Re: Anniversary of DC Principles

[John Sack <sack@stanford.edu>]

Fred,

I can't answer your questions about why twelve months is better than six
months (or not), but I can answer your question about the changes in
"embargo period" for journals based on some records that I informally
keep.  (I can't tell you about considerations that are still going on at
journals that haven't yet emerged as new policy, since HighWire wouldn't
necessarily know of those before they become policy.)  There are also some
changes that might be of interest that don't exactly fit your question;
I'll get to those at the end of this note.

As for changes in the "embargo": I send out an announcement about changes
in the "free back issues" ("FBI") program about once a quarter to
librarians who have requested to be notified about changes at HighWire
(new journals, etc.).  I scanned those notices to see what has changed
(unfortunately, I didn't keep this rigorously, so I might have missed a
notice).  Here are the stats in the last year:

16 journals have started offering FBI that didn't before
 3 journals have made the delay longer
11 journals have made the delay shorter

Other changes of interest (which unfortunately I can't statistically
compare to a year ago): we have an increasing number of journals that now
publish author manuscripts soon after acceptance (this is different from
those who publish fully redacted papers ahead of print).  About 50
journals HighWire works with now do this; my impression is that this is a
significantly higher number than a year ago (but don't ask for the stats,
I don't have them).  About 10 of these journals make the author mss free
immediately on publication (a form of "self archiving" that is
particularly easy for the authors and the readers).

I hope this is some help in answering your question.

John

John Sack, Director
        HighWire Press, Stanford University
        Phone: 650-723-0192; fax: 650-725-9335
        http://highwire.stanford.edu/~sack
        sack@stanford.edu


--On Wednesday, March 09, 2005 5:54 PM -0500 "\"FrederickFriend\"" 
<ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

> As we approach the first anniversary of the DC Principles, it would be
> good to hear from some of the Principles' authors about their experience
> over the past year and their plans for the future. In particular it would
> be good to know whether any of the societies signatory to the Principles
> are considering lowering the barrier to free access from twelve to nine or
> six months. The Statement one year ago claimed that "the full-text of our
> journals is freely available to everyone world-wide either immediately or
> within months of publication" but the perception is that in practice a
> twelve-month embargo has been adopted by the societies as the norm. In a
> statement to Dr Zerhouni last November, Marty Frank said that "over 80
> publishers are considering accelerated access policies in the next twelve
> months....This program is not static and will likely see further
> reductions in access control periods in the future". It would be good to
> know more about these reductions in access control periods.
>
> Open access advocates are often accused of speaking without evidence, but
> where is the evidence for a twelve-month embargo? There is no evidence to
> suggest that a six or nine-month embargo is any more harmful to a learned
> society publisher than a twelve-month embargo. In fact such experience as
> there is suggests the reverse, that earlier free access has no effect upon
> publisher income. The learned society publishers provide a valuable
> service to the academic community, and nobody wishes them harm. In the UK
> JISC is trying to provide practical support for learned society publishers
> as they consider the changes affecting us all.The authors of the DC
> Principles say that they "work in partnership with scholarly communities".
> Please let us hear from them.
>
> Fred Friend
>
> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Frederick J. Friend
> JISC Consultant
> OSI Open Access Advocate
> Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
> E-mail ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk
> xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx