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

[Stevan Harnad]

On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 4:01 PM, Jean-Claude Guédon <
jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca> wrote:

This form of enforcement is very different from that of directly applying
> penalties for not conforming, or whatever else has been used elsewhere.


As far as I know, no institutional mandate has ever applied or threatened
"penalties" for not complying.

Funder mandates make deposit a condition for funding or renewal.

HEFCE, like Liege, designates immediate deposit as the sole submission
mechanism for REF2020.

Stevan Harnad

On Fri, Sep 19, 2014 at 4:01 PM, Jean-Claude Guédon <
jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca> wrote:

>  Thank you, Bernard. I should have said, more precisely, that Liège does
> not force anything; that it has a mandate and that it is backed up, as you
> point out, by the procedures used for in-house research assessment.
>
> This form of enforcement is very different from that of directly applying
> penalties for not conforming, or whatever else has been used elsewhere.
> What you are doing, cleverly, is say: if you do not comply, you will suffer
> from bad results  in your personal research assessment.
>
> I also believe that this mandate applies to more than journal articles, or
> am I wrong? Books and book chapters, so very important for SSH disciplines,
> cannot be easily disregarded, and assessing SSH personnel purely on the
> basis of journal articles would be a (bad) joke. A dark archive can take
> care of all difficulties, and the celebrated button allows working around
> most difficulties.
>
> And getting close to 90% is indeed outstanding.
>
> Jean-Claude
>
>
>   --
>
> Jean-Claude Guédon
> Professeur titulaire
> Littérature comparée
> Université de Montréal
>
>
>
>   Le vendredi 19 septembre 2014 à 19:46 +0200, brentier at ulg.ac.be a
> écrit :
>
> "*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.*"
> (JC. Guédon)
>
>
>
>  Oh no, Jean-Claude, Liège mandates everything.
>
>  It is a real mandate and it took me a while to get almost every ULg
> researcher to realise that it is to his/her benefit.
>
>  Linking the deposits to personal in-house assessment was the trick to get
> the mandate enforced in the first place. As well as a few positive
> incentives and a lot of time consuming persuasion (but it was well worth
> it).
>
>  Last Wednesday, the Liège University Board has put an ultimate touch of
> wisdom on its mandate by adding "*immediately upon acceptance, even in
> restricted access*" in the official procedure. Actually, a nice but to
> some extent useless addition because, with time (the mandate was imposed in
> 2007), ULg authors have become so convinced of the increase in readership
> and citations that two thirds of them make their deposits between the date
> of acceptance and the date of publication.
>
>  All this explains why we are getting close to 90% compliance, an
> outstanding result, I believe.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Le 18 sept. 2014 à 23:40, Jean-Claude Guédon <
> jean.claude.guedon at umontreal.ca> a écrit :
>
>
>   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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