From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Fri Jun 3 06:40:10 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:39 2006 Subject: DINI Symposium: presentations are online (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 16:42:43 +0200 From: Petra Lepschy To: Symposium: ; Cc: gs@dini.de Subject: DINI Symposium: presentations are online Dear participants of the DINI-Symposium, thank you again for attending the DINI-Symposium "Wissenschaftliches Publizieren der Zukunft - Open Access" that took place in G?ttingen on 23.-24. May 2005. All presentations of the first day are now available via the symposium's homepage http://www.dini.de/veranstaltung/workshop/goettingen_2005-05-23/ Also online are press commentaries as well as photographs taken during the symposium. Presentations of the second day are being added constantly, so please do check the site again if you are looking for a particular presentation. Kind Regards DINI office Petra Lepschy, M.A. Research & Development, DINI Gesch?ftsstelle Nieders?chsische Staats- und Universit?tsbibliothek G?ttingen Papendiek 14 37073 G?ttingen lepschy@mail.sub.uni-goettingen.de phone: +49 (0)551 39 38 66 fax: +49 (0)551 39 38 56 From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Sat Jun 4 10:34:15 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:39 2006 Subject: Open Access Data Archiving: A Complement to Article-Archiving Message-ID: Prior Amsci Topic Threads: "Refereed Research Archiving and Data Archiving" (2001) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1582.html "Open Access Data Archiving: A Complement to Article-Archiving" (2005) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4458.html Distributed Interoperable Research Archives for Both Papers and Their Data: An electronic infrastructure for all users of scientific research http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/data-archiving.htm From Peter Suber's "Open Access News" http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_05_29_fosblogarchive.html#a111789702132682208 (1) Launch of the R4L repository This month marks the launch of R4L (Repository for the Laboratory), http://r4l.eprints.org/about.html a JISC-funded, Eprints-based, open-access repository for data and documents from laboratory science in the UK. From the web site: 'This project will address the area of interactions between repositories of primary research data, the laboratory environment in which they operate and repositories of research publications into which they ultimately feed (through documented interpretation and analysis of the results and in explicit linking and citation of the data sets). It will develop prototype services and tools to address the issues of working with, disseminating and reporting on experimental data. In collaboration with scientific equipment manufacturers the project will develop methods to make raw experimental data available and richly annotated with metadata, as it is generated in the laboratory. The possibilities for aggregating heterogeneous raw experimental data from different sources and experiments, via effective management of the repository for the laboratory, will also be explored and prototype tools developed to enable, manipulate and derive reports for publication purposes. It will also engage in discussions with publishers and societies to determine anticipated requirements.' Posted by Peter Suber at 10:52 AM. (2) Presentations on institutional repositories The presentations from the CNI-JISC-SURF conference, Making the strategic case for institutional repositories (Amsterdam, May 10-11, http://www.surf.nl/bijeenkomsten/index6.php?oid=142 2005), are now online. From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Mon Jun 6 15:56:48 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:39 2006 Subject: Detailed intro to OA Message-ID: [This is a belated entry from Peter Suber's Open Access News] http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_04_24_fosblogarchive.html#a111462392380179711 Detailed intro to OA Charlotte Hess, A Resource Guide for Authors: Open Access, Copyright, and the Digital Commons, The Common Property Resource Digest, March 2005, pp. 1-8. http://www.indiana.edu/~iascp/E-CPR/cpr72.pdf A detailed and comprehensive introduction to OA, including background on the problems it solves, recommendations for authors (covering both OA journals and OA archives), answers to common objections and misunderstandings, and an annotated list of major OA initiatives. Hess and her program at Indiana University maintain the OA repository for her field, Digital Library of the Commons. To encourage scholars in the field of commons and common property to fill the repository, her article includes this exemplary offer: 'Too busy to register (free) and submit your eprint to the Digital Library of the Commons? Send your word file to us at [email address] and we will convert it to .pdf and mount it on the website for you.' From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Mon Jun 6 23:33:24 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:39 2006 Subject: US University OA Resolutions Omit Most Important Component In-Reply-To: Message-ID: I am happy to report that 4 out of the 8 University OA Resolutions in ARL's 2005 list http://www.arl.org/scomm/open_access/2005facultyresolutions.html do *not* omit the all-important self-archiving component of an Open Access Policy. University of Kansas (1) has already registered its policy at http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php and it is hoped Cornell (2), Case Western Reserve University (3) and University of Wisconsin-Madison (3) will register theirs too! Their self-archiving policies [excerpted] are: (1) University of Kansas: "[T]he University of Kansas Faculty Senate... Calls on all faculty of the University of Kansas to... deposit... a digital copy of every article accepted by a peer-reviewed journal into the [KU] ScholarWorks repository, or a similar open access venue" http://www.provost.ku.edu/policy/scholarly_information/scholarly_resolution.htm (2) Cornell University: "The Senate strongly urges all faculty to deposit preprint or postprint copies of articles in an open access repository such as the Cornell University DSpace Repository..." http://www.library.cornell.edu/scholarlycomm/resolution.html (3) University of Wisconsin: "University of Wisconsin-Madison...faculty and academic staff researchers... must take action to ensure that their works are accessible to advance research and learning, and specifically should consider... Self-archiving their works in information repositories supported by research institutions and professional societies." http://www.secfac.wisc.edu/senate/20050307/1839.pdf (4) Case Western Reserve University: "Be it resolved that the Faculty Senate urges the University and its members to... Post their work prior to publication in an open digital archive and... to post their published work in a timely fashion and provide institutional support to those seeking to do so" http://www.case.edu/president/facsen/frames/committees/library/LibraryComReport.pdf Peter Suber has a longer list including earlier University Resolutions at: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#actions Over 90% of journals already endorse author self-archiving, http://romeo.eprints.org/ so the only thing still needed now is university policies mandating it: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php http://www.surf.nl/download/Alma%20Swan%20-%20Faculty%20awareness.ppt http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/outcomes.html http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/39903.htm Stevan Harnad AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM: A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2005) is available at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/ To join or leave the Forum or change your subscription address: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-forum@amsci.org UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your policy at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php UNIFIED DUAL 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 a 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 institutional repository. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://archives.eprints.org/ From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Tue Jun 7 20:34:02 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:39 2006 Subject: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Universit=E4t_Bielefeld_als_Vorreiter_f=FCr_=22O?= =?iso-8859-1?Q?pen_Access=22_an_deutsche_Hochschulen?= In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Hans-Christoph Stephan wrote: > dear Mr. Harnad, > > the University of Bielefeld says, it's the first german university which > will support Open Access officially and relates to "Berlin declaration". > > best regards, > Hans-Christoph Stephan > - editor - duz-Redaktion www.duz.de > RAABE Fachverlag f?r Wissenschaftsinformation > D-10585 Berlin Dear Hans-Christoph, This is splendid news! Actually Bielefeld is the *second* German University to adopt an institutional Open-Access Provision Policy: Dr. Dr. H.C. Juergen Luethje, Rector of Hamburg University, registered UH's policy 16 Feb 2004 2004: http://www.eprints.org/signup/fullinfo.php?inst=University%20of%20Hamburg and Prof. Eberhard R. Hilf CEO of the Institute for Science Networking at Oldenburg University registered his institute's policy on on 30 Mar 2004: http://www.eprints.org/signup/fullinfo.php?inst=Institute%20for%20Science%20Networking%20Oldenburg But that does not diminish one bit the importance of Bielefeld's step, which now makes Germany the country with the largest number of universities that have adopted official self-archiving policies http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php as well as the country with the third largest number of Open Access Archives (37) after the US (120) and UK (48) http://archives.eprints.org/index.php?action=browse We can only hope that this at last heralds the beginning of a very benign (and long overdue) epidemic, which will spread from Germany to the rest of the world! I hope Bielefeld too will soon register its open-access policy at: http://www.open-access.net/declaration_de.html so as to inspire other universities worldwide to follow their model! Stevan