Re: Open Choice is a Trojan Horse for Open Access Mandates

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

On Fri, 30 Jun 2006, Peter Banks wrote:

> If archiving isn't taking off, it isn't primarily because of publishers.

The fact that *spontaneous* (unmandated) self-archiving isn't
taking off, but instead only hovering at about 15% worldwide is
certainly not because of publishers. It is entirely the research
community's fault. The reason is (probably, in equal parts --
Alma Swan, who has twice surveyed authors can no doubt give the
precise figures): (1) uninformedness about the feasibility and
benefits of self-archiving on the part of researchers and (2)
work overload that makes academics reluctant to do it
until/unless they are required to (but then, 95% report they
would self-archive, 81% willingly, 14% reluctantly):

     Swan, A. (2005) Open access self-archiving: An Introduction.
     Technical Report, JISC
     http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/

The high compliance rates predicted by Swan & Brown's two author
surveys, now replicated by several others, have since been
concretely confirmed by the (few) actual self-archiving mandates
that have already been implemented so far (CERN, Southampton,=
Minho, QUT plus the Wellcome Trust mandate):

     http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php
     http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD002766.html

And of course now we will have the MRC, BBSRC, and EPSRC mandates
(and soon, one hopes, CCLRC and the others) in the UK, and
perhaps also the FRPAA and CURES mandates in the US and a similar
mandate recommended by the European Commission.

     http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD002766.html
     http://cornyn.senate.gov/doc_archive/05-02-2006_COE06461_xml.pdf
     http://lieberman.senate.gov/documents/bills/051207curesbill.pdf
     http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publ=
ication-study_en.pdf

So OA self-archiving mandates work, and successfully generate
high levels of OA. They are essentially natural extensions of
publishing mandates ("publish or perish"), without which authors=
would not be publishing much either.

So, no, it is definitely not because of publishers that authors
do not self-archive spontaneously more that they do.

> The SHERPA/ROMEO list of publishers' policies on copyright and 
self-arvhiving
> show that many major publishers permit posting of preprints and/or
> postprints. These include Blackwell, British Medical Journal, Elsevier,
> Wiley, Taylor&Francis, and many, many others.

This is completely correct. The publishers of the 94% of journals
that have already given their green light to immediate OA
self-archiving by authors are on the Side of the Angels, and it
is the 85% of authors who are not yet self-archiving that are at
fault -- particularly because OA is in their own interests (as
well as the interest of the public that funds the research they
conduct and publish).

     http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php

Not on the Side of the Angels are only those publishers who
oppose self-archiving mandates, and have been delaying them for
three years now.

> The failure of the self-archiving movement stems mainly from
> the indifference or open opposition of the authors and
> researchers who are supposed to undertake it.

The failure of the self-archiving movement? I would say that the
self-archiving movement is currently doing quite well in its
efforts to promote self-archiving mandates the world over (RCUK,
EC, FRPAA).

Where there is indifference (but certainly not opposition) is
among uninformed and overworked authors, who either don't know
about the benefits and feasibility of self-archiving, or wrongly
believe it might represent yet another time-consuming burden on
their duties, outweighing its benefits (whereas it actually just
represents a few minutes and keystrokes per article):

     Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2005) Keystroke Economy: A Study of the
     Time and Effort Involved in Self-Archiving.
     http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/

In any case, the remedy for author unawareness or inertia is the
self-archiving mandates that research funders and institutions
are now on the way (belatedly) to adopting, in the interests of
research, researchers, and the public that funds them.

> And remember that society publishers are not controlled by
> greedy staff publishers; they are controlled by governing
> bodies comprised of the authors and researchers affected by OA.

Some society publishers -- such as the American Physical Society
and the Institute of Physics Publishing -- are indeed acting
responsibly and in the interests of their researchers. Some,
alas, are not, and indeed some learned society publishers do seem
to be controlled by "greedy staff publishers" in a way one would
have expected only from the crassest of commercial publishers.

     "Not a Proud Day in the Annals of the Royal Society"
     http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4932.html
     http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#19.Learned

> Advocates have failed utterly to convince societies of the
> merits of OA because society volunteer leaders do not believe
> the fundamental premise that "the research community and public
> need 100% OA now."

The ones who need to be informed and convinced are the research
community, their institutions and their funders. That includes
the *membership* of Learned Societies. But remember that
researchers wear many hats: they are university employees and
grant fundees, not just, or primarily, society members. Nor is
the protection of the revenue streams of the societies of which
they are members that is (or ought to be) researchers' foremost
priority: their priority is research impact and progress. And
that is also the priority of their institutions and funders.

Convincing learned societies of the merits of OA for research and
researchers is like convincing any publisher: Some will be
persuaded, others will be more persuaded by their concerns for
their bottom lines.

> Those societies who advocate against mandates for OA--and not
> all do--have reasonable doubts about the accuracy and quality
> of preprints and postprints (especially in medicine, where
> mistakes can have serious consequences), the bibliographic
> confusion that archives are creating, and the difficulty
> archives cause for accurately tracking usage.

Peter, hand on heart, do you for a microsecond believe that those
publishers who are advocating against OA self-archiving are doing
it for the sake of research accuracy and quality?

     http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#3.Corruption
     http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#23.Version
     http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#7.Peer

In the face of the quantities of empirical evidence that OA
self-archiving increases research uptake and impact, do you
imagine that publishers are trying to hold all that at bay
because they believe that it generates inaccuracies?

     http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html

As to tracking usage: It is trivially obvious that cooperative
pooling of usage statistics is the solution, not blocking the
extra usage that OA will provide.

> They also doubt that OA archives are a solution
> to long-term preservation, as often (inaccurately) claimed.

Self-archiving is not being proposed as the solution to the long-term
preservation problem. Solving that problem is not the OA movement's
responsibility (why on earth should it be)? The OA movement's objective
is to maximise immediate access to published research articles by
*supplementing* the official subscription-based version -- the one
that does have the long-term preservation problem, which has nothing
to do with OA  -- with the author's final, refereed draft, to provide
immediate access for those would-be users who cannot afford access to
the publisher's official subscription-based version.

http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#1.Preservation

> In the 7 years I was publisher of two society journals, a total
> of zero (0) out of 18,000 members ever advocated for OA.
> Colleagues in other societies report a similar experience. It
> is not surprising, therefore, that there is a little
> foot-dragging among authors to the governmental stampede you
> advocate.

I am not sure when Peter's 7 years of journal publishing took
place, but, for a start, might I refer him to the 34,000
signatures of the PLoS Open Letter demanding OA? (When he gets
done reading those, I have other evidence for him.)

     http://www.plos.org/support/openletter.shtml

Having said that, I repeat: the research community *is* guilty,
both of uninformedness about the benefits and feasibility of OA
self-archiving, and foot-dragging about doing it spontaneously.
And that is precisely is why the OA self-archiving mandates were
needed.

Stevan Harnad