Re: A Keystroke Koan For Our Open Access Times

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

Prior Reference:

    "A Keystroke Koan For Our Open Access Times"
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3061.html

The two funding notices below from Open Access News caught my eye for the
sheer irony of these misdirected good intentions: Of course OA journal
publishing can use all the financial help it can get, but if these two
well-meaning OA supporters -- JISC and OSI -- were to spend the same
amount of money on funding the conversion of individual institutions
rather than individual journals to OA provision (by funding the creation
of institutional OA Eprint Archives and, more important, the
implementation of official institutional self-archiving *policies*), that
would generate far, far more OA for the same money!

    http://software.eprints.org/handbook/departments.php

The annual journal-article output of a university is far bigger than that
of a journal, and university OA provision propagates across journals (and
universities). Moreover, the per-article costs of funding self-archiving
are incomparably lower.

    http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php

When will OA-funders at last realize that they are doing far less for OA
when they just keep going for gold, instead of green?

    Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallieres, F., Carr, L.,
    Hitchcock, S., Gingras, Y, Oppenheim, C., Stamerjohanns,
    H., & Hilf, E. (2004) The Access/Impact Problem and the
    Green and Gold Roads to Open Access. Serials Review 30.
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/impact.html 
    Shorter version:
    The green and the gold roads to Open Access. Nature Web Focus.
    http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html

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    Funding to convert conventional journals to OA   
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2004_09_26_fosblogarchive.html#a109654986689264758

    JISC has announced another round of funding for publishers to
    convert conventional journals to open access.  From the tender: JISC
    "invites proposals from publishers or learned societies looking
    to move to an open access model for their journal(s).  JISC will
    award short term funding to a small number of publishers or learned
    societies who agree to waive open access submission and publication
    fees for UK Higher Education (HE) staff for a one-year period. There
    is funding of 150,000 pounds available to support this Initiative in the
    2004-05 Academic Year (1 August 2004 ? 31 July 2005). The deadline
    for submission of proposals is 12 noon on Thursday 11 November
    2004." http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=funding_open_access2

    OSI grants program for OA journals   
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2004_09_26_fosblogarchive.html#a109647280440189239

    The Open Society Institute Information Program has announced a new
    grants program for open access journals. OSI is providing $50,000
    "to support the publication in open access journals of articles by
    authors residing and working in countries where the Soros foundations
    network is active." The funding covers article processing fees charged
    by OA journals for accepted articles and will be paid directly to
    the journals. The program covers all open-access journals and all
    disciplines. Journal publishers may apply online.
    http://www.soros.org/openaccess/grants-journals.shtml

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Stevan Harnad