[GOAL] Re: Fwd: The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster
Jean-Claude Guédon
jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca
Fri Sep 19 21:38:24 BST 2014
I will let readers evaluate whether Stevan's answers are satisfactory or
not. Except for the Liège mandate where I did not express myself
sufficiently precisely, I disagree with points I--III, V-VI.
I agree that point VII deserves being studied more precisely.
For point VIII, part of the 30% (however it is calculated - is it 30% of
WoS articles?) comes from the Gold road, and, therefore, falls under a
different kind of argument. This said, I believe that Liège's solution
is the best one presently available, if you can get it. In countries
where university autonomy is far from being the norm (e.g. France), the
clout of in-house assessments of performance is perforce very limited.
Promoting the Liège solution is also what I do, and I do so everywhere,
but promoting OA publishing platforms (such as Redalyc and, with some
caveats, Scielo) that are both free and gratis is also what I do. IMHO,
this is superior to promoting only and exclusively the Green road: it
adds to the Green road without subtracting anything from it. This was
also the spirit of BOAI.
Finally, I do not need any fancy statistical footwork to agree that the
ways and means of the Liège mandate are the best. Common sense is enough
for me.
Let us get the Liège form of mandate wherever we can (which I am
presently trying to do in my own university), and let us also do all we
can to promote OA for all (including all disciplines).
And I will stop this thread here.
--
Jean-Claude Guédon
Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal
Le vendredi 19 septembre 2014 à 13:17 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit :
> I. A Web-of-Science-based estimate of Green OA mandate effectiveness —
> i.e., of the annual percentage of institutional journal article output
> that is being self-archived in the institutional repository — is fine.
> So is one based on SCOPUS, or on any other index of annual journal
> article output across disciplines.
>
>
> II. The fact that books are more important than journals in SSH
> (social science and humanities) in no way invalidates WoS-based
> estimates of Green OA mandate effectiveness. The mandates apply only
> to journal articles.
>
>
> III. Green OA mandates to date apply only to journal articles, not
> books, for many obvious reasons.
>
>
> IV. Jean-Claude writes: “Liège does not mandate anything, so far as I
> know.”
>
>
> Cf: “The University of Liege policy is mandatory… the
> Administrative Board of the University has decided to make it
> mandatory for all ULg members: - to deposit the bibliographic
> references of ALL their publications since 2002; - to deposit
> the full text of ALL their articles published in periodicals
> since 2002…” http://roarmap.eprints.org/56/
>
>
> V. The fact that research metrics are currently mostly journal-article
> based has nothing to do with the predictive power of estimates of
> Green OA mandate effectiveness.
>
>
> VI. The WoS-based estimate of Green OA mandate effectiveness has
> nothing to do with “impact factor folly.”
>
>
> VII. Jean-Claude writes:“SSH authors are less interested in depositing
> articles than STM researchers.”
>
>
> As far as I know, there is not yet any objective evidence
> supporting this assertion. In fact, we are in the process of
> testing it, using the WoS data.
>
>
> VIII. Status quo: OA to journal articles is around 30% today. Our
> practical solution: Green OA mandates (and tests for which kinds of
> mandate are most effective) so they can be promoted for adoption.
> Other practical solutions?
>
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 5:17 PM, Jean-Claude Guédon
> <jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca> wrote:
>
> A reasonably quick response as I do not want to go into
> discursive tsunami mode...
>
> 1. Stevan admits that his evaluation of compliance is an
> approximation, easy to get, but not easy to correct. This
> approximation varies greatly from one institution to another,
> one circumstance to another. For example, he admits that
> language plays a role; he should further admit that the
> greater or smaller proportion of SSH researchers in the
> research communities of various institutions will also play a
> role. in short, comparing two institutions by simply using WoS
> approximations appears rash and unacceptable to me, rather
> than simply quick and dirty (which I would accept as a first
> approximation).
>
> The impact factor folly was mentioned because, by basing his
> approximation on the WoS, Stevan reinforces the centrality of
> a partial and questionable tool that is, at best, a research
> tool, not a management tool, and which stands behind all the
> research assessment procedures presently used in universities,
> laboratories, etc.
>
> 2. Stevan and I have long differed about OA's central target.
> He limits himself to journal articles, as a first step; I do
> not. I do not because, in the humanities and social sciences,
> limiting oneself to journal articles would be limiting oneself
> to the less essential part of the archive we work with, unlike
> natural scientists.
>
> Imagine a universe where a research metric would have been
> initially designed around SSH disciplines and then extended as
> is to STM. In such a parallel universe, books would be the
> currency of choice, and articles would look like secondary,
> minor, productions, best left for later assessments. Then, one
> prominent OA advocate named Stenan Harvard might argue that
> the only way to proceed forward is to focus only on books,
> that this is OA's sole objective, and that articles and the
> rest will be treated later... Imagine the reaction of science
> researchers...
>
> 3. Liège does not mandate anything, so far as I know; it only
> looks into the local repository (Orbi) to see what is in it,
> and it does so to assess performance or respond to requests
> for promotions or grant submissions. If books and book
> chapters are more difficult to treat than articles, then place
> them in a dark archive with a button. This was the clever
> solution invented by Stevan and I agree with it.
>
> 4. To obtain mandates, you need either faculty to vote a
> mandate on itself (but few universities have done so), or you
> need administrators to impose a mandate, but that is often
> viewed negatively by many of our colleagues. Meanwhile, they
> are strongly incited to publish in "prestigious journals"
> where prestige is "measured" by impact factors. From an
> average researcher's perspective, one article in Nature, fully
> locked behind pay-walls, is what is really valuable. Adding
> open access may be the cherry on the sundae, but it is not the
> sundae. The result? OA, as of now, is not perceived to be
> directly significant for successfully managing a career.
>
> On the other hand, the OA citation advantage has been fully
> recognized and accepted by publishers. That is in part why
> they are finally embracing OA: with high processing charges
> and the increased citation potential of OA, they can increase
> revenues even more and satisfy their stakeholders. This is
> especially true if funders, universities, libraries, etc., are
> willing to pay for the APC's. This is the trap the UK fell
> into.
>
> 5. SSH authors are less interested in depositing articles than
> STM researchers because, for SSH researchers, articles have
> far less importance than books (see above), and, arguably,
> book chapters.
>
> 6. I am not citing rationales for the status quo, and Stevan
> knows this well. This must be the first time that I have ever
> been associated with the status quo... Could it be that
> criticizing Stevan on one point could be seen by him as
> fighting for the status? But that would be true only if Stevan
> were right beyond the slightest doubt. Hmmmmmmmmmm!
>
> I personally think he is right on some points and not so right
> on others.
>
> Also, I am simply trying to think about reasons why OA has
> been so hard to achieve so far, and, in doing so, I have come
> to two conclusions: too narrow an objective and too rigid an
> approach can both be counter-productive.
>
> This said, trying to have a method to compare deposit rates in
> various institutional and mandate circumstances would be very
> useful. I support Stevan's general objective in this regard; I
> simply object to the validity of the method he suggests. Alas,
> I have little to suggest beyond my critique.
>
> I also suggest that a better understanding of the sociology
> of research (not the sociology of knowledge) is crucial to
> move forward.
>
> Finally, I expect that if I saw Stevan self-archive his
> abundant scientific production, I would be awed by the
> lightning speed of his keystrokes. But are they everybody's
> keystrokes?
>
> Jean-Claude Guédon
>
>
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