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

[Stevan Harnad]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2013 at 5:59 AM, Graham Triggs <grahamtriggs at gmail.com>wrote:

And if they remain closed access forever, what has been achieved [by
> mandating immediate deposit]?
>

(1) "They" will not remain closed access, since about 60% of journals
already endorse making the immediate-deposit immediately OA and about
20-30% more endorse making it OA after an embargo of 6-12 months. So 60%
immediate OA plus 40% immediate Almost-OA via the Button would be
immediately achieved by universal adoption of the immediate-deposit mandate.

(2) 60% immediate-OA plus 40% Almost-OA would soon go on to generate an
unstoppable worldwide pressure from authors and users toward the inevitable
death of embargoes and 100% immediate-OA.

(Certainly not a fulfilment of the proposed HEFCE/REF requirements, funder
> mandates, etc.)
>

It will achieve a lot more than the fulfilment of the proposed HEFCE/REF
requirements, funder mandates, etc. thanks to the unstoppable adoption of
the immediate-deposit mandate model worldwide! *One size fits all, and
publishers and embargoes are out of the loop.*

I just did a quick check for some physics publishers that do not permit
> post-print archiving. I couldn't find any deposits of post-print material
> in arXiv.
>

(i) How do you know the deposits have not been revised to incorporate the
revisions from the peer review? The deposits are authors' drafts, not
publisher PDFs.

(ii) What percentage of physics journals do not permit immediate-OA
post-print archiving?


> Maybe you are right the physicists are sensible. Try asking some
> repository admins if authors [in other disciplines] can be trusted to
> deposit the correct thing, at the correct time.
>

Adopt the correct mandate, and monitor it correctly (by requiring the date
of the acceptance letter and the deposit to accompany papers in order to be
eligible both for institutional performance review and for REF, as HEFCE
has proposed) and leave the rest to the authors (and the consequences of
non-immediate deposit). *We are only talking about keystrokes.*


> Sorry, I can see now where I misread the statements. It would have been
> clearer if there was some distance the deposit, and the act of making it OA.
>

I hope that in a short time, if the HEFCE/REF mandate proposal is adopted,
the distinction between date of deposit and date of setting access to the
deposit as OA (and the immense power of this fundamental distinction) will
be crystal clear in everyone's minds.

The only thing standing between the world and 100% OA for the past 20 years
has been keystrokes. An immediate-deposit mandate requires N-1 of those
keystrokes for 40% of papers and all N keystrokes for 60%.

With an immediate-deposit mandate the only thing standing between
authors/users and OA for the remaining 40% will be one keystroke. Once that
is true worldwide, I don't think there is a sensible thinker on the planet
who has the slightest doubt about what would happen next, sooner or later.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that [reprint requesting/providing] is not a
> copyright matter. Rather that it has been tolerated and accepted (much like
> an author retaining rights to make use of their papers in teaching, for
> example).
>

Reprint requesting/providing has been "tolerated" for 50 years -- just as
physicist self-archiving has been "tolerated" 20 years -- because
researchers and research need and want it.

Immediate-deposit mandates will speed evolution to the optimal and
inevitable for researchers and research -- and journal publishers will
adapt to it.

If you have a system that allows for easy mass fulfilment of requests to
> access at low cost, then it's not unthinkable that a publisher might expect
> an author to prove that only legitimate requests are being fulfilled.
> Otherwise, they could attempt to either restrict availability of request
> copy buttons, or deny closed access deposits. How successful they might be
> in such a venture is debatable, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of
> them trying.
>

If reprint requesters/providers and self-archiving physicists had taken
such hypothetical contingencies seriously, the research world would have
lost 50 years' worth of reprint access and 20 years' worth of physics OA.

Let's hope that with the help of immediate-deposit mandates from their
institutions and funders the same will soon be true for all disciplines,
worldwide.

Stevan Harnad
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