Harnad > >>> "Dr. Hans-Martin Kruckis" > >>> 07.06.2005 15:08:52 >>> > Informationsdienst Wissenschaft - idw - Pressemitteilung > Universit?t Bielefeld, Dr. Hans-Martin Kruckis, 07.06.2005 14:56 > > Universit?t Bielefeld als Vorreiter f?r "Open Access" an deutschen > Hochschulen > > Die Universit?t Bielefeld hat als erste deutsche Hochschule in einer > heute durch das Rektorat verabschiedeten Resolution die offizielle > Unterst?tzung von Open Access beschlossen. "Open Access" meint den > ungehinderten freien Zugang zu wissenschaftlichem Wissen im Internet. > Bielefeld folgt damit der durch die Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, > Hochschulrektorenkonferenz, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft sowie > anderen Forschungs- und F?rderorganisationen herausgegebenen "Berliner > Erkl?rung" zu Open Access vom Oktober 2003. Die > Hochschulrektorenkonferenz hat durch ihre Generalsekret?rin, Dr. > Christiane Ebel-Gabriel, auf dem j?ngsten Symposium der Deutschen > Initiative f?r Netzwerkinformation (DINI) am 23. Mai den Stellenwert > von Open Access f?r die deutschen Hochschulen noch einmal > nachdr?cklich bekr?ftigt. Im Geiste der Berliner Erkl?rung und ihrer > Fortf?hrung im M?rz 2005 durch die so genannte "Berlin 3 Open Access" > Empfehlung (Southhampton, UK) wurde die folgende Resolution einstimmig > verabschiedet: > > 1. Das Rektorat der Universit?t Bielefeld fordert die > wissenschaftlichen Autoren der Universit?t nachdr?cklich auf, alle > ver?ffentlichten, wissenschaftlich referierten Artikel (sog. " > Postprint-Versionen") als Kopie auf dem wissenschaftlichen > Publikationenserver (e-Scholarship Repository) der Universit?t > abzulegen, soweit rechtliche Bedenken der Verlage nicht > entgegenstehen. Dies betrifft die Publikationen einer gro?en Zahl von > Verlagen, die dieser "Selbst-Archivierung" durch Autoren an ihren > Institutionen mittlerweile zustimmen. > > 2. Das Rektorat der Universit?t Bielefeld ermutigt und unterst?tzt die > Wissenschaftler der Universit?t Bielefeld zur Publikation in Open > Access-Zeitschriften. > > Der Rektor der Universit?t, Prof. Dr. Dieter Timmermann, betont im > Zusammenhang mit der aktuellen Diskussion um Open Access die > Notwendigkeit konkreter Ma?nahmen an den Hochschulen: "F?r die > Universit?t Bielefeld ist die Resolution der konsequente Schritt zur > Umsetzung der bereits vor ?ber einem Jahr eingeleiteten intensiven > hochschulinternen Diskussionen." Entscheidend f?r die erfolgreiche > Umsetzung der geplanten Open Access-Aktivit?ten ist die Akzeptanz > unter den Wissenschaftlern der Universit?t. Timmermann begr??t aus > diesem Grunde ganz besonders die spontan zugesicherte Unterst?tzung > der Resolution durch Professorinnen und Professoren aus mehreren > Fachgebieten, darunter der Biologie, Bioinformatik, Chemie, > Mathematik, Physik und Psychologie. > > Die Universit?t Bielefeld plant, die vor sich stehenden Aufgaben > zusammen mit anderen Forschungseinrichtungen anzugehen und die in > Bielefeld erworbenen Erfahrungen an andere Hochschulen > weiterzureichen. > > Kontakt: Dr. Norbert Lossau, Leiter der Universit?tsbibliothek > Bielefeld, Tel.: 0521/106 4050, E-Mail: norbert.lossau@uni- > bielefeld.de > > Arten der Pressemitteilung: > Organisatorisches > Wissenschaftspolitik > > Sachgebiete: > nicht fachbezogen > > -- > Informationsdienst Wissenschaft e.V. - idw - > WWW: http://idw-online.de > E-Mail: service@idw-online.de AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM: A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2005) is available at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/ To join or leave the Forum or change your subscription address: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-forum@amsci.org UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your policy at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php UNIFIED DUAL 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 a 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 institutional repository. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://archives.eprints.org/ From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Wed Jun 8 05:50:22 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:40 2006 Subject: What Provosts Need to Mandate In-Reply-To: <02c101c56c04$ac4c7cd0$791e09c0@Arun> Message-ID: On Wed, 8 Jun 2005, Subbiah Arunachalam wrote: > Dear Stevan: > > Here is a query from a CSIR librarian (at National Institute of > Oceanography, Goa). Why is it that not all entries in OAIster > have full text? he asks. Dear Arun, The answer is very simple: Because only 15% of OA's target content (the annual 2.5 million full-text research articles published in the world's 24,000 journals) is as yet being self-archived, worldwide. http://citebase.eprints.org/isi_study/ http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/lab/chawki/ch.htm That is OA's problem. That is why we do not yet have 100% OA. And that is why so much of OAIster http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/ and even of most institutional "OA" repository content http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=browse is currently just *metadata,* not full-text. And the solution is also 100% clear: As and when the institutions that produce the 2.5 million annual research articles in the 24,000 journals (and the research-funders that fund it) *mandate* that the articles they produce must be self-archived, we will have 100% OA. The publishers are not to blame. 92% of them have already given their green light to self-archiving. They cannot be expected to perform the authors' keystrokes for them! http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php In a sense the researchers are to blame, because 85% of them do not yet self-archive all their work. But the latest JISC author survey (Swan & Brown 2005) Swan, Alma and Brown, Sheridan (2005) Open access self-archiving: An author study. Technical Report, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), UK FE and HE funding councils (not yet published). Preprint: http://cogprints.org/4385/ indicates as clearly as one can indicate to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear that the researchers themselves *state explicitly* that they are quite busy and that -- just as they *publish* only because of the publish-or-perish carrot/stick incentives their institutions and funders have in place -- they will only self-archive if and when their institutions and funders *require* them to do self-archive. But if and when their institutions and funders do require them to do so, 81% (of the over 1300 sampled researchers worldwide, across all disciplines) respond that they *will* self-archive, and self-srchive *willingly* (14% will self-archive reluctantly, and 5% respond that they will not comply). http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/alma-amst.ppt The actual results for the only two institutions worldwide that have so far actually implemented such a self-archiving mandate -- (1) the Southampton University Department of Electronics and Computer Science and (2) CERN -- have borne this out completely. Their self-archiving rates for their current annual research output are now both over 90%: http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Feprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk%2F http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fcdsweb.cern.ch%2F So there is your answer, Arun! The rest is just about when institutions and funders will go ahead and do the obvious, in order to reach the optimal and inevitable (100% OA). The signs are positive (University of Bielefeld is the lastest to announce a clear, definitive self-archiving policy), http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php but the rate of institutional OA self-archiving policy adoption is still awaiting its definitive growth-spurt. Let us hope that that will come with the long-awaited and imminent announcement of the RCUK policy recommendation: "Will the RCUK support OA?" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4464.html if that indeed takes the form recommended by the UK Science and Technology Select Committee and the Berlin Declaration: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/UKSTC.htm http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/outcomes.html Best wishes, Stevan > Arun > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Dr. Murari P Tapaswi" > To: "Subbiah Arunachalam" > Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2005 12:55 PM > Subject: Re: [LIS-Forum] Promoting open Access > > > Dear Dr Arunachalam, > > > > I always read many of your mails on OA with interest and curse myself > > because I am, so far, unable to contribute anything in this area. > > > > I tried to reach to the link you provided below and had a test search > > (searched on Indian ocean AND nodules). It retrieved 4 items. Of the 4 > > items > > only 1 item had a full-text access. Is it not a waste of time to do this > > exercise with a hope that we would get access to the full-text literature? > > Please pardon me for a straight question. > > > > Regards, - Tapaswi > > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Subbiah Arunachalam" > > To: "c3net" ; ; > > > > Sent: Tuesday, June 07, 2005 4:01 PM > > Subject: [LIS-Forum] Promoting open Access > > > > > > Friends: > > > > Promoting open access has at least two parts. One is to set up an archive > > at one's own institution, as Rajashekar had done at IISc, and populate it > > with the institution's research papers quickly. The second part is to help the > > faculty and students (and researchers in general) to take advantage of the > > increasing number of papers in the world's open archives. > > > > Please tell all your clients (research scientists, professors and > > students) to search for papers relevant to their work using > > http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/cgi/b/bib/bib-idx?c=oaister;page=simple. > > > > There are 5,475,850 records from 480 institutions as of 5 June 2005. And > > the number is increasing every day. > > > > Best wishes. > > > > Arun > >> _______________________________________________ > >> LIS-Forum mailing list > >> LIS-Forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in > >> http://ncsi.iisc.ernet.in/mailman/listinfo/lis-forum > >> > From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Wed Jun 8 11:27:16 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:40 2006 Subject: 5th Frankfurt Scientific Symposium In-Reply-To: <5.1.1.6.0.20050608090338.02b5e890@pop.ecs.soton.ac.uk> Message-ID: Here are a few corrections on the following abstract for a paper to be presented at the 5th Frankfurt Scientific Symposium in October 22.10.2005 - 23.10.2005 http://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/messe/symposium2005/programme.html > Open Access - neither green road nor golden road. Is this the road to hell? > Dr. Rafael Ball, Leiter der Zentralbibliothek Forschungszentrum J?lich > GmbH, J?lich, Germany > http://www.