From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 23:36:23 +0200

The idea that SHERPA/Romeo, created as an index of publisher rights
policies on author OA self-archiving should be used by librarians as a
basis for journal cancellation is so absurd that it takes one's breath
away.

Shame on the (I hope very small) segment of the library community that
is thinking along these perverse lines -- though the fault is partly
with SHERPA/Romeo itself, for trying to be all things to all people,
instead of just providing authors with the essential information they
need, as originally intended: Does the journal endorse immediate Green
OA self-archiving or not? If not, how long an embargo does it request?

Stevan Harnad


On Tue, Sep 24, 2013 at 10:36 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: Owen Stephens <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 00:03:53 +0100
>
> On 17 Sep 2013, at 01:26, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
> > Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 15:18:53 +0000
> >
> > Rick Anderson asked:
> >
> >>> Is there an easy way (easier than searching title-by-title through SHERPA/RoMEO) to get a complete list of journals offering Green access with no embargo? I can't speak for the marketplace as a whole, but my library will cancel most if not all of our subscriptions to any such journals — my institution is not giving us money so that we can spend it on content that's available for free.
> >
>
> Putting aside the interesting debate about the cancellation of the
> titles, Sherpa/Romeo supports an API which might be of interest. While
> I don't think this will support getting exactly what you state here
> (i.e. I can't see a way of using the API to easily create "a complete
> list of journals offering Green access with no embargo"), given a list
> of ISSNs it would be easy to write a script that looked them up one by
> one and returned the relevant data from Sherpa/Romeo - this sounds
> like it might support the use-case you describe where the library
> would have the list of journals it wanted to consider for
> cancellation, and could run an automated job to retrieve data from
> Sherpa/Romeo to support that decision.
>
> Owen
>
> Owen Stephens
> Owen Stephens Consulting
> Web: http://www.ostephens.com
> Email: [log in to unmask]