From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2014 13:28:59 -0500

Jisc Scholarly Communications
<http://scholarlycommunications.jiscinvolve.org/wp/>

A schema for OA policies

By Neil Jacobs

<http://scholarlycommunications.jiscinvolve.org/wp/author/neilj/>
December 1, 2014

There are now many OA policies, from research funders and
universities, listed in Sherpa/Juliet:

 <http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/juliet/> and ROARMAP <http://roarmap.eprints.org/>.

This can lead to some confusion, especially for an author who is
subject to more than one, neatly illustrated in a slide used by John
Norman of Cambridge at an ALPSP seminar earlier this year.  Available
at:

<http://www.alpsp.org/Ebusiness/Libraries/1405MRO_Media/1405MRO_John_Norman_presentation.sflb.ashx?download=true>,
PDF, slide 8)

While potential alignment of policies is an ambition of the EC
PASTEUR4OA project <http://www.pasteur4oa.eu/>, and there are specific
calls for some alignment between RCUK and REF OA policies in the UK, a
first step might be simply to have policies expressed in a relatively
consistent way.

It turns out that this is not as straightforward as it might sound. A
group of us, including Alma Swan, Stevan Harnad, Bill Hubbard, Mafalda
Picarra and myself, have been working on a draft schema for a while
now. It remains a draft, and we are very interested in feedback on it.
Proposed schema for OA policies 20141117:

<http://scholarlycommunications.jiscinvolve.org/wp/files/2014/12/Proposed-schema-for-OA-policies-20141117.docx>
[MS Word].

There is a balance to be struck, between precise description,
complexity of expression, and difficulty in actually using the schema.
While the draft is quite long, we think that – on the basis of an
analysis of a range of real OA policies – it needs to be long, to
avoid too much ambiguity. And, of course, the schema would only need
to be filled out when a policy were issued or revised, which we hope
would not be too often.

Anyway, we are now asking for feedback, both via comments on this
post, and more directly in some cases. We hope, at the very least,
that the schema will provide a framework for a systematic and informed
debate on where and why policies differ.

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