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/messe/symposium2005/abstracts.html#ball > > Abstract: > In keeping with the views of its guru, Ste[va]n Harn[ad], the open access > movement is only prepared to discuss the two models of the "green road" and > the "golden road" as sole alternatives for the future of scientific > publishing. [Movements don't discuss; individuals (whether gurus or ordinary GIs) discuss. Movements, one hopes (if they are worthwhile), move.] The two roads are not alternatives for the future of scientific publishing. They are the two ways that scientists can provide open access to their own published articles. Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallieres, F., Carr, L., Hitchcock, S., Gingras, Y, Oppenheim, C., Stamerjohanns, H., & Hilf, E. (2004) The Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access. Serials Review 30. http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/impact.html > The "golden road" is put forward as the royal road for solving > the journals crisis. (1) Open access is not intended as a solution for the journals crisis but as a solution for the research access/impact problem. (2) The golden road (of open access journal publishing) is not put forward as the "royal road" to solving the research access/impact problem. It is merely *one* of the two roads, the green road of author/institution self-archiving being the other road, the far faster and surer road, and the one that 92% of journals already endorse: http://romeo.eprints.org/ (3) It is not the slower and more uncertain golden road to Open Access that this particular guru advocates at this time (though I certainly am not opposed to it!) but the faster and surer green road of author/institution self-archiving: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue42/harnad/ > However, no one has drawn attention to the fact that > the golden road represents a purely socialist solution to a free-market > problem and thus continues the "samizdat" tradition of underground > literature in the former Eastern bloc. As I said, although I was one of the several who first proposed the (rather obvious) author/institution-end cost-recovery model as an alternative to the user/institution-end cost-recovery model Harnad, Stevan (1995) Electronic Scholarly Publication: Quo Vadis? Serials Review 21(1):pp. 70-72. http://cogprints.org/1691/ that model is neither a "socialist" model (in any sense whatsoever) nor am I particularly advocating it at this time. What I am advocating is author/institution self-archiving: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php > The present paper reveals the alarmingly low level at which the open access > movement intends to publish top-class results from science and research, > and the low degree of professionalism with which they are satisfied. It is hard to imagine how this revelation can apply to the green road of open-access self-archiving, since what are being self-archived are exactly the very same published articles, at exactly the same class, level, and prefossionalism as before. This author may perhaps have in mind some of the lower quality gold journals? There are about 1500 gold journals and 23,500 non-gold journals. May I suggest that before drawing too sweeping conclusions on relative quality from having picked out some lower quality gold ones that aus thor should make some effort to do a controlled comparison with comparable non-gold ones? He will find that when one compares like with like, the quality (e.g., as measured by citation impact) turns out to be comparable too. http://www.isinet.com/oaj I regret I will not be atending the Frankfurt conference, but I know that there will be some well-informed colleagues there who will be able to correct any further misunderstandings. Stevan Harnad AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM: A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2005) is available at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/ To join or leave the Forum or change your subscription address: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-forum@amsci.org UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your policy at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php UNIFIED DUAL 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 a 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 institutional repository. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://archives.eprints.org/ From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Wed Jun 8 12:01:29 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:40 2006 Subject: The self-archiving sweepstakes In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, Hans-Christoph Stephan wrote: > > > the University of Bielefeld says it's the first german university which > > will support Open Access officially and relates to "Berlin declaration". The University of Bielefeld has just registered its OA Self-Archiving Policy: http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Mon Jun 13 08:40:09 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:40 2006 Subject: [Journal-notes] Re: OA Archives: Full-texts vs. metadata-only and other digital objects In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Mon, 13 Jun 2005, Tim Gray wrote: > Thank you for your full and illuminating reply to my query about how much > material in OA archives is available as full text. I am surprised at how > low you estimate the figure to be and that it is not, yet, possible to > produce a definitive number. Why the number of full texts in OA archives is so low is because the number of institutions with OA self-archiving mandates (as opposed to the number institutions with OA Archives) is so low. Cf.: http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=browse vs. http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php The remedy is quite obvious (and will come, but is taking rather than it might). Swan, Alma and Brown, Sheridan (2005) Open access self-archiving: An author study. Technical Report, Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), UK FE and HE funding councils. http://cogprints.org/4385/ http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/alma-amst.pdf > I am wondering if the Open DOAR (Directory of Oopen Access Repositories - > the 'sister project' to the Directory of Open Access Journals, DOAJ) will > set strictly 'full text only' rules for inclusion in its directory? Archives with mixed contents, some of it other than OA full-texts, should not be excluded, but an algorithm must be devised to recognise and record the number of full-texts separately. Tim Brody and co-workers at Southampton are working on this now for the Southampton OA Archives Registry. See: "Newly enhanced Registry of Open Access Repositories (ROAR)" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4585.html > how will it relate to the archives.eprints directory you are involved with? That remains to be clarified, but my understanding is that there will be a collaboration and DOAR will be built on the Southampton OA Archives Registry. (Others will have to confirm whether that is indeed the case.) > It gets confusing to me because there are so many lists of repositories around > on the web. That was why the Southampton OA Archives Registry was created, two years ago. Moreover, because all the other registries rely only on voluntary self-registration, and archives have not been rigorous about self-registering, the Southampton OA Archives Registry has been hand-trawling the Web and other registries to find and register new OA Archives as they are created. Perhaps a recognizable, consistent self-identifier tag will evolve, so OA Archives can be automatically harvested and registered, but so far this has not yet happened. Indeed, some of the ostensibly OAI-compliant OA Archives may not even be OAI-compliant! This too will improve, as more institutions adopt institutional self-archiving policies. Germany's DINI certificate will help. "Goettingen/DINI/SPARC-Europe Open Access Meeting" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4563.html > How does the celestial harvesting list you mention relate to > the archives.eprints list (are they the same list?) Celestial, written by Tim Brody, from the University of Southampton, is an OAI aggregator/cache application that imports OAI metadata from version 1.0,1.1,2.0 OAI-compliant repositories, and re-exposes that metadata through either an aggregated or per-repository OAI-compliant 2.0 interface. Tim is also the creator and maintainer of the Southampton OA Archives Registry archives.eprints.org where it is explained that: http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=about What does Not in Celestial mean? This means the archive has not been listed/harvested by Celestial (celestial.eprints.org). This may be because the archive doesn't have a functioning OAI-PMH interface. What does OAI Interface Unknown mean? Either the archive doesn't have a functioning Open Archives interface, or we couldn't track down where it is. Site admins should say on their 'about' or 'help' page where their OAI interface is and use a common URL for it (e.g. /perl/oai or /cgi-bin/oai). Submitting your site to the OAI registry/Hussein Suleman's Repository Explorer will also help to get your site noticed. > or the large list kept > by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) at > ? That is one of the registries from which the the Southampton OA Archives Registry hand-harvests. The Registry regularly harvests also from OAIster http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/ It can also import lists from OAI list-friends automatically: