Re: Roundtable Press Release (Access to Research Results)

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

As Suber surmises, one reason the group did not recommend a 
mandate  is that it favors posting of the Version of Record, and 
this  naturally means that the length of the embargo period 
becomes  crucially important. And as I asked librarians in 
another post here,  what length of time would ensure that 
humanities journals made  available through Project Muse would 
not find their subscriptions  undercut? A mandate that made a 
mistake here could result in the  disappearance of a great many 
humanities journals published by  smaller publishers like our 
press that have no facility for  publishing electronically other 
than through Project Muse. Our press  allows Green OA, but I 
believe myself that the VoR is essential for  scholarly purposes 
even though the Green OA version may be adequate  for classroom 
teaching and for transmitting information to the  general public. 
Here Suber and I appear to be in disagreement. Suber  says:

I'm one who agrees that the published edition is generally more 
useful than the final version of the author's peer-reviewed 
manuscript, although I'd add:  unless the published edition is 
only  available in PDF.  But even if all the editions we're 
talking about  are in HTML or XML, assured OA to the final 
version of the author's  peer-reviewed manuscript is far more 
useful to research than  untrustworthy (flaky, selective, 
temporary, late) OA to the published  edition.  If we can have 
assured OA to the published edition, and in  a use-friendly 
format, wonderful; I want it.  But if we can't, we  should put 
assured OA ahead of OA to the published edition.

And of course we have hardly begun to talk about OA for 
monographs  yet. This report avoids that subject altogether.

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press

>For Peter Suber's critique of this recommendation, see:
>http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2010/01/oa-across-federal-government-hold.html
>
>His criticism (spot-on) is that although the AAU Scholarly
>Communications report encourages Open Access, it fails to take a
>position on precisely the concrete policy question that is at
>issue in the OSTP Public Access Policy Forum, which is whether 
or
>not federal funders should mandate Open Access.
>
>It is quite possible to effect to be as favorable to OA as to
>motherhood and apple pie without taking, or supporting, the
>concrete step that would actually ensure that OA is provided...
>
>Nothing new. See:
>
>"AAU misinterprets House Appropriations Committee 
Recommendation"
>(Aug 2004)
>http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3850.html
>http://bit.ly/7YwycC
>
>Another opportunity lost (especially for AAU; no surprise from 
AIP,
>not to be confused with APS).
>
>Stevan Harnad