RE: Mandating OA around the corner?

["Margaret Landesman" <margaret.landesman@library.utah.edu>]

Jan,

I'm missing something in the discussion of "green" publishers.  I sent
Karen Hunter's paragraph describing Elsevier's policy to a faculty member
who wants to attach faculty articles to resumes on their departmental
website, as an updated way to distribute reprints.

Here is his question:

"About Elsevier: What if the author *scanned* the published version and
packaged the scan as a PDF?  This would not be a download of Elsevier's
authentic PDF.  It would be bulkier and of lower quality, not searchable,
and so on.  But for other scientists (the interested users), it would be
vastly preferable to the manuscript.  No one will go for that idea."

He's right. No one will go for the manuscript. And how does anyone know
that the Word document or whatever I send my local repository is really
the final article? Or really even accepted somewhere for publication?

How will this be different from our current situation with Physics?  The
faculty say that 95% of the time they don't need the journals - the
pre-print server works better.  But the more punctilious among them feel
they ought to verify citations and check for changes in the actual journal
before submitting grant applications or citing other's articles. We seem
to be operating a $400,000+ a year citation-verification service for
physics.  How will this sort of "green" archiving change that?

Margaret Landesman
Head, Collection Development
Marriott Library
University of Utah

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 6:36 AM
To: 'liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu'
Subject: Mandating OA around the corner?

With so many publishers allowing self-archiving of the final article
(though not necessarily the published one), or, if you wish, so many
publishers turning 'green' in Stevan Harnad's colour palet, including
Elsevier and Springer, the largest two of the lot, there surely is less
and less of a reason to put off introducing a *requirement* for authors to
make available an open access version in one way or another? Particularly
those whose research has been funded with public money should welcome such
a prod. They are reported to "do so willingly" if it were required.

>From a recent posting by Stevan Harnad:

Quote: "I am more inclined to believe the results of the Swan & Brown
(2004) that I have quoted so frequently: They

    "asked authors to say how they would feel if their employer or
    funding body required them to deposit copies of their published
    articles in... repositories. The vast majority... said they would
    do so willingly."

      Swan, A. & Brown, S.N. (2004) JISC/OSI Journal Authors Survey
      Report. http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/JISCOAreport1.pdf
      http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3628.html

      Swan, A. & Brown, S.N. (2004) Authors and open access
      publishing.  Learned Publishing 2004:17(3) 219-224.
      http://www.ingentaselect.com/rpsv/cw/alpsp/09531513/v17n3/s7/

Note that the critical factor is adding their employer's mandate, not
adding a price-tag of $3000".

One could easily substitute 'funder' for 'employer' in the last
sentence, I would have thought.

Jan Velterop
www.biomedcentral.com