http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=import > I take the archives.eprints to be the closest to a definitive list of the > OA Institutional Repositories which we are concerned with here - alhtough I > notice that our 'DSpace@Cambridge' repository > is not included. DSpace@Cambridge is in the Registry: See http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dspace.cam.ac.uk%2F But it is "not in Celestial" because http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/dspace-oai/ is either not the correct OAI base URL or does not work. In contrast, Cambridge's other OA Archive *is* in Celestial: http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cl.cam.ac.uk%2FTechReports%2F All OA archive managers are encouraged to register their Archives, including their OAI Base URL, and to contact Tim to make sure it works: http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=add (I have emailed this posting to Cambridge's Tom de Mulder and Peter Morgan in the hope that they will work with Tim to make sure Cambridge is harvested.) > I see the distinction between OA Archives and the Open Access Initiative. Yes, the OAI protocol is for all digital contents, whether OA or non-OA. It concerns metadata interoperability. > Maybe this is not strictly relevant to this forum and a basic > misunderstanding of the purposes of archiving, but I still cannot > understand why people are archiving *just* the metadata and not the full > text. It makes OA search engines like OAIster more like a any other > standard bibliographic database with mostly subscription-only access. You are quite right about the latter. And the main reason they are only archiving metadata is what I have already pointed out: The low number of institutional (full-text) OA self-archiving requirements to date. But a second reason is that for some kinds of objects (non-OA objects, i.e., not preprints, postprints or dissertations, e.g., library or institutional records) the institution may not *want* to archive the object, only its OAI metadata. The solution, as noted, is automatic distinction between OA full-text and other kinds of OAI records. > I am interested in the whole area of Open Access and keeping up with > developments. This forum is excellent for that purpose. Delighted. Stevan Harnad From biosci at net.bio.net Fri Jun 17 09:51:48 2005 From: biosci at net.bio.net (BIOSCI Administrator) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:40 2006 Subject: [Journal-notes] BIOSCI/Bionet has a new home Message-ID: <200506171451.j5HEpm800354@net.bio.net> Dear JOURNAL-NOTES readers, BIOSCI/Bionet is the long-running Biology news and discussion groups. The management of these groups has been handled ably at MRC/Rosalind Franklin Centre for several years now. They are turning over management to me, Don Gilbert, at Indiana University Biology department. The MRC/RFC folks deserve our thanks for their devotion to maintaining this useful and unique biology news service. Web access continues at http://www.bio.net/ Find there JOURNAL-NOTES links to Read/Subscribe/Post messages. E-mail postings continue to be through jrnlnote @ net.bio.net This is group has no moderator, unlike most other BIOSCI groups. If one or more among you would to like to take on this responsibility of filtering out unwanted postings, please contact me. The new home is at IUBio Archive, iubio.bio.indiana.edu, which I've maintained for over 15 years. The names net.bio.net and www.bio.net, and their related BIOSCI roles continue to work. Please keep using these bio.net addresses, they will continue when the host computer changes. There may be some hiccups over the coming weeks as the new BIOSCI home gets a work out. Please bear with us, and let us know if problems persist longer. Regards, Don Gilbert Biology Dept., Indiana University Bloomington, Indiana, USA 47405 BIOSCI help mail: biosci-help @ net.bio.net ---------------------------------------------- From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Sat Jun 18 13:00:59 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:40 2006 Subject: [Journal-notes] Statement on Open Access from the Russell Group of UK Universities Message-ID: [Adapted from SHERPA News (June 18 2005): http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/news/index.html#russellstatement ] The Russell Group, nineteen of the UK's major research-led universities http://www.russellgroup.ac.uk/index1.html http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/documents/rep_distrib.html have released a Statement on Scholarly Communication and Publishing http://www.russellgroup.ac.uk/2005/scholarly_communication.htm echoing the recommendations of the UK Parliamentary Select Committee http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/39903.htm by pledging to "support the development of institutional repositories of research papers... [and to] actively encourage their researchers to deposit their work in them". (Of the Russell Group 84% [16/19] already have institutional repositories.) http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?page=all&country=uk Birmingham http://eprints.bham.ac.uk/ Bristol http://rose.bris.ac.uk/dspace/ Cambridge http://www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/ Cardiff Edinburgh http://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/ Glasgow http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/ Imperial College http://eprints.imperial.ac.uk/ King's College London http://eprints.kcl.ac.uk/ Leeds http://sherpa.leeds.ac.uk/ Liverpool London School of Economics http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/ Manchester Newcastle upon Tyne http://rogue.ncl.ac.uk/ Nottingham http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/ Oxford http://eprints.ouls.ox.ac.uk/ Sheffield http://sherpa.leeds.ac.uk/ Southampton http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/ University College London http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/ Warwick http://eprints.csc.warwick.ac.uk/ From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Sun Jun 19 17:04:46 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:40 2006 Subject: [Journal-notes] Four Seminal Swan/Brown JISC Reports on Open Access Message-ID: ** Apologies for Cross-Posting ** Below is a new, short Introduction to Swan & Brown's very recent 2nd international, cross-disciplinary JISC Open Access Author survey, which, I am fairly certain, will turn out to be a milestone and historic turning point in the worldwide research community's progress towards 100% Open Access: 1S Short introduction to 2nd OA Author Survey Swan, A. (2005) Open access self-archiving: An Introduction. Technical Report, JISC, HEFCE. Accessible from: http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/ http://cogprints.org/4406/ http://www.keyperspectives.co.uk/OpenAccessArchive/2005_Open_Access_Report.pdf and the JISC site Powerpoint versions: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/alma-amst.pdf http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/alma-amst.ppt The link to the full JISC version comes next (below, followed by its abstract), then the link to a brand-new JISC Open Access Briefing Paper, and last, two versions each of Swan, Brown et al's two classic papers: the 1st JISC survey and JISC report of their strategic and cost/benefit analysis of institutional vs. central repository self-archiving: 1L Full JISC version of 2nd OA Author Survey) Swan, A. and Brown, S. (2005) Open access self-archiving: An author study. Technical Report, External Collaborators, JISC, HEFCE http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10999/ http://cogprints.org/4385/ ABSTRACT: This, our second author international, cross-disciplinary study on open access had 1296 respondents. Its focus was on self-archiving. Almost half (49%) of the respondent population have self-archived at least one article during the last three years. Use of institutional repositories for this purpose has doubled and usage has increased by almost 60% for subject-based repositories. Self-archiving activity is greatest amongst those who publish the largest number of papers. There is still a substantial proportion of authors unaware of the possibility of providing open access to their work by self-archiving. Of the authors who have not yet self-archived any articles, 71% remain unaware of the option. With 49% of the author population having self-archived in some way, this means that 36% of the total author population (71% of the remaining 51%), has not yet been appraised of this way of providing open access. Authors have frequently expressed reluctance to self-archive because of the perceived time required and possible technical difficulties in carrying out this activity, yet findings here show that only 20% of authors found some degree of difficulty with the first act of depositing an article in a repository, and that this dropped to 9% for subsequent deposits. Another author worry is about infringing agreed copyright agreements with publishers, yet only 10% of authors currently know of the SHERPA/RoMEO list of publisher permissions policies with respect to self-archiving, where clear guidance as to what a publisher permits is provided. Where it is not known if permission is required, however, authors are not seeking it and are self-archiving without it. Communicating their results to peers remains the primary reason for scholars publishing their work; in other words, researchers publish to have an impact on their field. The vast majority of authors (81%) would willingly comply with a mandate from their employer or research funder to deposit copies of their articles in an institutional or subject-based repository. A further 13% would comply reluctantly; 5% would not comply with such a mandate. In a separate exercise we asked the American Physical Society (APS) and the Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd (IOPP) what their experiences have been over the 14 years that arXiv has been in existence. How many subscriptions have been lost as a result of arXiv? Both societies said they could not identify any losses of subscriptions for this reason and that they do not view arXiv as a threat to their business (rather the opposite -- in fact the APS helped establish an arXiv mirror site at the Brookhaven National Laboratory). 2 JISC OA Brief Swan, A. (2005) JISC Open Access Briefing Paper. Technical Report, JISC, HEFCE. