Re: Berlin-3 Open Access Conference, Southampton, Feb 28 - Mar 1 2005

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btopenworld.com>]

I find no evidence here that scholars particularly want to deposit their
refereed research in institutional repositories. It would be extremely
surprising if scholars did not submit their their refereed research if
they are told to do so by authority especially if they think that by not
doing so they will not get grants or even lose their jobs (the same thing
for many). History and experience has shown that few refuse to do what
they are told in such circumstance. Nevertheless in this regard it is
interesting that a big report commissioned by JISC and written by a large
group containing associates of Professor Harnad reports that:

There are a handful of educational institutions that have gone so far as
to mandate that its authors deposit copies of all their research articles
in the institutional e-print archive
(http://www.eprints.org/signup/fullist.php); the best example of this is
Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Australia.The mandating
policy is only recently announced and, although it is now officially in
place, the university is taking a softly-softly approach to enforcing it
to avoid alienating faculty members.

For this report see http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/ACF1E88.pdf
(page 52).

As usual Professor Harnad has given a string of references.  The various
surveys by Key Perspectives are well known but the samples are small and
not to my mind representative of any population except those who decided
to fill in the questionnaires. As I have already said, it would be very
surprising if the majority of academics showed a willingness to revolt
against a mandate.

Of the other references, the first (Hajjem) is to a series of slides in
French, which appears to relate to a piece of work supervised in Quebec by
Professor Harnad himself.  There respondents appear to be from one
university and number 88.

The recent survey in South Africa (De Beer) seems at a first glance of the
233 pages to be a solid piece of work but there are only 74 respondents
(who have given permission for their returned questionnaires to be used)
and they appear to come from LIS and IT staff etc at Stellenbosch.  I
cannot see the relevance of the recommendation (so what!) quoted by
Professor Harnad to the larger debate.

His thinking seems to be:

OA is good for everyone. The way to OA is self-archiving. Therefore we
should force academics to submit their refereed research in institutional
repositories. When I write about it, apart from quoting myself
interminably, I shall drag in every scrap of evidence that seems to back
up my position and forget the I myself am an academic.

I cannot understand why OA advocates still feel they have to pretend that
the academic community is behind them in their endeavour - see for example
the quote from Bill Hubbard in announcing the DOAR project (see
http://www.opendoar.org/:)

Such repositories have mushroomed over the last 2 years in response to
calls by scholars and researchers worldwide to provide open access to
research information.

Which institutional repositories have been set up as a result of calls
from scholars and reseachers to provide OA? Why pretend that this is the
case?

Anthony Watkinson

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Sunday, February 13, 2005 11:27 PM
Subject: Re: Berlin-3 Open Access Conference, Southampton, Feb 28 - Mar 1
2005

> On Fri, 11 Feb 2005, Sally Morris (ALPSP) wrote:
>
> > Institutional policies may be one step closer to Stevan's desired goal,
> > but they are still not 'implementation' - that's when people actually do
> > it!
>
>     "69% of NOA authors [authors who have not yet made their work Open
>     Access] would willingly deposit their articles in an open repository
>     if required to do so (by their employer or funder): a further 8% would
>     do so but not willingly, and only 3% would not be prepared to do so."
>
>     Swan, A. & Brown, S. (2004) Authors and open access publishing.
>     Learned Publishing 17: 219-224
>
http://www.keyperspectives.co.uk/OpenAccessArchive/Authors_and_open_access_p
ublishing.pdf
>
> A more recent author survey by Swan & Brown, likewise international, finds
> that the percentage of authors who report they would self-archive
> willingly if it were mandated by their employer or funder has since risen
> from 69% to 79%.
>
> The finding has been corroborated by C. Hajjem in Quebec, who found that
> whereas only a minority of authors currently self-archive, 75% say that an
> official institutional self-archiving policy is needed.
> http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/lab/chawki/Auto-archivaeuqam.pdf
>
> A recent survey in South Africa likewise recommends a National Information
> Policy to
>
>     "require that scholars make their research available via an Open
>     Access mode of scholarly communication."
>
>     De Beer, J. (2005) Open Access scholarly communication in South
>     Africa : a role for National Information Policy in the National
>     System of Innovation. Master's Thesis in Information Science at
>     Stellenbosch University
>     http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00003110/
>
> In other words, the natural extension of "Publish or Perish" in the Online
> Age is: "...and Self-Archive to Flourish."
>
>     http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2837.html
>
> Stevan Harnad