Re: Elsevier and IOP Still Fully Green and Onside With the Angels

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

On 2011-06-24, at 6:52 AM, Wise, Alicia (Elsevier) wrote:

> Our journal authors... can...  post voluntarily the accepted 
manuscript version on a personal or institutional web site or 
server for scholarly purposes...

As noted, Elsevier is still fully green and on the side of the 
angels regarding author self-archiving. This endorsement of 
immediate (unembargoed) posting is all this means.

> We believe the voluntary posting of manuscripts is an 
acceptable practice for authors, and that both institutions and 
publishers should respect their choices.

And I'm confident that Elsevier also believes that publishers 
should and will respect institutions' voluntary policy choices -- 
for example, if institutions mandate posting by their employees. 
(In any case, publishers have no choice but to respect 
institutional policy.)

Elsevier authors are free to post, and their institutions are 
free to mandate that their employees post. That's all there is to 
it.

A contractual agreement cannot be contingent on whether a right 
that is retained by the author is exercised "voluntarily": 
Everything an author chooses to do is voluntary, including 
complying with his employer's policies.

***

ASIDE: There is, however, a possible basis for genuine 
misunderstanding here, and, on one construal, Elsevier would 
definitely have a valid point (but that point has nothing to do 
with Green OA self-archiving):

Most institutional mandates are simply mandates to post, i.e., to 
make the author's final draft freely accessible to all users on 
the web immediately upon acceptance for publication.

But there are a few other kinds of institutional mandates, 
needlessly demanding ones, that would require authors to retain 
further rights, over and above the right to post the author's 
final draft free for all on the web immediately upon acceptance 
for publication (in other words, over and above Green OA), for 
example, the right to post the publisher's version of record, or 
the right to allow users to re-use or republish the posted 
article (e.g., by adopting various Creative Commons licenses that 
may not be compatible with the copyright agreement with the 
publisher): in general, the right to provide not just "gratis" OA 
(free online access) but also "libre" OA (gratis OA plus various 
other permissions).
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/442-guid.html

This kind of needless over-reaching by some institutions and 
funders is not only extremely unfortunate and counterproductive, 
because it predictably induces even angelic Green publishers like 
Elsevier and IOP to balk at going that far, but it also weakens 
mandates, because such strong demands in turn require allowing 
authors to opt out of the mandate if they cannot get their 
publisher to agree. That's as bad as the pseudo-mandates that say 
"you are required to self-archive -- if your publisher agrees." 
(There is a far better mandate and strategy -- 
Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access  (IDOA) & the eprint-request 
Button -- for dealing with articles published in non-Green 
journals.)

***

But we are not talking here about such gratuitously 
over-demanding mandates, but only about Green Gratis OA 
self-archiving mandates that merely require authors to do what 
Green publishers have already endorsed: immediate posting of the 
author's final draft, free for all.

> The systematic posting of manuscripts, for example because of a 
mandate to post, is only agreeable if done in ways that are 
sustainable for the underlying journal.

Authors post individually, and publisher copyright agreements are 
agreements with authors.

It is not clear what "systematic posting" means, but if it means 
that an institution systematically requires its employees to 
post, then, with all due respect, this is absolutely none of the 
business of the publisher!

The publisher sets policy for its authors; the institution sets 
policy for its employees.

The author's (retained) rights agreement with the publisher has 
nothing whatsoever to do with what the author's institution's 
policy might or might not be.

To put it another way: Retained rights are not contingent on the 
author's reasons for exercising them. If you have a license to 
drive, it cannot state: "You only have the right to drive 
voluntarily; you may not drive if driving is a condition of your 
employment"...

> Our first systematic posting agreements have been with funding 
bodies and date back to 2005.  Authors funded by organizations 
such as Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and NIH could not 
have complied with the systematic posting policies of these 
funding bodies under the terms of our voluntary posting policy, 
so we created agreements or arrangements with those funders to 
enable authors to comply in ways that we believed would be 
sustainable.

I think it is perfectly fair that funders that needlessly demand 
more than Green Gratis OA should have to pay for it, or have it 
embargoed, or both.

But (most) institutions and funders are only mandating Green 
Gratis OA, not asking for more; hence no further arrangements are 
necessary (with Green publishers -- and IDOA & the Button takes 
care of non-Green publishers).

> Embargo periods are a feature of these agreements or 
arrangements.  The embargo periods are journal specific and 
differ according to the varied usage patterns that exist across 
science and social science areas. A high percentage of these are 
for a 12 month period, predominantly in life and health sciences, 
but in other areas such as mathematics and social sciences longer 
embargo periods of typically 24 or 36 months are necessary to 
ensure the sustainability of the underlying journals.

Green publishers, by definition, have no embargo on Green Gratis 
OA.

For Libre OA my own feeling is that the fees and embargoes are a 
fair punishment for those institutions and funders that were to 
short-sighted to see that they were needlessly over-reaching and 
hence gratuitously inviting publisher opposition -- especially 
because the confusion it is causing to disentangle publisher 
reactions to that over-reaching from their acceptance of Green 
Gratis OA is causing confusion even for those institutions and 
funders that are only mandating Green Gratis OA, or contemplating 
doing so.

But fortunately, a clear-headed reading of the new clauses in the 
Green publishers' self-archiving policies shows that nothing has 
changed: authors may provide immediate Green Gratis OA (and 
institutional or funder mandates to do so have absolutely no 
bearing on the matter).

> During the period when the embargo period would apply to posted 
manuscripts there is wide availability of articles.  93% of 
researchers surveyed in academic institutions reported that they 
are satisfied with access to research information in journal 
articles (Access vs. Importance, A global study assessing the 
importance of and ease of access to professional and academic 
information Phase I Results, Publishing Research Consortium, 
October 2010 ? 4,109 respondents).  However we are not complacent 
with even this great result, and systematically identify and 
close access gaps in sustainable ways through programmes such as 
Research4Life which provides free and very low cost access to 
researchers in the world?s poorest countries.  We also have an 
extremely active program of pilots to provide innovative access 
services to members of the public, patients and their families, 
people working in small and medium sized businesses, students, 
etc.

Yes, yes, that's all well and good. To the extent that there is 
enough access already, supplementary access to the author's final 
draft well not make a bit of difference.

But to the extent that there are would-be users who lack 
subscription access, it will make a world of difference.

> Please note that as our early systematic posting agreements 
have been with funding bodies, we are still in test-and-learn 
mode for institutional agreements.

With institutional Green Gratis OA self-archiving mandates there 
is nothing further to be said or done. All is in order.

With institutional Green Libre OA mandates, all bets are off. 
Green Publishers do not become one bit less green of angelic if 
they elect to charge for and/or embargo Libre OA.

(Note that I have nothing at all against Libre OA or CC licenses. 
They are simply premature, at a time when we do not yet even have 
Green Gratis OA, and they are clearly getting in the way of it. 
Perhaps publisher constraints on anything over and above 
immediate Green Gratis OA self-archiving will help to clear the 
air so we can move forward toward universal Green Gratis OA 
mandates from all the planet's institutions and funders -- and 
thereby to universal OA, at long last.)