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11005/ http://cogprints.org/4407/ http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=pub_openaccess 3A Journal version of institutional vs. central repository analysis Swan, A., Needham, P., Probets, S., Muir, A., Oppenheim, C., O'Brien, A., Hardy, R., Rowland, F. and Brown, S. (2005) Developing a model for e-prints and open access journal content in UK further and higher education. Learned Publishing 18(1): 25-40. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11000/ http://cogprints.org/4120/ 3R Full JISC version of institutional vs. central repository analysis Swan, A., Needham, P., Probets, S., Muir, A., Oppenheim, C., O'Brien, A., Hardy, R. and Rowland, F. (2005) Delivery, Management and Access Model for E-prints and Open Access Journals within Further and Higher Education. Technical Report, JISC, HEFCE. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11001/ http://cogprints.org/4122/ 4A Journal version of 1st OA Author Survey Swan, A. and Brown, S. (2004) Authors and open access publishing. Learned Publishing 17(3): 219-224 http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11003/ http://cogprints.org/4123/ 4R Full JISC version of 1st OA Author Survey Swan, A. and Brown, S. (2004) ISC/OSI JOURNAL AUTHORS SURVEY Report. Technical Report, JISC, HEFCE http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11002/ http://cogprints.org/4125/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The American Scientist Open Access Forum has been chronicling and often directing the course of progress in providing Open Access to Universities' Peer-Reviewed Research Articles since its inception in the US in 1998 by the American Scientist, published by the Sigma Xi Society. The Forum is largely for policy-makers at universities, research institutions and research funding agencies worldwide who are interested in institutional Open Acess Provision policy. (It is not a general discussion group for serials, pricing or publishing issues: it is specifically focussed on institution Open Acess policy.) To sign on to the Forum: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Stevan Harnad Moderator, American Scientist Open Access Forum Chaire de recherche du Canada Centre de neuroscience de la cognition (CNC) Universit? du Qu?bec ? Montr?al Montr?al, Qu?bec, Canada H3C 3P8 Professor of Cognitive Science Department of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/ From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Mon Jun 20 05:35:48 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:40 2006 Subject: [Journal-notes] Re: The Harvards, the Have-Nots, and Open Access Message-ID: Prior AmSci Thread: "The Harvards, the Have-Nots, and Open Access" (began Nov 2003) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3177.html The following is an (anonymized) exchange with a journal editor in a particular discipline/specialty ("X") who challenged -- for his particular journal's disicplime/specialty -- my often repeated estimate -- based on the data (1) from Ulrich's on the worldwide number of peer-reviewed journals, (2) from ARL on the size of library journal subscriptions, (3) from estimates of the worldwide number of universities and research institutions, (4) from (guess-)estimates of average and min/max journal subscription sizes and (5) from data on the size of the citation impact advantage for published articles (in the same journal) that have also been self-archived by their authors -- that it is true of *every* one of the 2.5 million articles published annually in the world's 24,000 peer-reviewed journals that it is inaccessible to many (or even most) of its potential users/citers worldwide. http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/analysis/ http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/arlbin/arl.cgi?task=3Dsetuprank http://www.aneki.com/universities.html http://citebase.eprints.org/isi_study/ http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/lab/chawki/ch.htm http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html This is a strong claim (and far stronger than what one would need to claim in order to argue that 100% self-archiving would be beneficial, hence desirable, for research, researchers, their institutions, and their funders -- (5) alone would be enough for that); but it is nevertheless of some historic and demographic interest to test how true the stronger claim actually is. That is the subject of this exchange. > I'm sorry to quibble, but showing that nobody subscribes to all > journals just says that THERE EXIST papers that are inaccessible to > many potential users, not that this is the case for EVERY SINGLE > paper. But I didn't say nobody subscribes to all journals: I said (and cited the ARL/Ulrichs statistical evidence to the effect that) most institutions can only subscribe to a very few, and that no journal is subscribed to by most, let alone all. Only such a journal could say that it is not the case that it is inaccessible to many or most of its potential users. > that they are unaffordable for some institutes doesn't say anything > about specialist journals. What would say something to that would be reliable, objective data on (1) the worldwide number of institutions and their institutional researchers in that particular specialty relative to (2) the wordlwide number of institutions (or individuals) that subscribe/license that particular journal. (If you have such reliable, objective worldwide data for your own particular journal speciality, and it does indicate that it is *not* the case that the articles are inaccessible to many or most of their potential users worldwide, I would be most interested to see those data, and happy to announce them henceforth as the happy exception to my general contention!) >sh> On the other side of the access/impact ledger, the evidence -- across >sh> all disciplines and journals -- that self-archived articles have >sh> 50-300+% more citations than non-self-archived articles (in the same >sh> journal and year) confirms that open-access enhances usage and impact. > > I'm not disputing this. And [my publisher] allows self-archiving so there > is no barrier for authors in my journal. That's fine -- and highly commendable that your publisher's journals are among the the 92% of journals that are green on self-archiving: it is the research community that is entirely to blame for that fact that it currently only self-archives 15% of its annual output! (But does it not make you wonder -- if the publisher's official toll-version were indeed accessible to all or most of its would-be users -- why there should be this usage/impact advantage to the author's self-archived home-brew? If most institutions (in a specialty) already had an online license to the publisher's deluxe PDF, why on earth would there be any citation advantage to those articles that also had a self-archived freebie? Is it not more likely that the freebie is taken up by those who cannot access the journal version, because their institutions happen to be unable to afford that particular journal?) >sh> (What is the size of the institutional subscribership of your journal? >sh> And how many institutions worldwide do you think there are that have >sh> researchers in its area -- and how many researchers?) > > I'll try to find the answer to the first question. The number is > changing (growing) constantly because of [electronic bundling]. > Anyway, that number, whatever it is, is probably not very meaningful since > some of those institutions have no [X discipline-name deleted] departments. The data would be useful in any case. The lack of a pertinent department would increase the numbers and make the estimate of have-nots more conservative, which is fine: You also need a worldwide tally of institutions with X departments and/or X researchers too, by the way, and a specific enough one to be able to estimate from it and the worldwide subscriber data the number of have-nots, based on those that do and don't subscribe to your journal! > I don't know the answer to the second question and I don't have any > way of finding out. But I would guess that most academic [X] > departments would have somebody working in the [specialty] area, and > probably the number that don't is of a similar order as the number of > non-academic research institutions with somebody in the area. So, how > many academic [X] departments are there in the world? Good question! Stevan Harnad AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM: A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2005) is available at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/ To join or leave the Forum or change your subscription address: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-forum@amsci.org UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your policy at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php UNIFIED DUAL 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 a 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 institutional repository. