From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 27 May 2013 14:42:41 -0400

Dear Professor Beall,

You are perfectly right that I both (1) strongly advocate Green OA
self-archiving mandates by funders and institutions and (2) strongly
oppose constraining author choice of journal by any other criterion
than journal quality standards.

It is for this reason that I strongly advocate the strongest and most
effective Green OA mandate, the ID/OA
(Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access) mandate model (as I described in
a-j, in my posting):

a. funders and institutions mandate immediate-deposit
...
d. immediately upon acceptance for publication
...
f. whether access to the deposit is immedate-OA or embargoed

What is required is immediate-deposit, not immediate-OA.

Over 60% of journals endorse immediate-OA. For the remaining 40%, the
Button (h) can tide over user needs until, as I went on to say at the
end, universal ID/OA mandates induce the inevitable and well-deserved
death of all remaining OA embargoes, under the growing pressure of
global OA:

h. institutions implement repository's facilitated email eprint request Button;

until, as I went on to say at the end, universal ID/OA mandates induce
the inevitable and well-deserved death of all remaining OA embargoes,
under the growing pressure of global OA.

The other crucial component of the optimal Green OA mandate is the
link to research assessment:

i. institutions designate immediate-deposit the mechanism for
submitting publictions for research performance assessment;
j. institutions monitor and ensure immediate-deposit mandate compliance

So you see there is no constraint whatsoever on journal choice with
the ID/OA mandate (although I don't think any harm is done by imposing
a 6-12-month limit on embargo length; authors can ignore it, but it
helps stress that embargoes are not welcome -- and will not be
tolerated by authors for long, once ID/OA prevails).

At the end of my posting I also described, step by step, how mandating
Green OA will lead to a transition from today's subscriptions and
double-paid "Fool's Gold" to Fair Gold at an affordable, sustainable
price.

I am criticized for posting variants of the same message so many
times. Yet as you see, although the message is simple, and short, it
keeps being missed on 1st reading, just as you missed it.

But I hope it is clearer now.

(Ceterum censeo: There is no such thing as "platinum OA"! There's just
author-provided OA, which is Green. And publisher provided OA, which
is Gold. The publication charges for Green OA continue to be covered
via institutional subscriptions. The publication charges for Gold OA
can be covered in three different ways: (1) subscriptions, as in Green
OA; the publisher simply makes the online version free for all; (2)
subsidies and/or pro bono; (3) author-fees.)

Stevan Harnad

PS It's not the Gold OA model that abrogates author freedom, it's a
Gold OA mandate, requiring the author to publish in a Gold OA journal.
Fortunately, there is no such mandate anywhere today, among the 288 OA
mandates registered in ROARMAP. The Finch/RCUK mandate set out to be a
Gold OA mandate, but has since subsequently detoxified, under pressure
from authors, institutions and OA advocates. It's still a flawed
mandate though, but if the HEFCE/REF mandate proposal is adopted, the
remaining flaws will be remedied. The HEFCE/REF proposed mandate is
ID/OA, linked to research assessment...

On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 1:14 PM, Beall, Jeffrey
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear Prof. Harnad:
>
> I am delighted that gave a positive mention to authors' choice, as indicated by your referring to number six below as a "predictable perverse effect" of the RCUK policy. I agree -- No one should take away an author's freedom of journal choice.
>
> 6. abrogating authors' freedom of journal-choice [economic model/CC-BY instead of quality]
>
> However, you've been a big advocate of mandates, and these mandates effectively remove freedom of journal-choice in many instances. I read your recent article, "Worldwide open access: UK leadership?" and saw that you advocate various mandates, some of which effectively abrogate the authors' freedom of journal-choice. For example, if a journal does not allow green OA archiving, then the author would be mandated not to publish in it, effectively removing his "freedom of journal-choice."
>
> I'd be interested to hear how you reconcile these contradictory views. Why is it a flaw for the gold OA model to abrogate authors' freedom of journal-choice but not a flaw when the green OA model does the same thing?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jeffrey Beall, MA, MSLS, Associate Professor
>
> Scholarly Initiatives Librarian
> Auraria Library
> University of Colorado Denver
> 1100 Lawrence St.
> Denver, Colo.  80204 USA
> [log in to unmask]