[GOAL] Re: UK HEFCE/REF Open Access Policy FAQs

[Harnad, Stevan]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2015 at 12:43 PM, Rick Anderson <rick.anderson at utah.edu <mailto:rick.anderson at utah.edu>> wrote:
Given that HEFCE continues to allow CC BY NC ND licensing, can 
its policy really be called Open Access?

"Open Access" (OA) is not synonymous with CC-BY, and never was.

There is Gratis OA (free online access) and Libre OA (free online access + re-use rights)

And the re-use rights can range over all the CC licenses, all the way up to CC-BY.

Gratis OA is urgently needed (and vastly overdue) in all fields.

Gratis OA is also the easiest to provide, because it faces far fewer rights restrictions from publishers.

Libre OA is urgently needed in only a few fields (and not as urgently as those same fields need Gratis OA). 

(Libre OA would also be beneficial, but not urgent, in many other fields.)

But Libre OA is much harder to provide, because it faces far more restrictions from publishers.

Hence the rational and practical policy is to mandate Gratis OA first.

Once Gratis OA has prevailed globally, as much Libre OA as users need and authors wish to provide 
will not be far behind.

But not if policy-makers foolishly try to mandate Libre OA first, instead of Gratis OA.

Gratis OA already faces publisher OA embargoes. 

But the Liege/HEFCE immediate-deposit mandate plus the repositories' copy-request Button 
is immune to publisher OA embargoes and can provide the access that research and researchers 
need most, and most urgently. 

This is not yet 100% Gratis OA, but once immediate-deposit plus the Button prevail globally, 
Gratis OA (and then Libre OA) will not be far behind.

The only way researchers can provide immediate Libre OA now is if they pay for Gold OA.

This is exactly why publishers are trying to embargo Green Gratis OA: to force authors to pay 
for Libre Gold OA.

And this is exactly why Green Gratis OA must be globally mandated first.

 Stevan Harnad

> On Feb 10, 2015, at 11:12 AM, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> HEFCE/REF have updated the FAQs for their Open Access Policy: 
> http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/rsrch/rinfrastruct/oa/faq/ <http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/rsrch/rinfrastruct/oa/faq/>
> 
> The HEFCE/REF OA policy is excellent: very well thought out, clearly explained,
> and implementable by one and all (both institutions and funders). 
> 
> It is an implementation of the Liège model for aligning and harmonizing all OA
> policies, and especially for the all-important evaluation/assessment contingencies
> as well as compliance-monitoring.
> 
> In my view, by far the fastest and surest way to reach universal OA globally is for all
> institutions and funders to adopt this model.
> 
> Here are what I think are the three most important of the FAQ items for the
> HEFCE/REF OA Policy:
> 
> 3. What is meant by the date of acceptance? (NEW) <http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/rsrch/rinfrastruct/oa/faq/#>
> 
> 5. Why does the policy state that deposit on acceptance is required? <http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/rsrch/rinfrastruct/oa/faq/#>
> 
> 37. What supporting information and evidence of meeting the deposit, discovery, access and exceptions should institutions retain? <http://www.hefce.ac.uk/whatwedo/rsrch/rinfrastruct/oa/faq/#>
> 
> (Unmentioned, but all-important too, is the fact that although all the articles
> deposited immediately upon acceptance may not be immediately OA, they
> are nevertheless immediately accessible once deposited in the institutional
> repository, via the repositories' copy-request Button (eprints <http://wiki.eprints.org/w/RequestEprint>, dspace <https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/RequestCopy>),
> with one click from the requestor and one click from the author.)
> 
> Stevan Harnad
> 

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