For the perplexed reader who wonders what on earth two OA advocates -- long on the same team, and still on the same team -- are disagreeing about: <i>it's just about where the time and effort of OA advocates is best invested</i>. <div>
<br></div><div>I am for redoubling efforts to persuade institutions and funders to adopt Green OA Mandates (now with the help of EOS), and Arthur is for encouraging researchers to adopt the Titanium Technology (e.g. Mendeley) which could provide OA as a side-effect (if adopted).<div>
<br></div><div>That's all.</div><div><br></div><div>Both of us would like to see OA prevail before we become nitrogen nourishing future generations.</div><div><br></div><div>I wish Arthur the best of luck in promoting Titanium. I'm sure he does not wish me any less in promoting Green OA mandates.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Peace.</div><div><br></div><div>Stevan Harnad</div><div><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 1:37 AM, Arthur Sale <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:ahjs@ozemail.com.au">ahjs@ozemail.com.au</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-AU" link="blue" vlink="purple"><div><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">[ARTHUR] It seems that I am back on-list again, so here is a response to another chunk of Stevan’s response. I find it interesting to argue with Stevan, because we are both on the same side of wanting OA as soon as possible and believing it is well overdue. If I can characterise the debate, Stevan wants to keep it focused obsessively on ID/OA institutional repositories (which I believe from his recent comments he would now characterize as just a subclass of the Green Road), whereas I have become convinced that this approach will not suffice in my lifetime and think we should pursue a multi-factorial approach (which includes my Titanium Road).<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Here are my responses interspersed after selected bits of Stevan’s last post. I have tried to condense this because otherwise no-one will read it. My apologies to him if I quote him out of context. Unfortunately, it is difficult to reconstruct a reply email from the archive. I have done my best.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 4:57 PM, Arthur Sale <ahjs at <a href="http://ozemail.com.au" target="_blank">ozemail.com.au</a>> wrote:<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">***<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> ** The more important issue is that I have failed to get across to him<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> that the Titanium Road has nothing to do with researcher voluntarism.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Volunteerism means that *in order to make their papers OA, researchers have<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">to do something that they are not currently doing*, of their own accord,<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">not because of an institutional or funder requirement.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Using new tools, voluntarily, is volunteerism.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">[ARTHUR] This is more word-play and inventing a definition. A volunteer has clear options: to volunteer to do something, or do nothing at all. ‘Volunteer’ is not the same as ‘choose between options’. It may be useful to look at the origin of the word in the Oxford English Dictionary: the primary meaning is that of someone who volunteers for military service, as opposed to those who have no choice. Or do not have to choose. Researchers who self-archive in an institutional repository are either volunteers or conscripts. Users of Titanium Road apps are neither.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> The Green Road also does, because the researcher has to volunteer to<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> undertake unnatural extra work to deposit works in the institutional<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> repository through a clunky interface.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">The volunteer step in Green OA self-archiving is: Choosing to self-archive.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">[ARTHUR] We both agree on that: volunteering to do the extra work in self-archiving.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">The "clunkiness" of the interface is a technological matter. Not everyone<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">would agree that filling out a few obvious form-interface fields (login,<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">password, author, title, journal, date, etc.) is so "clunky" or "unnatural"<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">in a day when we are filling out online forms all the time. It's just a few<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">minutes' worth of keystrokes.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">But my friend Arthur is profoundly mistaken if he thinks that the reason<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">why over 80% of researchers are *not* voluntarily self-archiving today is<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">because they find it too "clunky" to do the keystrokes.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">[ARTHUR] But is it the reason they overwhelmingly give up after having been persuaded to try it?<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">I wish it were that simple. But in fact there are at least 38 reasons<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">researchers why do not voluntarily self-archive --<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><a href="http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#38-worries" target="_blank">http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#38-worries</a> -- and their worry<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">that doing so might be "clunky" is just one of them (and usually based on<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">never even having tried it out).<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">[ARTHUR] See above. Frankly I resent being characterized at complaining about keystrokes, when the Titanium Road has little to do with keystrokes. It is about ‘doing what comes naturally.’<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">[omitted, more keystroke rhetoric.]<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">[ARTHUR] I have to waste time answering this. Simplifying things to keystrokes is inappropriate. It *is* just extra work. I know it takes me 5 minutes extra, but that is 5 minutes I could spend on other work things. That is volunteering. And for what? More citations in the cloud, which a researcher may not really be interested in? I do it willingly, but then I am pursuing a cause.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">They even hate to deposit a version of the article that they have no<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> confidence in (the Accepted Manuscript).<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Arthur: Over 80% of researchers hate to deposit *any version at all*, and<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">don't! Worries about versions are just one of the at-least 38 reasons<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">researchers don't deposit, year upon year upon year.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">And the point is that all 38+ reasons are groundless. But it is now evident<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">that it is hopeless to try to persuade researchers of this, one by one,<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">researcher by researcher, reason by reason, year upon year upon year.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">That's why deposit has to be mandated. (That way, only researchers' funders<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">and institutions need to be persuaded!)<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">[ARTHUR] Stevan, do you really think I need to be told this after my work all these years? The facts are, if you observe them, researchers DO care about versions. Where mandates are applied, they often ignore the Accepted Manuscript requirement in favour of the Version of Record. The VoR becomes restricted because it is the institution’s liability not the researcher’s. Nobody complains. Nor do I expect them to. Open Access loses.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">[ARTHUR] So, let’s summarize your argument: it is now evident that it is hopeless to try to persuade researchers, so instead let us persuade the key decision-makers in institutions, who are mostly ex-researchers, because there are fewer of them. The evidence is increasingly that this is not working either. This is probably because the decision makers see the liability landing in their laps.