Nature's Offer To "Let Us Archive It For You": Caveat Emptor

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

NOTE: Since I posted this on other lists, Peter Suber has 
informed me that Nature had informed him that they were willing 
to do proxy deposit in Institutional Repositories too, 
immediately upon acceptance (if it can be done in batch). If that 
is true, then I withdraw all but one of my criticisms, with 
apologies for having impugned Nature's motives. However, the one 
remaining criticism stands: Nature would do OA a lot more good by 
dropping its access embargo than by saving Nature authors a few 
minutes worth of keystrokes.

SUMMARY: Nature Publishing Group has offered its authors a proxy
archiving service that would:

       (1) help lock in embargoed deposit instead of immediate 
deposit

       (2) help lock in central deposit (which does not scale) 
instead of institutional deposit (which does).

       (3) help lock out IDOA/DDR mandates and the embargo 
tide-over Button (again, to Nature 's advantage, not OA's)

       (4) help keep deposit in publisher's hands instead of 
author/institution hands, encouraging authors to remain passive 
instead of proactive about OA

       (5) give the misleading impression that Nature (and other 
publishers that make such offers) are acting in OA's interests 
rather than their own.

If Nature really wants to help OA, then dropping its access 
embargo would be a lot more helpful than saving authors from 
having to do a few keystrokes.

What follows is a fuller posting that quotes the Nature Press 
Release and comments on it point by point.

                [Apologies for Cross-Posting]

Nature has circulated the following Press Release:

> NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP TO ARCHIVE ON BEHALF OF AUTHORS
>
> Nature Publishing Group (NPG) is pleased to announce the initiation of a
> free service, launching in 2008, to help authors fulfill funder and
> institutional mandates.
>
> NPG has encouraged self-archiving, including in PubMed Central, since
> 2005.

No, Nature gave its green light to author self-archiving of the author's
final refereed draft till 2005 and then withdrew its green light and
imposed a 6-month embargo in anticipation of NIH's announcement in 2005
that it would allow an embargo of 6-12 months on its OA self-archiving
recommendation. The NIH recommendation became a mandate 3 years later,
but NIH continues to impose a 6-month embargo. I would not call that
"encouraging self-archiving." I would call that Nature trying to
make the best of what it considers a bad but now inescapable bargain.

      "Nature Back-Slides on Self-Archiving" (Jan, 2005)
      http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4264.html
      http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2529.html

> Later in 2008, NPG will begin depositing authors' accepted
> manuscripts with PubMed Central (PMC) and UK PubMed Central (UKPMC),
> meeting the requirements for authors funded by the Howard Hughes Medical
> Institute (HHMI), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), The Wellcome
> Trust, the Medical Research Council and a number of other major funders
> in the US, the UK and Canada who mandate deposition in either PMC or
> UKPMC. NPG hopes to extend the service to other archives and
> repositories in future.

In other words, now that there is no choice but to comply with these
biomedical funder mandates (all clones of one another, and all pertaining
only to biomedical research, and all specifying PubMed Central as the
locus of the deposit and allowing an embargo of 6-12 months), Nature is
trying to retain maximal control over the remaining degrees of freedom,
by "relieving" authors of the burden of doing the deposit (i.e., taking
deposit out of the author's hands), by ensuring that the deposit does not
occur before the embargo occurs, and by ensuring that the locus of deposit
is PubMed Central rather than the author's institutional repository.

The result of this co-opting of *self*-archiving is:

(1) The self-archiving practice is made less likely to generalize beyond
non-NIH/biomedical research.

(2) The self-archiving practice is less likely to be done in the
author's institutional repository.

(3) The self-archiving is less likely to be immediate (rather than
after an embargo).

(4) It is less likely that the institutional repository's "email eprint
request" button will be able to tide over research usage needs during
any embargo.

(5) In general, this proxy-archiving in an external repository makes it
less likely that institutions will converge on institutional
self-archiving mandates like Harvard's and Stanford's.

In other words, while appearing to be doing OA a service, this Nature
policy is actually doing Nature a service and only giving OA the minimal
due that is already inherent in the NIH and kindred mandates.

> "We are announcing our intention early in the process to solicit
> feedback from the community and to reassure authors that we will be
> providing this service," said Steven Inchcoombe, Managing Director of
> NPG. "We invite authors, funding bodies, institutions, archives and
> repositories to work with us as we move forward."

Translation: "We are offering to take over the burden of doing the few
extra keystrokes that self-archiving mandates entail in exchange for
retaining control over self-archiving and its likelihood of scaling up to
universality and immediacy across disciplines and institutions. Let's
now hope that the appetite for OA stops there: embargoed,
journal-mediated central access to NIH-funded biomedical research in
PubMed Central..."

