Princeton OA Policy needs to add requirement

[Stevan Harnad <amsciforum@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 7:02 PM, Rick Anderson 
<rick.anderson@utah.edu> wrote:

>>This information comes courtesy of the IFLA copyright programme.
>>Are Princeton's essentially the same terms/conditions as the
>>Harvard Mandate?
>
> It looks like this is indeed just another non-mandatory
> "mandate." The language about each faculty member automatically
> granting Princeton a non-exclusive license to "exercise any and
> all copyrights in his or her scholarly articles published in any
> medium," etc., is then followed by this important qualifier:
> "Upon the express direction of a Faculty member, the Provost or
> the Provost=B9s designate will waive or suspend application of this
> license for a particular article authored or co-authored by that
> Faculty member."
>
> So in other words, it's not an OA mandate, but rather an OA
> "mandate." You're bound by it unless you ask not to be, in which
> case you're not.

1. First, congratulations to Princeton University (my graduate 
alma mater!) for adopting an open access mandate: a 
copyright-reservation policy, adopted by unanimous faculty vote. 
http://roarmap.eprints.org/520/

2. Princeton is following in the footsteps of Harvard in adopting 
the copyright-reservation policy pioneered by Stuart Shieber and 
Peter Suber. http://roarmap.eprints.org/75/

4. I hope that Princeton will now also follow in the footsteps of 
Harvard by adding an immediate-deposit requirement with no waiver 
option to its copyright-reservation mandate, as Harvard has done. 
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/545-guid.html

5. The Princeton copyright-reservation policy, like the Harvard 
copyright-reservation policy, can be waived if the author wishes: 
This is to allow authors to retain the freedom to choose where to 
publish, even if the journal does not agree to the 
copyright-reservation.

6. Adding an immediate-deposit clause, with no opt-out waiver 
option, retains all the properties and benefits of the 
copyright-reservation policy while ensuring that all articles are 
nevertheless deposited in the institutional repository upon 
publication, with no exceptions: Access to the deposited article 
can be embargoed, but deposit itself cannot; access is a 
copyright matter, deposit is not. 
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/364-guid.html

7. Depositing all articles upon publication, without exception, 
is crucial to reaching 100% open access with certainty, and as 
soon as possible; hence it is the right example to set for the 
many other universities worldwide that are now contemplating 
emulating Harvard and Princeton by adopting open access policies 
of their own; copyright reservation alone, with opt-out, is not. 
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html

8. The reason it is imperative that the deposit clause must be 
immediate and without a waiver option is that, without that, both 
when and whether articles are deposited at all is indeterminate: 
With the added deposit requirement the policy is a mandate; 
without it, it is just a gentleman/scholar's agreement.

[Footnote: Princeton's open access policy is also unusual in 
having been adopted before Princeton has created an open access 
repository for its authors to deposit in: It might be a good idea 
to create the repository as soon as possible so Princeton authors 
can get into the habit of practising what they pledge from the 
outset...]

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship
http://www.openscholarship.org/