From: "Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF)" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 18 Jun 2015 17:54:19 +0000

Hi Ann,

Thank you, and Rick, for drawing attention to the What's Changed slide
(http://www.slideshare.net/aliciawise/whats-changed-in-sharing-policy).
It's been viewed 581 times, c. 125 of these when I first distributed
the link and a further 200 times in the last couple of days.

You ask several questions about embargos: their length, how they are
set, and whether we would like to rationalize or normalize the embargo
periods.

First, the length of our embargo periods, and particularly how many
journals have 48 month embargo periods.  The answer is that only 25,
or 1.1%, of our journals have 48 month embargo periods.  54.7% of our
journals have embargo periods of 12 months.  We are using a shorter
embargo list in the UK, and in that case 83.7% of our journals have
embargo periods of 12 months.  Longer embargo periods are typically
used for social science and some physical science titles where there
is a longer usage half-life.

(For us, and for other publishers, see:
http://publishers.org/sites/default/files/uploads/PSP/journalusagehalflife.pdf).

We are reviewing our embargo periods in 2015, and while I cannot
pre-judge the outcome of this review, we are very conscious of the
many new funding body policies that have emerged in the last year with
12 month embargo periods.  We obviously want embargo periods that
support authors, funders and journals.

Second, you ask about how we set embargo periods.  These are largely
based on underlying usage patterns, but following review of usage data
we do sense-check the suggested embargo period with publishers and
consult with Society publishing partners.  This sense-check factors
in: feedback from researchers, analysis of researcher sharing
behaviors, what our competitors are doing, and funder policies and
mandates that might influence author submission decisions.  As I
explained above, we want embargo periods that support authors, funders
and journals, but there will be occasions where the requirements of
funders for short embargo periods, for example of six months, won’t
align with our need to protect journals.  If a funder insists on 6
month embargo periods and we can’t see a way for that to be
sustainable for a journal, then we have gold OA options available.
Most funders with such policies provide funding for gold OA
publishing.

Third, you ask if we would like to rationalize or normalize the
embargo periods.  We do understand the administration and
communication benefits for us all of increased simplicity, and we do
see more coherence in embargo periods over time.  However it is likely
there will always be some exceptions and that it will not be possible
to get 100% alignment for all our journals on one specific embargo
period.

With kind wishes,
Alicia

-----Original Message-----
From: Ann Shumelda Okerson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 17 Jun 2015 19:45:55 -0400

Alicia Wise also linked to this chart in her posting of 4 June, and I
happen to agree that the clarifications are more crisp and thus are
useful -- and in some cases actually increase share-ability.

In the extensive liblicense-l discussion on this whole matter, Rick is
the one commentator who references the chart.  Others haven't
commented - perhaps they haven't yet looked at it?

The largest amount of heat has been generated over the length of
embargoes, some (?) being as long as 48 months, presumably.  Now, I've
assumed that Elsevier (like Springer, Wiley, and others) distributes
(or publishes, if you will) a number of journals that it doesn't own
or control.  These are likely produced by societies and research
organizations and contracted with Elsevier.

What I next assumed is that the owners of those journals are
responsible for their policies about revenue, access, editorial, etc.
And so, it would be up to them to decide about the length of the
embargo period, not necessarily Elsevier.  Since Alicia noted that the
length of embargo is an ongoing topic of conversation at Elsevier, I
also assumed that as much as possible Elsevier would like to
rationalize or normalize the embargo period, but is not always able to
do that.  So I've not laid the responsibility for longer embargo
periods squarely at Elsevier's door.

Is this correct (Alicia, please!) or am I wrong here (possibly many
readers will tell me that I am.

Regards, Ann Okerson


On Tue, Jun 16, 2015 at 3:31 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 16 Jun 2015 11:11:21 +0000
>
> Speaking as someone who was indeed somewhat confused ― not by the new
> policy itself, but rather from trying to figure out what had and had
> not changed with the new policy ― I find the matrix of differences to
> which Alicia provided a link:
>
> (http://www.slideshare.net/aliciawise/whats-changed-in-sharing-policy)
>
> tremendously helpful.
>
> What I see on that matrix leads me to ask this group two very simple
> questions of my own:
>
> 1. As far as anyone on this list can tell, does it fully and
> accurately represent what has changed with the new policy?
>
> 2. If so, it appears to me that Elsevier’s new sharing policy
> represents a net increase in liberality when it comes to sharing and
> posting ― am I mistaken about that?
>
> ---
> Rick Anderson
> Assoc. Dean for Scholarly Resources & Collections Marriott Library,
> University of Utah [log in to unmask]