate and I won't publish unless I can make my
article OA, or feel safe being illegal.

I regard the REF deposit requirement to be absurd, and will continue to
support the Australian authorities in their better grasp of the situation
than the UK.

Best wishes

Arthur Sale

From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf
Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: Friday, 22 March 2013 1:55 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Cc: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum
Subject: [GOAL] Re: Harnad Comments on Proposed HEFCE/REF Green Open Access
Mandate

An immediate-deposit mandate moots most of this discussion. Versions and
rights need 

not be checked if the mandate simply says:

"Deposit the refereed draft immediately, and make it Closed Access."

So all this discussion is about what *else* you can do, and when.

Here's a list:

1. A sensible author will make the immediate-deposit OA immediately, just as
physicists 

have been successfully doing for decades with no problems.

2. A cautious author will look up the publsher's embargo policy as well as
the funder's

embargo limit, and make the immediate-deposit OA at whichever date comes
first.

3. A timid author will look up the publsher's embargo policy and make the 

immediate-deposit OA at whatever date the publisher indicates.

4. A foolish author will simply make the immediate-deposit and leave it as

Closed Access (attending to reprint requests generated by the request copy
Button

on an individual case by case basis).

The speed with which we reach 100% Green OA and beyond depends on the
relative

proportion of foolish, timid, cautious and sensible authors.

But please, while we keep speculating, let us all mandate immediate-deposit.

I don't mean just:

"Deposit the refereed draft immediately, and make it Closed Access."

Improve on that in any way you like:

"and make it OA immediately"

"and make it OA immediately or after X months at the latest"

But in any case, deposit immediately!

Stevan Harnad

On 2013-03-21, at 9:40 AM, Hans PfeiffenbergAer <hans.pfeiffenberger at awi.de>
wrote:

Am 21.03.13 10:35, schrieb Tim Brody:

By comparison, taking a copy is little extra effort and the institution
can say unambiguously that they have an open access copy. 

wrong: if somebody uploads a PDF the institution

- may have a copy if the identity of the file submitted or its equivalence
with the version of record can be established

- may have an OA copy. But to establish that, someone at the institution
(the library?) must  check the copyright notice in it (if any) and possibly
consult with the authors about his/her contract with the publisher (because,
legally, something found on the web pages of the publisher or ROMEO does not
count), ...

I just insisted on bean counting because it was done to the other side as
well. I think this could go on indefinitely and should therefore be stopped.

Seen from a non-British perspective, the discussion has morphed from being
about Open Access to a discussion about controlling of science. And setting
up of mandates and policies which are the least costly to enforce. Cost to
the admin dept., of course! Where the library, if involved in this, may
morph into a branch of admin. 

How very German! Enjoy!

best,

Hans

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