From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2013 09:02:15 -0600

Why should Green OA not apply to books if and when the authors are
receiving no royalty payments? What difference is there in the
intellectual content that justifies treating them any differently? If
money is not involved as a reward to authors, why should they not be
under the same mandate as journal article authors? It seems artificial
to create this digital divide between books and journals. Both
contribute to the advance of knowledge, and access to both is
important.

Sandy Thatcher


At 9:40 AM -0500 11/15/13, Stevan Harnad wrote:

Commentary on "Open Access and Academic Freedom" in Inside Higher Ed
15 November 2013, by Cary Nelson, former national president of the
American Association of University Professors

________________________________

If, in the print-on-paper era, it was not a constraint on academic
freedom that universities and research funders required, as a
condition of funding or employment, that researchers conduct and
publish research -- rather than put it in a desk drawer -- so it could
be read, used, applied and built upon by all users whose institutions
could afford to subscribe to the journal in which it was published
("publish or perish"), then it is not a constraint on academic freedom
in the online era that universities and research funders require, as a
condition of funding or employment, that researchers make their
research accessible online to all its potential users rather than just
those whose institutions could afford to subscribe to the journal in
which it was published ("self-archive to flourish").

However, two kinds of Open Access (OA) mandates are indeed constraints
on academic freedom:

1. any mandate that constrains the researcher's choice of which
journal to publish in -- other than to require that it be of the
highest quality whose peer-review standards the research can meet

2. any mandate that requires the researcher to pay to publish (if the
author does not wish to, or does not have the funds)

The immediate-deposit/optional-access (ID/OA) mandate requires authors
to deposit their final refereed draft in their institutional
repository immediately upon acceptance for publication, regardless of
which journal they choose to publish in, and regardless of whether
they choose to comply with an OA embargo (if any) on the part of the
journal. (If so, the access to the deposit can be set as Closed Access
rather than Open Access during the embargo, and the repository
software has a facilitated copy-request Button, allowing would-be
users to request a copy for research purposes with one click, and
allowing the author the free choice to comply or not comply, likewise
with one click.)

Since OA is beneficial to researchers -- because it maximizes research
downloads and citations, which universities and funders now count,
along with publications, in evaluating and rewarding research output
-- why do researchers need mandates at all? Because they are afraid of
publishers -- afraid their publisher will not publish their research
if they make it OA, or even afraid they will be prosecuted for
copyright infringement.

So OA mandates are needed to embolden authors to provide OA, knowing
they have the support of their institutions and funders. And the ID/OA
mandate is immune to publisher embargoes. Over ten years of experience
(of "performing a useful service by giving faculty a vehicle for
voluntary self-archiving") have by now shown definitively that most
researchers will not self-archive unless it is mandatory. (The only
exceptions are some fields of physics and computer science where
researchers provide OA spontaneously, unmandated.) So what is needed
is a no-option immediate-self-archiving mandate, but with leeway on
when to make the deposit OA. This is indeed in a sense "optional Green
OA," but the crucial component is that the deposit itself is
mandatory.

Funding is a red herring. Most universities have already invested in
creating and maintaining institutional repositories, for multiple
purposes, OA being only one of them, and the OA sectors are vastly
under-utilized -- except if mandated (at no extra cost).

The ID/OA mandate requires no change in copyright law, licensing or
ownership of research output. Another red herring.

There are no relevant discipline differences for ID/OA either. Another
red herring. And the need for and benefits of OA do not apply only to
rare exceptions, but to all refereed research journal articles.

OA mandates apply only to refereed journal articles, not books.
Another red herring (covering half of Cary Nelson's article!).

As OA mandates are now growing globally, across all disciplines and
institutions, it is nonsense to imagine that researchers will decide
where to work on the basis of trying to escape an OA mandate -- and
with ID/OA there isn't even anything for them to want to escape from.

The ID/OA mandate also moots the difference between journal articles
and book chapters. And it applies to all disciplines, and publishers,
whether commercial, learned-society, or university.

Refereed journal publishing will adapt, quite naturally to Green OA.
For now, some publishers are trying to forestall having to adapt to
the OA era, by embargoing OA. Let them try. ID/OA mandates are immune
to publisher OA embargoes, but publishers are not immune to the rising
demand for OA:

Paying for Gold OA today is paying for Fool's Gold: Research funds are
already scarce. Institutions cannot cancel must-have journal
subscriptions. So Gold OA payment is double-payment, over and above
subscriptions. And hybrid (subscription + Gold) publishers can even
double-dip. If and when global Green OA makes journal subscriptions
unsustainable, journals will downsize, jettisoning products and
services (print edition, online edition, access-provision, archiving)
rendered obsolete by the worldwide network of Green OA repositories)
and they will convert to Fair Gold, paid for peer review alone, out of
a fraction of the institutions windfall subscription cancellation
savings.

It is not for the research community to continue depriving itself of
OA while trying to 2nd-guess how publishers will adapt. That -- and
not OA mandates -- would be a real constraint on academic freedom: The
publishing tail must not be allowed to continue to wag the research
dog.