[GOAL] Bravo!!! Re: {Disarmed} Fw: [oadl] Re: ReOpen Access Policy on Website for Comments-Revised(4.7.2014)

[Heather Morrison]

Bravo!!! to the OA policy committee - in my opinion, this sets a new standard for the world for OA policy (although I have two small suggestions for improvement as well). My comments have been sent to the committee and cross-posted to my blogs Sustaining the Knowledge Commons  http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2014/07/05/bravo-to-indias-dbt-dst-on-their-proposed-open-access-policy/ and The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2014/07/bravo-to-indias-dbtdst-on-proposing-new.html

Innovative strengths to highlight:

No payment of OA article processing charges by the funder. This is a good thing; it avoids market dysfunction and leaves research funding where it belongs - in the hands of researchers and their organizations to support the actual research.

Direction to consider only the quality of academic work, not the impact factor of the journal it is published in. This is the recommendation of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment http://am.ascb.org/dora/ which I strongly support as a means of moving away from the distorting influence of the impact factor on scholarly publishing (on the market and on research and researchers in the developing world).

Strong compliance incentives: no further funding or promotions if researchers fail to comply. That will work!

Suggestions for improvement:

Insist on deposit in a local archive, even when researchers publish in an open access journal. Journals and publishers are free to come and go and change business model. An active open access journal today could ease to exist, or be sold to a publisher that uses a toll access model. The only way to ensure ongoing open access is through a repository under the direct or indirect control / influence of the funders.

Insist on, rather than suggest, a maximum embargo of one year, with language indicating eventual elimination of embargoes. Publishers have had more than a decade to adjust to open access policy. There are now close to 10 thousand fully open access journals, using a variety of business models, including very successful commercial operations. The incremental nature of science means that a delay of a year at every step can in practice mean a delay of many years towards a breakthrough. The purpose of public funding of research is advancing knowledge, not propping up secondary services such as publishing.

best,

Dr. Heather Morrison




On 2014-07-05, at 2:20 AM, Subbiah Arunachalam wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dear All:
> 
> Here is the proposed OA policy of the Department of Science Technology and the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India. This is a funder OA policy. Your comments and suggestions are welcome and may be sent to Dr T Madhan Mohan of DBT (madhan.dbt at nic.in) and me. 
> 
> Arun
> 
> http://dbtindia.nic.in/docs/DBT-DST_Open_Access_Policy.pdf
> 
> 
> 
> __._,_.___
> Posted by: Subbiah Arunachalam <subbiah.arunachalam at gmail.com>
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