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://archives.eprints.org/ From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Tue Jun 21 10:19:11 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:40 2006 Subject: [Journal-notes] Re: The Harvards, the Have-Nots, and Open Access In-Reply-To: Message-ID: > Okay, maybe you didn't say literally that nobody subscribes to all > journals; I understood you as saying that lots of institutions don't > subscribe to lots of journals. The distinction is critical, and I chose my words (and meanings) quite consciously: The relevant question is about *articles*, and the size of the current potential readership/usership to which they are currently inaccessible because their institutions can't afford access to the journal in which they happen to be published. > My point is that it is not possible to infer from this data that > *every single paper* is inaccessible to many/most of its potential > readers. Although the inference does sound rather shocking and is probably stronger than necessary, I think it *is* possible to infer from the existing data that every single one of the annual 2.5 million articles is inaccessible to *many* of its potential users. (For that to be true, all you need is a few institutional nonsubscribers with several relevant researchers each.) That is why I chose my words as I did: What I said was "inaccessible to many or even most". (For clarification, perhaps I should say "inaccessible to many, even most.") Whether it is many or most will be indirectly revealed by our citation data. We know that *most* published articles (c. 60%) are not cited at all, and only 10% are cited more than 5 times. (There is substantial self-archiving in every citation-bracket, though more for the higher-cited articles). http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/lab/chawki/classement_citations.htm http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/online-nature01/ We also know that self-archiving increases citations from 50-300+% http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/lab/chawki/ch.htm http://citebase.eprints.org/isi_study/ We also know that downloads correlate significantly with -- hence predict -- citations: http://citebase.eprints.org/analysis/correlation.php http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10206/01/BMJ1.html We also know that the number of readings per article averages under and sometimes well under) 1000, which means that -- if we take the (conservative) upper limit of 5 citations per article -- 200 readings generate one citation (no doubt varying by field: in astrophysics Michael Kurtz reported a 17/1 reads/cites ratio.) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0899.html http://psycprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00000084/ http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3696.html Although it is not yet possible to make direct comparisons between download counts for OA vs. non-OA articles in the same journal issue (as it is already possible to do with citations), unilateral download counts for OA articles (along with logic), corroborated by the observed download/citation correlation, suggest that OA substantially increases downloads too (by at least the amount implied by the download to citation ratio -- 200/1 to 17/1, take your pick) plus the a-posteriori evidence that OA increases citations by 50-300%. In short, I think we can safely infer that self-archiving increases accessibility substantially. If it adds from 0.5 to over 3 citations per article when most articles receive 0.0 citations, this does imply that articles are today missing many (perhaps even most) of their potential users if they are not being self-archived. > To see that, let's imagine an extremely obscure topic, with no > connection to anything else, that is only studied in one place in the > world. A journal on that topic that is subscribed to by that one > institution would achieve 100% coverage! Conceded. Now, how representative do you think that kind of hypothetical special case is, for the 2.5 million articles published annually? And please don't interpret the 60% of articles that receive zero citations as prima facie evidence for your hypothesis that no one is interested in them, as they are just as readily (and more optimistically!) interpretable in exactly the opposite way: that articles have been losing users and citers because they were inaccessible rather than because no one was interested in using and citing them. > A specialist academic journal (and many of the world's journals are > very specialized!) doesn't have to be on such an obscure topic for a > similar affect to be relevant. It is a foregone conclusion that peer-reviewed research journal articles will never be best-sellers! But the question that the OA advantage data are answering is whether they have been maximizing their usage and impact until now. And the answer is that they have not: They have substantially more potential impact than they have actually exhibited to date. And the most parsimonious interpretation is that this is because they have been substantially less accessible than one might have hoped. > I think there are other very important factors at work and > maybe they even dominate when it comes to the behaviour of individual > researchers. For instance: > 1. Publisher X doesn't allow Google and other search engines to index its > journals. So people typing keywords into Google won't see articles > in Publisher X journals, even if they have access to them. They will > see articles in open archives. > 2. Publishers try to make their websites user-friendly but Google > etc. are just so good that getting access to a paper via [a publisher's > or aggregator's website ] or whatever can be more work than typing stuff > into Google, especially since each publisher lays out its website > differently. > 3. Of course, nobody physically goes to libraries anymore. Excellent points, and they will need to be tested by comparing the OA impact advantage for (1) toll-access journals that do and do not have full-text indexing by google and that (2) do and do not have online versions (though virtually all journals now do). > Here's another factor, but I don't know how it affects anything: > 4. I think many, perhaps most, citations are to papers that the > authors haven't actually read, as background material. All an > author needs to make a reference is an accurate citation that they > can cut and paste, and maybe a skim through a few paragraphs from a > preliminary version. No doubt there is some of that (indeed there is some published evidence for it, based on propagated typos, as you note), but how much? And did unread citations not occur in on-paper days too? It will take a much more sophisticated kind of text-analysis to partition citations into read and unread ones, and then to compare the size of the OA advantage for each. I suspect 100% OA self-archiving will have prevailed before we can do that; indeed we probably need the full text corpus as a database to do that sort of analysis thoroughly in the first place! Stevan Harnad AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM: A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2005) is available at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/ To join or leave the Forum or change your subscription address: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-forum@amsci.org UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your policy at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php UNIFIED DUAL 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 a 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 institutional repository. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://archives.eprints.org/ From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Tue Jun 21 15:58:25 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:41 2006 Subject: [Journal-notes] Open Access to Oeuvre of Bosc and of Chanier on Open Access Message-ID: (1) There has been dramatic Open Access Progress in France http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?page=all&country=fr http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php This progress owes a great deal to its earliest and most dedicated Hexagonal champion, Helene Bosc (who is reputed to be retiring this year, but of course such rumours can never really be given much credence de facto even if true de jure when they concern such indefatigable individuals). Below is a list of some of HB'S pertinent work. See especially her recent chapter in Aubry & Janik (2005) and her website: http://www.tours.inra.fr/prc/internet/documentation/communication_scientifique/comsci.htm (2) Another formidable Open Access champion in France is Thierry Chanier, whose work is on the Technology of Information and Communication in Education (TICE). His specialty is scientific publication in the humanities and social sciences, he has founded several Open Access Journals, and now he has written an excellent and very up-to-date book on Open Archives and Open Access: Chanier, T. (2004) Archives ouvertes et publication scientifique: Comment mettre en place l'acc?s libre aux r?sultats de la recherche? [Open Archives and Scientific Publication: How to Provide Open Access to Research Results?] L'Harmatan, Paris. Open Access Full Text: http://archivesic.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents/archives0/00/00/14/86/index_fr.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bosc, H. (2005) Archives ouvertes : quinze ans d'histoire [Open Archives: Fifteen Years of History]. In Aubry, C. and Janik, J., Eds. Les Archives Ouvertes : enjeux et pratiques. Guide ? l'usage des professionnels de l'information, pages pp. 27-54. ADBS, Paris. Open Access Full Text: http://cogprints.org/4408/ [In French] English Summary: Both the idea and the benefits of providing open access to scientific publications are now coming to be understood by a growing number of researchers who publish in new open access journals. However, the potential of the complementary strategy of self-archiving in Open Archives -- which could provide immediate open access to all scientific articles -- is still under-utilized. This chapter describes the various attempts in the last fifteen years to generalize the self-archiving practice first adopted by physicists, who have been providing open access to their work since 1991. The benefits of self-archiving and open archives are explained. The adoption of the practice of self-archiving by researchers and their institutions is still too slow. The reasons for this delay are discussed. The official policies adopted by various institutions following the Berlin 3 meeting in Southampton (UK) now makes it more likely that the practice of self-archiving will spread considerably in 2005.The open access thereby provided will increase the scientific impact of research worldwide Bosc, H. and Harnad, S. (2005) In a paperless world a new role for academic libraries: Providing Open Access. Learned Publishing. http://cogprints.org/4200/ Bosc, H. (2004) Pour une plus grande visibilit? des travaux des chercheurs : l'exemple de l'archive ouverte PhysiologieAnimale http://cogprints.org/4412/ Bosc, H. (2003) La Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) pour un libre acc?s aux r?sultats de la recherche. Terminal. http://cogprints.org/4409/ Bosc, H. (2003) Le droit des auteurs ? mettre en acc?s libre leurs propres r?sultats de recherche [Authors' right to provide open access to their own research results.]