From: "Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF)" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2015 17:32:08 +0000 Dear Kevin, As explained in my last email, the shorter UK embargo periods apply to any article where any one of the authors is from the UK. The UK is the only country in which we currently operate a separate embargo list, and we take this approach because the national policy is to focus on a transition to gold OA with green OA as a supporting mechanism. If I may, uniform policies with very short embargos rather miss the real challenge: to make OA work in reality as part of a sustainable scholarly communication system. If green OA is to work at scale it must work alongside the subscription model through which publishing costs are recovered. If funders or authors want immediate open access, then the gold OA model is probably the better route, and funding for it would be required. Publishers and librarians may disagree on the details, but I hope that we can at least agree on the ideal of a sustainable publishing ecosystem. We are (all!) working in a complex, changing, and varied international landscape and it is a challenge (for us all!) to develop clear, fair and consistent policies which scale and work in practice. We continue to believe that the changes in our policies are more clear, consistent, and flexible for both IRs and for commercial platforms and that they will help to make OA work in practice. With kind wishes, Alicia -----Original Message----- From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]> Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2015 12:23:52 +0000 Hi Alicia, Thank you for this reply. The more I look at this policy, the more complicated it seems to be. Does this mean that the same paper could be subject to different embargoes on self-archiving, if it was written by authors from both sides of the Atlantic? One embargo imposed on U.S. co-authors and a shorter one imposed on U.K. co-authors? Or would all co-authors benefit from the shorter embargo allowed for the U.K. co-authors? Are any other countries subject to this differential rules (we have a large number of papers co-written by U.S. authors and authors in Asia)? It does seem to me that the message from this aspect of the new policy is that funders, especially government funders, should insist on the shortest possible embargos and be inflexible about them. Otherwise U.S. authors find themselves at a competitive disadvantage vis-à-vis their British counterparts. I appreciate your continued discussion of this involved and difficult policy change. Best, Kevin Kevin L. Smith Director, Copyright & Scholarly Communication Duke University Libraries -----Original Message----- From: "Wise, Alicia (ELS-OXF)" <[log in to unmask]> Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2015 13:09:39 +0000 Hi Kevin, In the UK, as part of the sustainable approach to OA negotiated amongst all stakeholders via the Finch Group, we have all made changes to move forward together. One of the many changes Elsevier made was to adopt a shorter embargo list for the UK. This operates at article level rather than journal level, and applies whenever there is a UK author or co-author on a paper. We obviously want embargo periods that support authors, funders and journals. If a funder insists on 6 month embargo periods and we can't see a way for that to be a sustainable green OA option for a journal then we have gold OA options available. Most funders with such policies provide funding for gold OA publishing. While I'm here, please may I draw the attention of liblicense readers to an extremely interesting piece written by Lisa Peets in the Library Journal: http://lj.libraryjournal.com/2015/06/industry-news/sharing-policy-draws-criticism-elsevier-responds/#_ It suggests a key issue that we are all discussing at present is "who should control the scholarly communication system". Researchers do, of course, and sharing articles is important to them. Both libraries and publishers support researchers. So… how do we move forward together to facilitate sharing? This is the context for a conversation tomorrow (Saturday) at the ALA 2015 Annual Conference which will be facilitated by Maggie Farrell, the Dean of Libraries and the University of Wyoming. Please join us for conversation about scholarly sharing from 10-11am at the Elsevier booth #504. It's a busy event, and there are other meetings on at this time, so do feel free to come along for a conversation at other times during the day too! With kind wishes, - Alicia -----Original Message----- From: Kevin Smith <[log in to unmask]> Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2015 00:48:24 +0000 There are a couple of things that confuse me in Dr. Wise's answers to these questions. I wonder if she could explain what it means to say that Elsevier uses a shorter embargo list in the UK. Does this mean that for some journals an embargo is imposed on US authors but not on British ones? Or does in mean that some individual embargoes may be shorter in the UK? Is the difference, whatever it is, because of funder requirements? Relatedly, is the policy she describes such that if a funder requires public access in six months, Elsevier will refuse to allow the authors to comply unless they pay the additional fee for Elsevier's gold OA option? Green OA would not be permitted even if required by the funder? Thanks for explaining. Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D. Director, Copyright and Scholarly Communications Duke University Libraries