[GOAL] Re: [SCHOLCOMM] Sour Grapes in the SSP Scholarly Scullery

[Stevan Harnad]

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 11:53 AM, Joseph Esposito <espositoj at gmail.com>wrote:

> Delighted to see how Professor Harnad's actions move in one way while his
> argument goes in another.  Why the cross-posting? Well, this is despite the
> fact that the post and comments he cites are openly available on the
> Scholarly Kitchen.  If Green OA were inefficient, there would be no need to
> cross-post:  things would be easily found from a single source.  Green OA
> is a mess, and that is its virtue:  it could not exist if it were otherwise.
>
> I think it is also incorrect, or at least misleading, to say that 60% of
> articles are OA now.  The figure is closer to 100%.  Articles appear
> everywhere:  on author's blogs, in institutional repositories, on sites
> dedicated to particular topics--not to mention the availability as email
> attachments.  What's missing is an easy way to find things and to know that
> what you find is the version you are looking for. If that happens, there
> would be no Green OA at all.
>
> Praise be to chaos and confusion.  Green OA depends on it.
>

It's certainly not the case that 60% of articles are OA now!

It's closer to 20-30% (for articles in the last half decade --
50%<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1037-Delayed-Access-DA-Is-Not-Open-Access-OA-Any-More-Than-Subscription-Access-SA-is-OA.html>if,
with Science-Metrix, you credit an article with being OA regardless of
how long after publication it becomes freely accessible online:
immediately, or a year or more after publication; I don't; I call most of
that delayed or embargoed access: DA).

The 60% figure<http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics.php?la=en&fIDnum=|&mode=simple>
I
cited (follow the link) did not refer to the percentage of articles that
are OA, but to the percentage of journals that do not embargo author
self-archiving. A big difference. If that percentage really were OA we'd
soon be at our goal. But in fact the reason mandates are needed is to get
authors to deposit them all -- the 60% that they can make immediately OA,
and also the 40% that is embargoed (to enable authors to provide
Button-mediated Almost-OA during the embargo).

Conflating the percentage of article that are Green OA with the percentage
of journals (or publishers) that do not embargo Green OA is the same
conflation Rick
Anderson<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1051-Is-the-Library-Community-Friend-or-Foe-of-OA.html>made
in his posting about cancelling "Green Journals."

Where Joe gets his figure of 100% OA I can't remotely fathom (unless he is
counting the possibility of going to a subscribing library or writing to
the author for a reprint as OA -- in which case we've had OA for well over
a half-century already).

In reality, redundancy is good -- and the capacity of search engines to
find everything that is freely accessible online is excellent.

What's missing is the OA content -- 70-80% missing.

But with the help of the optimal Green OA mandate (the
Liège<http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/handle/2268/102031>
-FNRS <http://roarmap.eprints.org/850/> model immediate-deposit mandate
recommended by BOAI-10<http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai-10-recommendations>
, HEFCE<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/987-The-UKs-New-HEFCEREF-OA-Mandate-Proposal.html>
, BIS<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1040-UK-BIS-Committee-2013-Report-on-Open-Access.html>
 and HOAP<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap/Implementing_a_policy#Internal_use_of_deposited_versions>,
which is immune to publisher embargoes), once adopted by all institutions
and funders, Joe's figure of 100% is really just keystrokes away...

On versions, see the (12-year-old) self-archiving FAQ,
#23<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#23.Version>
.

(I poly-post, because my request to redirect this exchange to library lists
was not heeded. But I certainly wouldn't want to restrict this exchange to
the Scholarly Scullery<http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/09/26/when-it-comes-to-green-oa-nice-guys-finish-last/>,
which is not a librarian site but a publisher site!)

*Stevan Harnad*

On Sat, Sep 28, 2013 at 7:31 AM, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> *Joseph Esposito:*<http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/09/26/when-it-comes-to-green-oa-nice-guys-finish-last/>
>>
>> *"Stevan Harnad engaged Rick’s comment<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1051-Is-the-Library-Community-Friend-or-Foe-of-OA.html> and
>> asserted that such a [journal cancellation] policy was a very bad thing
>> since it would set back the advance of Green OA. This is an interesting
>> remark, as it reveals Professor Harnad’s conviction that librarians, indeed
>> the whole world, should view the achievement of his idiosyncratic goal as
>> their highest priority. As far as I know, it is not the mission of Rick’s
>> institution or any other to put Green OA at the top of a list of
>> desiderata. Most institutions put service to their own institutions first,
>> as one would expect. Cancelling Green OA journals will indeed set back the
>> advance of Green OA, but that’s beside the point."*
>>
>> *David Crotty*<http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/09/26/when-it-comes-to-green-oa-nice-guys-finish-last/#comment-112263> (with
>> 11 scholarly thumbs up from his co-cuisiniers): *
>> "I find Dr. Harnad’s response here somewhat appalling. Progress in
>> implementing Open Access will come from open discussion, analysis and
>> experimentation, not from censorship, obfuscation and withholding
>> information. When voices as disparate as Kent Anderson and Cameron Neylon
>> are in agreement about OA reaching a new era of practical implementation,
>> it should be a sign that Harnad is out of step here. It’s always valuable
>> to have someone willing to point out the state of the Emperor’s clothing."
>> *
>>
>> Compliments to the chefs. Some suggested recipe upgrades:
>>
>> 1. No suggestion made that institutions cannot or should not cancel
>> journals if their articles are all or almost all Green.
>>
>> (No such journal in sight yet, however, since Green OA is still hovering
>> around 20-30%, apart from some parts of Physics -- but there it's already
>> been at or near 100% for over 20 years, and no cancellations in sight<http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/261006/>.
>> For the rest, when Green OA -- which grows anarchically, article by
>> article, not systematically, journal by journal<http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/265753/> --
>> prevails universally, because Green OA mandates prevail, all or most
>> journal articles will be Green universally, so Green OA will not be a
>> factor in deciding whether to cancel this journal rather than that one.)
>>
>> 2. The issue with Rick was not about the notion of canceling journals
>> because their articles are all or almost all Green, but about cancelling
>> journals (60%) because they do *not* have a policy of embargoing Green
>> OA!
>>
>> 3. And such a perverse cancellation policy would not be a setback for
>> Green OA but for OA itself. (But not a *big* setback, thanks to the Liège<http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/handle/2268/102031>
>> -FNRS <http://roarmap.eprints.org/850/> model immediate-deposit mandate
>> recommended by BOAI-10<http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai-10-recommendations>
>> , HEFCE<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/987-The-UKs-New-HEFCEREF-OA-Mandate-Proposal.html>
>> , BIS<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1040-UK-BIS-Committee-2013-Report-on-Open-Access.html>
>>  and HOAP<http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap/Implementing_a_policy#Internal_use_of_deposited_versions>,
>> which is immune to publisher embargoes.)
>>
>> (I notice in the SSP scullery discussion above that my suggestion that
>> Rick should post his OA-unfriendly cancellation strategy to library lists
>> rather than to OA lists amounts to a call for censorship over open
>> discussion. I add only that I am not the moderator of any list, hence have
>> no say over their content. It was an open expression, on an open list, of
>> my opinion (together with the reasons for it) that such discussion belongs
>> on another open list.)
>>
>> *Stevan Harnad*
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Joseph J. Esposito
> Processed Media
> espositoj at gmail.com
> @josephjesposito
> +Joseph Esposito
>
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