32nd Green Open Access Mandate: Kudos and Caveat

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

         ** Cross-Posted **

         Fully hyperlinked version:
         http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/288-guid.html

The UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) is now the 
6th of the 7 UK Research Councils to adopt a Green Open Access 
Self-Archiving Mandate

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

(That makes AHRC's the 18th funder OA mandate, in addition to 14 
university and departmental mandates, 2 proposed multi-university 
mandates, and 4 proposed funder mandates, for a total of 38 Green 
OA mandates adopted and proposed worldwide so far.)

Like most of the mandates adopted so far, the AHRC has some 
needless, easily-corrected flaws, but first, let us (with Dr. 
Johnson) applaud the fact that it has been adopted at all: Bravo 
AHRC!

Now the mandate's completely unnecessary and 
ever-so-easily-corrected flaw:

In their anxiety to ensure that their policy is both legal and 
not needlessly worrisome for publishers, AHRC (and many of the 
other funder mandates, including yesterday's CIHR mandate from 
Canada) have allowed an embargo period before the article is made 
OA, if the publisher wishes.

That is fine. But it is a huge mistake to allow the time at which 
the article must be deposited to be dictated by the publisher's 
embargo.

The deposit should be required immediately upon acceptance for 
publication, without exception. If there is no publisher embargo, 
that deposit is also immediately made Open Access at that same 
time. Otherwise it is made Closed Access for the duration of the 
embargo period. (Only the bibliographic metadata are visible and 
accessible via the web, not the article itself.)

It may seem pointless to require an article to be deposited 
immediately if it cannot be made OA immediately. But the point of 
requiring immediate deposit either way is to close a profound 
loophole that could otherwise delay both deposit and OA 
indefinitely, turning the mandate into a mockery from which any 
researcher can opt out at the behest of his publisher.

The early mandators have been very progressive and helpful in 
having adopted OA mandates at all, but now that mandates are 
spreading, it is important to optimize them, and plug the 
needless loopholes. Otherwise the mandates will suffer the same 
fate as the ill-fated NIH Public Access Policy, which failed so 
badly that its self-archiving rate was even lower than the 
spontaneous baseline for random self-archiving, in the absence of 
any policy at all. (The proposed NIH policy upgrade to a mandate 
is now one of the 4 pending funder mandate proposals).

     Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates:
     What? Where? When? Why? How?
     http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html

     The Immediate-Deposit/Optional Access (ID/OA) Mandate:
     Rationale and Model
     http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html

OA mandators (and those proposing or contemplating OA mandates): 
Please consult the above links, as well as Peter Suber's critique 
below, and then do the minor tweaks that are the only thing 
needed to transform your policies into reliable, effective 
mandates, setting an example worthy of emulation by others.

Stevan Harnad