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> So few of them do it, and they backslide so easily, that the only solution<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> is to force them to do it (a mandate). Since mandates rely on persuasion of<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> key executives who are themselves usually ex-researchers and are<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> transitory, voluntarism is an intrinsic thread running through the Green<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> Road.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">You are quite right that persuading the key executives of research<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">institutions and funders to adopt an OA self-archiving mandate is a<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">substantial challenge. But I think time has shown that it is the challenge<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">that can yield the greatest OA dividends, the fastest, and that it hence<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">deserves far more time and effort now than pinning our hopes yet again on<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">trying to promote the adoption of a new killer-app by researchers.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">The volunteerism in question here, by the way, is *the volunteer stroking<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">of keys by researchers*. Of course all human decisions, including<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">institutional executive ones, are "free-willed" decisions. But casting that<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">as just another variant of the OA voluntarism problem misses the fact that *it<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">is individual researcher voluntarism that is failing*, and that persuading<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">key executives to (voluntarily!) mandate researcher keystrokes is not quite<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">the same thing.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Wendy Hall (Southampton), Tom Cochrane (QUT) and Bernard Rentier (Liege),<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">after all, are "key executives", and they have chosen, of their own free<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">will, to mandate the OA self-archiving (keystrokes).<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">One of the key objectives of EnablingOpenScholarship (EOS) -- of which<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Bernard Rentier is Director (and Tom Cochrane is a Board member) -- is to<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">advise their fellow key executives at other institutions worldwide on how<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">to mandate the keystrokes that are the only thing that stands between us<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">and 100% OA.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">[ARTHUR] Some people have been persuaded, but pitifully few, after all these years. My observations of key executives suggest there is no likelihood of a landslide any time soon.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> ** I liken the Titanium Road with the situation with Electronic Theses<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> and Dissertations (ETDs). Where universities mandate the deposit of an<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> electronic copy of the thesis, the deposit rate easily reaches completeness<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> (and I mean 100%, not the 80% or so ID/OA mandated articles sometimes<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> achieve). It never retreats from that. Why? Because the action required of<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> the graduating student is completely natural and they’ve always expected to<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> do it. The university simply says “instead of depositing two bound copies<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> of your thesis with the university before graduating, give us one and an<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> electronic copy”. Or in even more enlightened universities “just give us an<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> electronic copy”. The student does what is asked, and is even happy that<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> copying the files to a CD or DVD is much, much easier than waiting for 100s<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> of pages to print, finding a binder who can do black card covers and gold<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> lettering, and paying for all of it. The success of ETD schemes is that<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> they are natural, and simply electronicize a function that is already part<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">> of a PhD student’s activity.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">This is alas where theorizing gets in our way:<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">The reason students deposit theses as mandated is *because deposit is<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">mandated*. Volunteer deposit means unmandated deposit.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">It doesn’t. But I don’t want you to succeed with a digression.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">And the reason most researchers don't deposit is because *deposit is<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">mandated by fewer than 200 institutions*, out of at least 10,000 worldwide!<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">(see ROARMAP <<a href="http://roarmap.eprints.org/" target="_blank">http://roarmap.eprints.org/</a>>).<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Moreover, many of those first 200 mandates are wishy-washy<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">ones<<a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html" target="_blank">http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html</a>>,<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">without a clear indication of what to do and how, and without any mechanism<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">for monitoring compliance.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Not so with Tom Cochrane's or Bernard Rentier's ID/OA mandates at QUT and U<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Liege. And the Liege mandate model, the most effective one of all, *designates<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">deposit as the sole mechanism for submitting publications for institutional<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">performance assessment*: “instead of mailing paper copies or emailing<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">digital copies of your publications to the university for performance<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">assessment, deposit one electronic copy in the institutional repository”.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">You, Arthur, are attributing the success to the fact that depositing is<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">"natural."<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">But the real reason for the success is that it is mandatory (in both cases).<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">The Titanium Technology may prove quite natural to use, but to get everyone<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">to use it, you would have to mandate it. That's certainly not in the cards.<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">But mandating deposit is.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">[ARTHUR] Again, you miss the point, Stevan. Sure ETD deposits are mandated. But the mandate is easy to get. The students don’t complain because it is natural. The executive agree because it is natural.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">[ARTHUR] I could argue that it would be as easy to get a key executive to ‘mandate’ the provision of a free Titanium Road licence to every researcher. No resistance, easy agreement. But I don’t think that is necessary. Mendeley is free, to use an indicator of what the Titanium app will be.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">[ARTHUR] I’ll stop here because this is already far too long. The rest of the harangue can wait for another day. I’ve got halfway through, and it is tiring to find the flaws in each argument. Keystrokes are not the issue. This argument does not take OA forward.<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Best wishes<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New""><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">Arthur Sale<u></u><u></u></span></p><p><span style="font-family:"Courier New"">University of Tasmania, Australia<u></u><u></u></span></p><p class="MsoNormal">
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