Last week a friend in the UK sent me the following comment, “The major fuss brewing here is over the proposed implementation (by universities) of the Harvard model as the scholarly communications licence. It seems, according to the publishers, that the end of the world will come if this happens. I hadn't noticed the end of the world happening in the US because of Harvard”.
I must admit I had not really been across this debate which is clearly hotting up in UK. While this topic initially may seem remote to some US readers of this list, the debate raises yet again fundamental issues regarding scholarly communication in the 21st century and whether we are still locked, while clearly in digital access mode, in 20th century historical print paradigms, metrics and pricing.
There is a lot of background on the web . See for instance the recent Scholarly Kitchen blog by Karin Wulf at
https://scholarlykitchen.
Rather than identifying librarians as the problem, as Wulf occasionally does, she would have been better, taking a wider perspective of scholarly communication issues and background. Librarians are often caught between faculty pressure and sophisticated publisher lobbying of governments and research bodies. Some would argue that the OA debate in UK went awry when the Dame Janet Finch committee in 2012, arguably influenced by multinational publishers on the committee, recommended the gold open access approach, specifically for articles, but Finch did not provide a framework for long-term redistribution of university library subscriptions in order to fund those payments. In that context, Dr Danny Kingsley at Cambridge University Library, has identified some of the issues and problems in double dipping article payment, record-keeping and compensation that have flowed post Finch. The debate will undoubtedly continue globally. Best Colin
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Correcting the record on the Harvard OA license.
Yesterday at the Scholarly Kitchen, Karin Wulf and Simon Newman posted some objections to the UK Scholarly Communications License, which is based on the Harvard OA license.
https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/07/26/missing-target-uk-scholarly-communications-license/
In the process they characterized the Harvard OA license and OA policies, sometimes correctly and sometimes incorrectly.
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Here are a few comments on what the authors have said about the Harvard OA policies. I leave comments on the UK-SCL for another time.
When Wulf and Newman first refer to the Harvard OA license, they link to the Harvard repository terms of use. That's confusing. The Harvard OA license is embodied in the OA policies, not the repository terms of use. These are separate and complementary.
For the language of the Harvard OA license, see (for example) the language of the policy from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences or the Harvard model OA policy.
https://osc.hul.harvard.edu/policies/fas/
https://osc.hul.harvard.edu/modelpolicy/
> "There is no evidence that the so-called Harvard model is widespread or that it may become so...."
This doesn't matter to the merits of the Harvard model and even less to the merits of the UK-SCL. But for the record the Harvard model has been adopted by at least 70 institutions in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.
https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/Additional_resources#Policies_of_the_kind_recommended_in_the_guide
> "First, the Harvard model is more of a statement of institutional preference than a directive, and it is entirely voluntary on the part of academic staff who are not compelled to participate...."
It helps to be more careful here. The authors' statement is true in three senses: (1) faculty were not compelled to vote for the OA policies; (2) once adopted by vote, the waiver option in each policy lets faculty members decide for or against OA for each new article, with the default favoring OA; and (3) although the policies include a commitment to deposit a certain version of each new article in the repository, there is no penalty for non-deposit. But the statement is untrue in another sense: (4) the Harvard OA policies have legal consequences, and are not just statements of institutional preference. By voting up the policies, faculty granted the university a certain set of nonexclusive rights.
> "Some [members of the Harvard History Department] may have requested waivers for all of their articles."
There are two ways to read this, one certainly false and the other probably false. (1) It might mean that one waiver can cover all of an author's future articles, and that some members of the History Department have requested this kind of standing waiver. That is untrue. The Harvard OA policies only allow article-by-article waivers, not standing waivers. Faculty who want waivers for separate articles must obtain them separately. (2) It might mean that some faculty in the Department have made separate waiver requests for each of their articles. That's possible but not likely. The highest number of waivers requested by any member of the Department is very low.
(I'm taking the authors' claim in its strongest form, and disregarding the fact that they say some Harvard historians "may" have done this, not that any actually have done it.)
The authors say that the Harvard repository terms of use are "similar to a CC-BY-NC-ND license." I suppose that's true. But if so, it's equally true that the terms are dissimilar to a CC-BY-NC-ND license. The terms permit some but not all commercial use (differing from NC licenses), and some but not all derivative works (differing from ND licenses). If the authors' point was that these terms differ from the straight CC-BY-NC license used by the UK-SCL, that's true.
Finally, commenter Siloh says, "The Harvard model is 'ignored' by top scientists at Harvard because it restricts choice and the freedom to choose where to publish their work, i.e., prevents them from publishing in the most prestigious journals in their subject area (knowledge gained directly from two Harvard Profs)."
I have no doubt that some faculty ignore the policies. But the policies do not restrict the freedom of faculty to choose where to publish their work. There are two kinds of misunderstanding on this front. (1) Some covered authors believe that the policies require them to publish their new articles in OA journals. That belief is untrue, and even a superficial reading of the policies shows it to be untrue. This misunderstanding reflects the tenacious background assumption that all OA is gold OA, or that the only way to make an article OA is to publish it in an OA journal. This kind of misunderstanding is common to all green policies, not just to Harvard-style green policies. (2) Some covered authors overlook or undervalue the waiver option. This option assures the freedom of faculty to choose where to publish their work, and was incorporated into the policies precisely to assure this freedom. This was well-explained at the time of each faculty vote, which is why faculty voted for the policies (at four Harvard schools by unanimous votes), and it's well-explained in all our published material on the policies.
The Harvard repository has more than 39,000 deposits, the vast majority from scientists, who are no slouches at publishing in the journals of their choice.
#oa<https://plus.google.com/s/%23oa> #openaccess<https://plus.google.com/s/%23openaccess>
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See also the lengthy piece by Chris Banks, the Director of Library Services at Imperial College London, posted on July 7, responding to issues raised by the Publishers Association.
https://www.slideshare.net/chrisabanks/scholarly-communications-model-policy-and-licence-publishers-association-concerns-together-with-ukscl-steering-group-responses
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Colin Steele
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ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
The Australian National University
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