From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 22:06:54 -0400

Estimating Open Access Mandate Effectiveness: I. The MELIBEA Score

Philippe Vincent-Lamarre, Jade Boivin, Yassine Gargouri, Vincent
Lariviere, Stevan Harnad

ABSTRACT: MELIBEA is a Spanish database that uses a composite formula
with eight weighted conditions to estimate the effectiveness of Open
Access mandates (registered in ROARMAP). We analyzed 68 mandated
institutions for publication years 2011-2013 to determine how well the
MELIBEA score and its individual conditions predict what percentage of
published articles indexed by Web of Knowledge is deposited in each
institution's OA repository, and when. We found a small but
significant positive correlation (0.18) between MELIBEA score and
deposit percentage. We also found that for three of the eight MELIBEA
conditions (deposit timing, internal use, and opt-outs), one value of
each was strongly associated with deposit percentage or deposit
latency (immediate deposit required, deposit required for performance
evaluation, unconditional opt-out allowed for the OA requirement but
no opt-out for deposit requirement). When we updated the initial
values and weights of the MELIBEA formula for mandate effectiveness to
reflect the empirical association we had found, the score's predictive
power doubled (.36). There are not yet enough OA mandates to test
further mandate conditions that might contribute to mandate
effectiveness, but these findings already suggest that it would be
useful for future mandates to adopt these three conditions so as to
maximize their effectiveness, and thereby the growth of OA.