. http://cogprints.org/4411/ Bosc, H (2002) Mise en service d'une archive num?rique. Launching an archive. http://cogprints.org/4415/ http://cogprints.org/4416/ Bosc, H. (2001) Partager et utiliser des connaissances scientifiques: de la responsabilit? individuelle ? la responsabilit? collective. INRA mensuel. http://cogprints.org/4410/ Stevan Harnad AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM: A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2005) is available at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/ To join or leave the Forum or change your subscription address: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-forum@amsci.org UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your policy at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php UNIFIED DUAL 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 a 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 institutional repository. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://archives.eprints.org/ From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Wed Jun 22 20:21:39 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:41 2006 Subject: [Journal-notes] Re: A Simple Way to Optimize the NIH Public Access Policy In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 22 Jun 2005, David Goodman wrote: > If we were able to achieve both a network of discipline based repositories, and one > of IRs (thus accommodating all preferences), would it not be better for the items to be > mirrored, rather than just linked and harvested? The virtue of mirroring would > be the provision of multiple copies as an automatic byproduct and immediately > providing truly reliable archiving not under the control of a single institution. Mirroring (and back-up, caching, and other valuable features) are not an *or*, in place of linking and harvesting, they are an *and*, as a safeguard, and for speed and efficiency. > As for the rest of the NIH policy, it does have one really good feature that > you did not mention. It would be very easy to improve on it next year. > The embargo can be shortened, all the way to zero. The material can improve to > the pdf's. The "requested," which is being read by all those with NIH grants as > meaning "required, unless you want to gamble with your career" can change to "required." One can always improve on a flawed policy. But meanwhile, the clock is ticking, and valuable usage and impact are being needlessly lost, while people do wait-and-see apologetics for a needlessly flawed policy -- and one that runs the risk of being cloned and copied in its present flawed form, just because of where it comes from. Not to mention the Publisher Back-Sliding (like Nature's) that this flawed policy (inadvertently) encourages, and continues to encourage as long as it remains in place, thereby slowing things even further. As I said, though, other, far better models are out there, and on the ascendant. http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php (And moving from authors' postprints to publishers' PDFs is not necessarily an improvement!) Stevan Harnad AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM: A complete Hypermail archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2005) is available at: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/ To join or leave the Forum or change your subscription address: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-forum@amsci.org UNIVERSITIES: If you have adopted or plan to adopt an institutional policy of providing Open Access to your own research article output, please describe your policy at: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php UNIFIED DUAL 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 a 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 institutional repository. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://archives.eprints.org/ From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Fri Jun 17 16:09:45 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:41 2006 Subject: [Journal-notes] Berlin-3 recommendations taken by The Association of Swedish Higher Education Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 08:52:59 +0200 From: Bjornshauge Lars To: Peter Suber, Stevan Harnad Dear Peter & Stevan, The Association of Swedish Higher Education (www.suhf.se) has taken the Berlin3 recommendations - http://www.suhf.se/BinaryLoader.aspx?ObjectID=108&PropertyName=FileList&PropertyValueIndex=0&CollID=File - on page 2 in bold you will find the decision in Swedish, which is as far as it goes an exact translation of the Berlin3 text - included on page 1. Now the membership institutions will discuss how to actually implement the recommendations - this is in process at at least some universities. Kindest regards Lars Bjornshauge Director of Libraries Lund University Libraries, Head Office P.O.Box 134, SE-221 00 LUND, Sweden Visiting address Tornavagen 9B, Lund Telephone +46 46 222 92 03 Mobile phone +46 70 217 70 28 Telefax + 46 46 222 36 82 e-mail: lars.bjornshauge@lub.lu.se From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Thu Jun 23 09:56:29 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:41 2006 Subject: [Journal-notes] New international study demonstrates worldwide readiness for Open Access mandate (fwd) Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 14:57:03 +0100 From: Joyce Lewis News from the University of Southampton Ref: 05/117 23 June 2005 New international study demonstrates worldwide readiness for Open Access mandate ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- A wide-ranging new international study across all disciplines has found that over 80 per cent of academic researchers the world over would willingly comply with a mandate to deposit copies of their articles in an institutional repository. The findings of the study, carried out by Key Perspectives Ltd, for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the UK, have been greeted by Southampton's Professor Stevan Harnad as 'a historic turning point in the worldwide research community's progress towards 100 per cent Open Access'. The new results are being reported this week at the International Conference on Policies and Strategies for Open Access to Scientific Information in Beijing, China (22-24 June 2005) by Dr Alma Swan of Key Perspectives, along with new findings from Dr Les Carr, of the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton, the only UK university that already has a self-archiving mandate. Southampton is a leader in the worldwide Open Access movement. The international, cross-disciplinary study on Open Access had 1296 respondents. The main findings are: * The vast majority of authors (81 per cent) would comply willingly with a mandate from their employer or research funder to deposit copies of their articles in an institutional or subject-based repository; a further 14 per cent would comply reluctantly, and only 5 per cent would not comply (highest willingness, US: 88 per cent; UK: 83 per cent; lowest, China: 58 per cent). * 49 per cent of respondents had already self-archived at least one article in the previous three years * 31 per cent of respondents were not yet aware of the possibilities of self-archiving * Use of institutional repositories for self-archiving had doubled since the first survey (2004) ; the University of Southampton has the highest rate of self-archiving in the UK * Only 20 per cent of authors who self-archived reported any degree of difficulty in self-archiving, and this dropped to 9 per cent with subsequent experience. Les Carr's analyses of Southampton web-logs show that it takes 10 minutes for the first paper, and even less for subsequent papers. * Self-archiving is done the most by those researchers who publish the most papers * Researchers' primary purpose in publishing is to have an impact on their fields (i.e., to be read, used, built upon, and cited) In a separate exercise the American Physical Society (APS) and the Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd (IOPP) were asked about their experiences over the last 14 years of existence of arXiv (the open e-print archive which has over 300,000 physics papers deposited). Both publishers said that they could not identify any loss of subscriptions due to arXiv, did not view it as a threat to their own publishing activities and indeed encouraged it. 'These results are hugely important,' said Stevan Harnad, 'and will be highly influential. Currently only 15 per cent of articles are being self-archived worldwide, but we can see from the survey that the overwhelming majority of academic authors everywhere would willingly self-archive if they were asked to do so. The results are already confirmed by the 90% self-archiving rate at Southampton, the first institution to adopt a self-archiving mandate, and by CERN, the world's biggest institution to adopt a self-archiving mandate, with likewise over 90% self-archiving: http://makeashorterlink.com/?W11C2205B http://makeashorterlink.com/?Y24C2105B http://makeashorterlink.com/?O65C4205B 'Universities and research-funders who have hesitated about requiring this now have the clear evidence that a self-archiving mandate would not lead to resistance or resentment. And those who hesitated to mandate out of concern for publishers should note that the publishers with the most and longest experience with author self-archiving welcome it.' On the critical question of whether the optimal route for self-archiving is the central one (as favoured by the US National Institutes of Health) or the distributed institutional model (favoured by the UK), Professor Harnad says that the JISC/Key Perspectives reports provide strong support for the UK Parliamentary Select Committee, which specifically proposed distributed institutional self-archiving. This is now likely to form the basis of a recommendation from Research Councils UK (RCUK), which has been considering the future of Open Access to UK-funded research output. ENDS Notes for Editors 1. Web links for further information Swan, A. and Brown, S. (2005) Open access self-archiving: An author study. Technical Report, External Collaborators, JISC, HEFCE http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10999/ Powerpoints http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/alma-amst.pdf http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/ppts/02-AlmaSwan.ppt Key-stroke study of archiving time: http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/ Publisher responses including APS and IOPP: http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/ Beijing meeting http://libraries.csdl.ac.cn/Meeting/MeetingID.asp?MeetingID=7&MeetingMenuID= 39 Swan, A. (2005) JISC Open Access Briefing Paper. Technical Report, JISC, HEFCE. