Re: Fwd: US University OA Resolutions Omit Most ImportantComponent

[Joseph Esposito <espositoj@gmail.com>]

I thought David Prosser's position was particularly well expressed.

We can extend this position with other examples, some hypothetical.  
There is nothing wrong with requiring someone, as a condition of
employment, to check email over the weekend.  Or a university, as a
condition of employment, could require that faculty assign royalties on
textbooks to the parent institution.  Some of these conditions will be
more popular than others.  A university that demands control of faculty's
intellectual property may find that some faculty will defect to other
institutions, just as some people switch jobs to shorten a commute or for
better pay.

The question to my mind is not what is right or wrong about any of these
matters but what is practical.  Will organizations that make Open Access a
condition of funding also fund the entire process?  Or will they assume,
impractically, that other entities will subsidize some portion of the
process, as all of the NIH proposals do?  Some people view the process as
being fairly simple and therefore not hard to replicate.  For my part, I
think brain surgery is easy, but then I have never tried it.

Joe Esposito

On 5/12/05, David Prosser <david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> In these discussions about authors doing, or being forced to do, what is
> 'good for them' we appear to forget that we already force authors to do
> 'what is good for them'.  For example:
> 
> In return for providing research grants we force researchers to deposit
> gene sequences, protein sequences, etc.  It is not to the benefit of the
> individual researcher to deposit, they don't volunteer, but we recognise
> the value of it being done and so insist on it. In doing so we create
> databases that are of benefit to all researchers.
> 
> In return for providing research grants we force researchers to write and
> file end-of-project reports.  Again, researchers don't volunteer to write
> these reports, but we recognise the value of having a reporting step and
> insist on it.
> 
> In return for providing (significant) research grants the NIH is now
> insisting on strategies to make data available.  The researchers are not
> queuing-up to volunteer, but NIH sees it as important and so forces
> researchers to 'do the right thing'.
> 
> Open access advocates would argue that in return for research grants
> funding agencies have the right to 'force' researchers to make a copy of
> their research papers available through open access.  The fact that some
> may not volunteer to do this no more significant than the fact the some do
> not volunteer to deposit sequences, write reports, or publicly archive
> their data.  If the funders of research believe it is important then they
> have a right to 'force' researchers to do something that benefits research
> by widening access and dissemination of the research they have paid for.
> 
> David C Prosser PhD
> SPARC Europe
> E-mail:  david.prosser@bodley.ox.ac.uk