Mandating OA around the corner?

[Jan Velterop <velterop@biomedcentral.com>]

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