As a researcher, my response would be: "Thank you, but I'll still go ahead
and do the keystrokes myself, depositing my own final refereed draft in my
own institutional repository, immediately upon acceptance for publication.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/
Then my IR's eprint request Button can help me provide almost-instant,
almost-OA to fulfill the immediate-usage needs of researchers webwide who
cannot afford access to Nature's paid version and cannot afford to wait
until Nature's embargo expires.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html
For the 63% of journals that, unlike Nature, are fully green,
I can provide immediate OA to my deposits. http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
And at the end of the Nature embargo, my deposits can also be exported
to PubMed Central or harvested by any other central collection that may
want to host them (but they will already by OA in my IR):

      "Optimize the NIH Mandate Now: Deposit Institutionally, Harvest
      Centrally"
      http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/344-guid.html

> Initially, the service will be open to authors publishing original
> research articles in Nature, the Nature research titles and the clinical
> research section of Nature Clinical Practice Cardiovascular Medicine.
> NPG will then extend the service to society and academic journals in its
> portfolio that wish to participate.

Let's hope that authors and their institutions will be wise enough not
to once again leave their research output entirely in the hands of
publishers. In the online age, journal publishers render their essential
service in managing peer review and certifying its outcome with their
journal-name and its track-record, but there is no longer any earthly
reason why they should continue to retain exclusive control over the
access-provision process, particularly in order to embargo it!

> For eligible authors who opt-in during the submission process, NPG will
> deposit the accepted version of the author's manuscript on acceptance,
> setting a public release date of 6-months post-publication. There will
> be no charge to authors or funders for the service.

Deposit is only a few keystrokes, and the only place it makes sense to
deposit upon acceptance is the author's own institutional repository,
which hosts all the institution's research output (not just biomedical
research funded by NIH and held and embargoed by Nature) and makes
it possible for the author to provide immediate almost-OA during any
embargo period (thanks to the Button).

> "NPG is committed to serving as a partner to the scientific and medical
> communities," continued Steven Inchcoombe. "We believe this is a
> valuable service to authors, reducing their workload and making it
> simple and free to comply with mandates from their institution or
> funder. We recognise that publishing in an NPG title can be a career
> high-point for researchers, and want to ensure that our authors enjoy
> the best possible service from their publisher of choice."

Minus the hype, this is an offer to spare you a few keystrokes in exchange
for retaining control over access provision to your work, blocking
access for 6 months, and reducing the likelihood that self-archiving
and self-archiving mandates will scale across all disciplines and all
institutions.

> NPG has been an early mover amongst subscription publishers in
> encouraging self-archiving. In 2002, the publisher moved from requesting
> copyright transfer for original research articles to requesting an
> exclusive license to publish. In 2005, NPG announced a self-archiving
> policy that encourages authors of research articles to self-archive the
> accepted version of their manuscript to PubMed Central or other
> appropriate funding body's archive, their institution's repositories
> and, if they wish, on their personal websites.

After a six-month embargo, rescinding in 2005 Nature's previous 2003
green light to provide immediate Green OA upon acceptance for publication.

> In all cases, the manuscript can be made publicly accessible six months after
> publication.

And retaining control over that is the real motivation behind this
generous offer, along with the brakes it puts on scaling beyond NIH (and
kindred) funded biomedical research, destined for PubMed Central, to
all research, from all institutions, across all scientific and scholarly
disciplines.

> NPG's policies are explained in detail at this web page:
> http://www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/license.html

And their consequences are explained above.

Advice to Nature authors: accept the offer, but deposit your final
refereed draft in your IR immediately upon acceptance anyway, allowing
you and your institution to retain control of it, as well as to provide
almost-OA to it immediately. Once all researchers do this, all
access-embargos will die their well-deserved deaths of natural causes.

Stevan Harnad
AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
      http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/

UNIVERSITIES and RESEARCH FUNDERS:
If you have adopted or plan to adopt a policy of providing Open Access
to your own research article output, please describe your policy at:
      http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
      http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html
      http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html

OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY:
      BOAI-1 ("Green"): Publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal
      http://romeo.eprints.org/
OR
      BOAI-2 ("Gold"): Publish your article in an open-access journal if/when
      a suitable one exists.
      http://www.doaj.org/
AND
      in BOTH cases self-archive a supplementary version of your article
      in your own institutional repository.
      http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
      http://archives.eprints.org/
      http://openaccess.eprints.org/