[GOAL] Fwd: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster

[Stevan Harnad]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, Sep 16, 2014 at 5:01 PM
Subject: Fwd: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster
To: JISC-REPOSITORIES at jiscmail.ac.uk


Begin forwarded message:

*From: *Stevan Harnad <harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
*Subject: **Re: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster*
*Date: *September 16, 2014 at 4:59:51 PM GMT-4
*To: *LibLicense-L Discussion Forum <LIBLICENSE-L at listserv.crl.edu>,


On Sep 16, 2014, at 2:30 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner2 at unl.edu> wrote:

Stevan,

Apologies for a delayed response. I have been meaning to reply, and now
have time.

You have asked some questions of us at UNL. Paul Royster may reply, as
well. These are my thoughts.

"(1) What percentage of Nebraska-Lincoln output of peer-revewed journal
articles (only) per year is deposited in the N-L Repository?
"(Without that figure, there is no way of knowing how well N-L is doing,
compared to other institutional repositories, mandated or unmandated.)"

You are requesting a certain metric and claiming that it is the only valid
one. We have approximately 75,000 items in our repository, almost all of
which can be read freely by anyone with an Internet connection. We also
have several dozen monographs under our own imprint, and we host several
journals. We don't devote too much of our time to analyzing our metrics, in
part because we are a staff of three (as of two weeks ago--before which we
were a staff of two), and we spend much of our time getting content into
the repository in favor of administrative activities. Personally, I welcome
anyone to analyze our output by any measure and I will be interested to
know the result, but that information won't change our day-to-day
activities, so it would remain off to the side of what we're doing.


Sue,

I mentioned it because UNL was being described as one of the biggest and
most successful Institutional Repositories (IRs). This may be true if IR
success is gauged by total contents, regardless of type. But if it is about
success for OA’s target contents — which are first and foremost *refereed
journal articles* — then there is no way to know how UNL compares with
other IRs unless the comparison is based on the yearly proportion of UNL
yearly refereed journal article output that is being deposited in UNC’s IR
(and when).

I might add that the question is all the more important as the success of
UNC’s IR was being adduced as evidence that an OA mandate is not necessary
for IR (OA) success.

"(2) Why doesn’t N-L adopt a self-archiving mandate?"

We just don't see how -mandating- deposit would improve anything. You can
tell people what to do, and maybe they will do it--and, if they do, it's
probably not because you told them to. My feeling about it is: Am I serving
the needs of my constituents, i.e. the faculty? I feel strongly that I'm
here to facilitate access to their work, not to bear down on them with
demands of any kind. If it works for them, it works for me--not the other
way around.


But whether mandates are increasing annual deposits and OA is an empirical
question. Objective evidence exists (e.g., see 1
<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18493/>, 2
<http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/344687/>, and 3
<http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/358882/>). Without data of this kind, there is
no way to know how well UNC is doing, compared to mandated institutions.

"(3) Why do you lump together author-pays with author-self-archives?"

I lump them together because they both result in a burden on the author
that I feel is best taken up by other constituencies.


You are right that the consituency that mandates either author-payments or
self-archiving is not the library (it is the university administration
and/or the faculty).

But do you think authors lump together dollars and keystrokes as the same
sort of burden?

Author-pays results in a skewed body of work being published. I watch my
close colleagues in academic departments deal with this on a daily basis,
and it would be comical if it weren't so deadly serious.


I agree about author-pays. But the issue of IR OA success and
self-archiving mandates is not about author-pays.

Author-pays, a scenario: The junior author has money from her institution
to go with an author-pays journal. The established author doesn't care
about impact factor and wants to go with a smaller, more regional journal.
The junior author insists that she must publish within a certain subset of
prestigious journals, so they submit to one of them. The reviewers that are
assigned know very little about the techniques that the authors are using,
but it gets pushed through with suggested revisions that the established
author knows border on ridiculous. The paper gets published and it's not
what the established author had ultimately envisioned, but there you have
it.


A rather tendentious hypothetical example — but either way, I agree that
author-pays is a bad idea (today), for manny reasons.

Self-archiving scenario: An established author has 170 papers going back to
1984. Many of those either do not exist digitally or are not coming through
via interlibrary loan, despite several attempts. He has a stack of
reprints. He has some manuscripts in various files on his computer, but
he's not sure if they're pre-print or post-print. He is administering two
large, federally-funded projects, one of which takes him into the field for
2-3 months per year. He teaches at least one class each semester. He runs
the weekly seminar for his department. He has three active PhD students, a
post-doc, and a master's student who needs a lot of mentoring. He holds two
officer positions on national boards that require his attendance at least
once a year. He is asked to review dozens of papers per year from
for-profit publishers (had to throw that in--all too true). Etc.  ... [drum
roll?]  We tell him has HAS TO deposit his papers into our institutional
repository.


