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Re: European Research Council Mandate Green OA Self-Archiving



Does this apply to all "publications," including books? If so, one wonders how authors of these books will find any publishers for them. I certainly wouldn't invest our press's money in publishing a book that became available for free after six months from another source. And I would worry a great deal if agencies like the NEH made this a condition for all projects it funds in the humanities, both books and journals. A six-month embargo might work for science; I think it will destroy publishing in the humanities.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


As a historic matter: The European Research Council finalised its Green OA Self-Archiving Mandate (and it did so 19 days before the NIH mandate!):

The ERC requires that all peer-reviewed publications from ERC-funded
research projects be deposited on publication into an appropriate
research repository where available, such as PubMed Central, ArXiv
or an institutional repository, and subsequently made Open Access
within 6 months of publication."

http://erc.europa.eu/pdf/ScC_Guidelines_Open_Access_revised_Dec07_FINAL.pdf
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

Like the NIH mandate, the ERC mandate is also an immediate-deposit
mandate, with the allowable embargo applying only to the date that
the deposit is made OA, not to the date it is deposited (which must
be immediately upon publication). The ERC embargo is also shorter (6
months, whereas NIH is 12 months). Better still, the deposit may be
either institutional or central.

The only way to improve on this nigh-optimal mandate is to require
that the deposit be institutional ("Deposit Institutionally, Harvest
Centrally") except if the grant recipient's institution does not yet
have an institutional repository (in which case deposit should be in
an interim generic repository such as the UK's DEPOT or Europe's
EurOpenScholar).

Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates: What? Where? When? Why? How?
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html

Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)
http://roar.eprints.org/

Depot
http://depot.edina.ac.uk/FAQ/

EurOpenScholar
http://recteur.blogs.ulg.ac.be/?p=151

Bravo to both the US and Europe. Now it is time for the other US and
EC funding agencies -- and, even more importantly, all the US and
European universities -- to follow suit with Green OA Self-Archiving
Mandates of their own.

Stevan Harnad