Re: Interview with Rector of University of Liege

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

On 2011-06-09, at 7:21 PM, Sandy Thatcher wrote:

> Rentier certainly deserves to be included among the pioneers of
> OA journal publishing, [http://bit.ly/mM0TRg]

Bernard Rentier is not particularly one of the pioneers of (gold) 
OA publishing! He is a pioneer of (green) OA self-archiving:

"Green OA is a way of responding immediately to the needs of the 
university, and of providing immediate visibility to an 
institution's researchers. If green OA grows steadily, as it 
currently is doing, it will lead the way to gold OA. So for me 
green OA is a path to OA..."

> and the mandate he has put in place likely
> is the most effective kind that can be used and should be
> emulated everywhere.

Hear! Hear!

> He has little to say about OA for books,
> however, except noting that faculty are welcome to submit them
> also but are not required to do so. More needs to be done by
> leaders at his level to encourage the development of OA for books
> lest book content be artificially segregated from journal
> content.

Don't worry. Like gold OA and copyright reform, a lot more book 
OA will follow, after green OA becomes universal.

But book OA cannot (and should not) be mandated. (It can and 
should only be encouraged; I don't think you disagree.)

In contrast, 100% Green OA for all 2.5 million articles published 
in all 25,000 peer-reviewed journals is within immediate reach. 
All worldwide scholarly/scientific community need do is grasp it, 
by doing what you suggest above: all universities as well as all 
research funders should mandate it, using the Liege ID/OA mandate 
as their model.

(This is why Bernard Rentier and Alma Swan founded Enabling Open 
Scholarship: to help universities worldwide develop an effective 
OA policy: http://www.openscholarship.org )

> One such leader is the president of Athabasca University
> in Canada, who launched the university press there as a fully OA
> operation. Perhaps Richard will interview him at some point in
> the future.

Good idea. But gold OA is still premature (whether for journals 
or books).

What's urgently needed and fully within our reach is green OA. 
Once we have grasped that, all the other good things will follow.

Amen,

Your weary archivangelist