You are talking about a few keystrokes (which can be done for the author or
by graduate students or research assistants).

Is this a person we can reasonably expect to self-archive his work into our
repository? Note that he has to understand the vagaries of copyright
permissions and post a legal version, or we are going to be doing work
after he has complied.


Yes, you can reasonably expect it, based on existing evidence evidence. All
that has to be done is to adopt the right self-archiving mandate,
which is *immediate-deposit
of the final refereed draft, immediately upon acceptance for publication*.
If the journal embargoes OA (and the author elects to comply) they can
deposit it initially as Restricted Access instead of as OA and rely on the
repository’s automated copy-request Button to tide over user needs during
the embargo. (No copyright vagaries.)

If we do not mandate deposit, and if we offer mediated deposit (as opposed
to requiring self-archiving), this faculty member's work will be included
in the IR. If we mandate self-archiving, his work will remain in the deep
archive that is bound up in older, hard copy research.


Nothing stops the administration from mandating self-archiving and the
library also offering to help mediate deposit. (It’s silly, because it’s
only a few keystrokes. But authors can just email you the final draft when
they get their acceptance letter.)

So, that is where I am coming from. I see what works and what doesn't, and
that's how I have formed my opinions.


UNL has not tried mandating self-archiving to see if it works. I suggest
that you at least look at the evidence.

Best wishes,

Stevan Harnad


Sincerely,

Sue Gardner
Scholarly Communications Librarian/Professor
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Lincoln, Nebraska, 68588 USA


-----Original Message-----
From: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum [mailto:LIBLICENSE-L at listserv.crl.edu
<LIBLICENSE-L at listserv.crl.edu>] On Behalf Of LIBLICENSE
Sent: Thursday, September 4, 2014 6:05 PM
To: LIBLICENSE-L at listserv.crl.edu
Subject: Re: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2014 21:42:16 -0400

On Sep 3, 2014, at 3:53 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner2 at UNL.EDU> wrote:

"As repository managers, many of us are having trouble envisioning getting
from where we are currently to what the original OA movement idealistically
proposed. This is due to the practical constraints we are faced with (such
as restrictive publishers’ policies including not allowing posting of
published versions even a decade and more after publication, lack of ready
access to authors’ manuscripts, etc.). The solutions being offered to move
toward the initial goal include author-pays OA, mandated self-archiving of
manuscripts, CHORUS, SHARE, and others, which are—from my standpoint as a
repository manager—one-and-all ineffectual or unsustainable initiatives to
varying degrees.

"In populating our repository within the varied constraints, and in
offering non-mandated, mediated deposit, at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln we are taking a bottom-up approach to access (from the
author to the reader) and, as Paul Royster has pointed out, it leaves us in
the odd position of actually standing outside the OA movement as it is
defined. We have seen forces gather (led by publishers and others) that
have further galvanized our peripheral position. From my perspective, these
forces intend that the initial vision of OA will be realized on the backs
of the authors themselves (with author-pays schemes, mandated
self-archiving of manuscripts, etc.).

"Should authors have to bear the brunt of the OA movement? To some extent,
of course, but ultimately that seems counterproductive since they are the
ones who generate the content. As librarians and as the in-house publishing
unit within the library, we work with, and for, authors daily and we help
them get their work out to readers. We assist with interpretation of
permissions, upload the work, and so on.
They create, we facilitate access to their creations.

"In summary, in the discussions that have ensued on the various lists this
past week, I see a disconnect between what I experience on a daily basis
working with the IR and what we say as a community we are trying to
achieve."

Sue Gardner
Scholarly Communications Librarian

*******

Three questions for Nebraska-Lincoln (N-L) Libraries, in order of
importance:

(1) What percentage of Nebraska-Lincoln output of peer-revewed journal
articles (only) per year is deposited in the N-L Repository?

(Without that figure, there is no way of knowing how well N-L is doing,
compared to other institutional repositories, mandated or unmandated.)

Simple way to estimate the above (but you have to keep track of both the
publication date and the deposit date): Sample total annual N-L output from
WoS or SCOPUS and then test what percentage of it is deposited (and when).
That can be benchmarked against other university repositories.

(2) Why doesn’t N-L adopt a self-archiving mandate?

The right mandate — immediate-deposit of all refereed final drafts
immediately upon acceptance for publication — plus the request-copy Button
during any allowable publisher embargo interval — works (especially if
librarians keep mediating during the start-up and if deposit is designated
as the sole means of submitting articles for performance-review). Try it.

(3) Why do you lump together author-pays with author-self-archives?

They’re opposites… Only one of them is objectively describable as the
"author bearing the brunt” (and that’s having to shell out a lot of money —
not just do a few extra keystrokes -- or else give up journal-choice).

Stevan Harnad
<Sue Ann Gardner.vcf>
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