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11005/ Swan, A., Needham, P., Probets, S., Muir, A., Oppenheim, C., O'Brien, A., Hardy, R., Rowland, F. and Brown, S. (2005) Developing a model for e-prints and open access journal content in UK further and higher education. Learned Publishing 18(1):pp. 25-40. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11000/ GNU eprints software: http://www.eprints.org/ Citebase http://citebase.eprints.org/ Self-archiving FAQ: http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ OSI Eprints Handbook: http://software.eprints.org/handbook/ Institutional Archives Registry: http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?action=browse Institutional Self-Archiving Policy Registry http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php Journal Self-Archiving Policy Directory http://romeo.eprints.org/ Bibliography of OA Advantage http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html American Scientist Open Access Forum http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.h tml UK Science and Technology Committee Policy Recommendation: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/3990 3.htm Berlin-3/Southampton Policy Recommendation: http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/outcomes.html 2. The University of Southampton is the home of GNU EPrints software, the most widely used software for building Institutional Repositories, and the JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee) TARDis (Targeting Academic Research for Deposit and Disclosure) project, which has been investigating the technical, cultural and academic issues which surround institutional repositories. 3. The University of Southampton is a leading UK teaching and research institution with a global reputation for leading-edge research and scholarship. The University has over 20,000 students and over 5000 staff. Its annual turnover is in the region of ?270 million. For further information Professor Stevan Harnad (email Harnad@soton.ac.uk) Dr Alma Swan (email a.swan@talk21.com) Joyce Lewis, Communications Manager, School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton (tel.023 8059 5453; j.k.lewis@ecs.soton.ac.uk) From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Tue Jun 28 08:19:14 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:41 2006 Subject: [Journal-notes] Press Release: RCUK Announces Proposed Position on Access to Research Outputs Message-ID: Pertinent Prior AmSci Topic Thread: "New international study demonstrates worldwide readiness for Open Access mandate" (June 23 2005) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4604.html Forwarded RCUK Press Release 28 June 2005 http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/press/20050628openaccess.asp RCUK Announces Proposed Position on Access to Research Outputs http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/access/index.asp The principal investors in publicly-funded research in the UK have responded to the debate on improved access to research outputs by putting forward their emerging views on the issue. The eight UK Research Councils, under the umbrella of Research Councils UK (RCUK), have proposed to make it mandatory for research papers arising from Council-funded work to be deposited in openly available repositories at the earliest opportunity. The Councils are seeking views on their position statement published today (28 June 2005) on the RCUK website. http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/access/index.asp RCUK spokesman, Professor Ian Diamond said that Councils have already widely consulted the research community: "We've held workshops, given evidence at Select Committees, met with the publishers through a DTI working group and written out to all UK Vice Chancellors to share our views as they emerge on this issue and hear what others are saying," he said. "The technology that has led to this debate is still evolving and so is our position. We see today's statement as a starting point and we're actively seeking the views of all parties involved in the debate, such as the Learned Societies," he added. RCUK's position would apply to new grants awarded after 1 October this year. Given the long-term nature of most research, the impact of the policy will not be felt immediately. "The Research Councils are responsible for supporting and promoting the activities of a research base that is vibrant, productive and sustainable. We're therefore committed to ensuring the widest possible dissemination of ideas and knowledge, effective quality assurance of research and its results, cost effective use of public funds and the long-term preservation of research outputs. Our emerging position on the access issue should come as no surprise to those who understand our remit," said Professor Diamond. RCUK proposes: * A requirement for all grants awarded from 1 October 2005 that, subject to * copyright and licensing arrangements, a copy of any resultant published * journal articles or conference proceedings should be deposited in an * appropriate e-print repository (either institutional or subject-based) * wherever such a repository is available to the award-holder. Deposit should * take place at the earliest opportunity, wherever possible at or around the * time of publication. * Research Councils will also encourage, but not formally oblige, * award-holders to deposit articles arising from grants awarded before 1 * October 2005. * Councils will ensure that applicants for grants are allowed, subject to * justification of cost-effectiveness, to include in the costing of their * projects the predicted costs of any publication in author-pays journals. The Research Councils argue that technology offers new possibilities to communicate the results of research, through developments in electronic publishing such as open access journals and e-print repositories. Notes for editors A full copy of RCUK's position statement on access to research outputs can be found at http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/access/index.asp Research Councils UK (RCUK) is the partnership between the UK's eight Research Councils. Through RCUK, the Councils work together to champion the research, training and innovation they support. The Councils are independent non-departmental public bodies, funded by the Science Budget through the Office of Science and Technology. RCUK was created to increase the collective visibility, leadership and policy influence of the Research Councils; to stimulate multi-disciplinary research that encourages collaboration; to provide a single focus for collective dialogue with stakeholders and to encourage greater harmonisation of internal operations. The partnership is led by the RCUK Executive Group, which meets monthly and comprises the chief executives of the eight Research Councils. The Group is currently chaired by Professor Ian Diamond, chief executive of the Economic and Social Research Council. BBSRC http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/ currently manages media relations for Research Councils UK. Please contact Media Officer, Matt Goode 01793 413299 matt.goode@bbsrc.ac.uk The eight UK Research Councils are: * Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC); * Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC); * Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC); * Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC); * Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC); * Medical Research Council (MRC); * Natural Environment Research Council (NERC); * Particle Physics & Astronomy Research Council (PPARC). From harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk Tue Jun 28 12:53:21 2005 From: harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stevan Harnad) Date: Mon Jan 2 02:09:41 2006 Subject: [Journal-notes] Re: RCUK policy on open access In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Tue, 28 Jun 2005, Michael Fraser wrote: > >> RCUK PROPOSAL: There will be no obligation to set up a repository where > >> none exists at present. > > > I would suggest that rather than stating 'no obligation,' the RCs [instead] > encourage grant proposals to include a proportion of the cost of running > an IR as a directly allocated 'infrastructure' cost (if not directly > incurred) under the FEC regime. This would complement the explicit > encouragement to budget for publishing in author-pays journals. Michael Fraser -- who is in charge of creating Oxford University's Institutional Repository -- is *so* right! http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/collaboration/?rq=specialevents/20050610 http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Feprints.ouls.ox.ac.uk%2F Consider the present logic of the RCUK proposal: (1) You are *required* to self-archive your RCUK-funded research -- except if your institution has no OA Institutional Repository (presumably because your institution can't afford one)! In that case you may opt out of the RCUK requirement... (2) You are *encouraged* to publish your RCUK-funded research in an OA ("gold") journal (if/when a suitable one exists: 5% of journals are OA gold today, whereas 92% are "green" on self-archiving). RCUK will help cover with the costs! In other words, RCUK proposes to let fundees opt out of the self-archiving "requirement" if their institutions can't afford an IR -- instead of offering to help fund IRs instead (as the UK Select Committee had proposed). At the same time, RCUK does propose to help fund OA publishing, which they are (rightly) only encouraging rather than requiring! This, even though the cost per article is *vastly* lower for OA self-archiving, and despite the immediate scope for 100% OA via OA self-archiving (when 92% of journals are already green) is vastly greater than the scope for 100% OA via OA publishing (when only 5% of journals gold)! So Michael is spot-on: RCUK should help fund compliance with the requirement, rather than allowing opt-out while funding compliance with the mere encouragement (at a far, far greater cost per article!) Stevan Harnad