[Sigiii-l] [Fwd: Re: [SIGMETRICS] Commission study addresses Europe's scientific publication system]

Wed Apr 19 11:32:18 EDT 2006

In case ou missed this from the SIGMetrics list

-------- Message original --------
Sujet: 	Re: [SIGMETRICS] Commission study addresses Europe's scientific 
publication system
Date: 	Tue, 18 Apr 2006 15:40:54 -0400
De: 	Stevan Harnad <harnad at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
Répondre à: 	ASIS&T Special Interest Group on Metrics 
<SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU>
Pour: 	SIGMETRICS at LISTSERV.UTK.EDU
Références: 
<311174B69873F148881A743FCF1EE53701825191 at TSHUSPAPHIMBX02.ERF.THOMSON.COM>

On 18-Apr-06, at 1:53 PM, Eugene Garfield wrote:

> Subject:  Commission study addresses Europe's scientific publication 
> system
> The European Commission has published a study 
> The study... makes a number of recommendations for future action,
> including:
> *       Guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research, at the 
> time of
> publication and also long-term...
> http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-study_en.pdf

Given that Gene has posted the above to Sigmetrics, here is some 
pertinent follow-up:

Suggestion for Optimising the European Commission's Recommendation to 
Mandate Open Access Archiving of Publicly-Funded Research**

The European Commission "Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution 
of the Scientific Publication Markets in Europe 
<http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-study_en.pdf>" 
has made the following policy recommendation:

*RECOMMENDATION A1. *GUARANTEE PUBLIC ACCESS TO PUBLICLY-FUNDED RESEARCH 
RESULTS SHORTLY AFTER PUBLICATION.

"Research funding agencies have a central role in determining 
researchers' publishing practices. Following the lead of the NIH and 
other institutions, they should promote and support the archiving of 
publications in open repositories, after a (possibly domain-specific) 
time period to be discussed with publishers. This archiving could become 
a condition for funding. The following actions could be taken at the 
European level: (i)/ Establish a European policy mandating published 
articles arising from EC-funded research to be available after a given 
time period in open access archives/ [emphasis added], and (ii) Explore 
with Member States and with European research and academic associations 
whether and how such policies and open repositories could be implemented."

 The European Commission’s /Recommendation//  //A1/ is very welcome and 
potentially very important, but it can be made incomparably more 
effective with just one very simple but critical revision concerning 
/what /needs to be deposited, /when/ (hence what can and cannot be delayed):

 For the purposes of Open Access, a research paper has two elements – 
(i) the whole document itself (called the “full-text) and (ii) its 
bibliographic metadata (its title, date, details of the authors, their 
institutions, the abstract and so forth). This bibliographic information 
can exist as an independent entity in its own right and serves to alert 
would-be users to the existence of the full-text article itself.

EC Recommendation A1 should distinguish between  first (a) depositing 
the full text of a journal article in the author’s Institutional 
Repository <http://archives.eprints.org/> (preferably, or otherwise any 
other OAI-compliant Open Access Repository – henceforth referred to 
collectively as OARs; see Swan et al. 2005) and then deciding whether to 
(b1) allow Open Access to that full-text deposit, or to (b2) allow Open 
Access only to its bibliographic metadata and not the full-text. EC 
Recommendation A1 should accordingly specify the following:

   1. Depositing the full-text of /all/ journal articles in the author's
      OAR <http://archives.eprints.org/> is mandatory immediately upon
      acceptance for publication for all EC-funded research findings,
      without exception. 

   2. In addition, allowing Open Access to the article’s bibliographic
      metadata at the time of deposit (i.e., immediately upon acceptance
      for publication) is always mandatory.

   3. However, allowing Open Access to the full-text of the article
      itself immediately upon deposit is merely encouraged wherever
      possible, but not mandatory; full-text access can be made Open
      Access at a later time if necessary: The OAR software enables the
      author to allow Open Access to either the whole article or to its
      bibliographic metadata only.

This separate treatment of the rules for (a) depositing and for (b) 
access-setting provides authors with the means of abiding by the 
copyright regulations for the articles published in the 7% of journals 
that have not yet explicitly given their official green light 
<http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php> to authors to provide immediate 
Open Access through self-archiving (as  93% of journals 
<http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php> have already done). Authors can 
make their full-text Open Access at the time agreed with the publisher 
simply by changing the access-setting for the deposit at the chosen time.

Meanwhile, however, the  bibliographic metadata for all articles are and 
remain openly accessible to everyone from the moment of acceptance for 
publication, informing users of the existence and whereabouts of the 
article. During any publisher-imposed embargo period, would-be users who 
access the metadata and find that they cannot access the full-text can 
email the author individually to request an eprint -- and the author can 
then choose to email the eprint to the requester, or not, as he wishes, 
exactly as authors did in paper reprint days.

The European Commission is urged to make this small but extremely 
important change in its policy recommendation. It means the difference 
between immediate 100% Open Access and delayed, embargoed access for 
years to come.

Pertinent Prior American Scientist Open Access Forum Topic Threads 
<http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html>:

 2002: "Evolving Publisher Copyright Policies On Self-Archiving 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2351.html>" 
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#2351 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#2351>

2003:  “Draft Policy for Self-Archiving University Research Output 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#2550>” 
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#2550 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#2550> 

"What Provosts Need to Mandate 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3241.html>" 
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3241 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3241>

"Recommendations for UK Open-Access Provision Policy 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3292.html>" 
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3292 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3292>

2004:  "University policy mandating self-archiving of research output 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3439.html>" 
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3292 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3292>

"Mandating OA around the corner? 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3830.html>" 
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3830 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3830>

"Implementing the US/UK recommendation to mandate OA Self-Archiving 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3892.html>" 
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3892 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3892>

"A Simple Way to Optimize the NIH Public Access Policy 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4092.html>" 
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4092 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4092>

2005: "Comparing the Wellcome OA Policy and the RCUK (draft) Policy 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4549.html>" 
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4549 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4549>

"New international study demonstrates worldwide readiness for Open 
Access mandate 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4605.html>" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4605 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4605>

"DASER 2 IR Meeting and NIH Public Access Policy 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4963.html>" 
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4963 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4963>

"Mandated OA for publicly-funded medical research in the US 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4982.html>" 
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4982 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4982>

2006: "Mandatory policy report 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4979.html>" (2 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/5055.html>) 
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4979 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4979>

"The U.S. CURES Act would mandate OA 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/5046.html>" 
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#5046 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#5046>

"Generic Rationale and Model for University Open Access Mandate 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/5216.html>"" 
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#5216 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#5216>

"U. California: Publishing Reform, University Self-Publishing and Open 
Access <http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/57-guid.html>" 
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/57-guid.html

"A Simple Way to Optimize the NIH Public Access Policy 
<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/64-guid.html>" http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/64-guid.html

"Optimizing Open Access Guidelines of Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft 
<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/70-guid.html>" 
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/70-guid.html

"Optimizing MIT's Open Access Policy 
<Optimizing%20MIT%27s%20Open%20Access%20Policy>" http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/74-guid.html 

Future UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) to be Metrics-Based 
<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/75-guid.html> http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/75-guid.html 

Optimizing the European Commission's Recommendation for Open Access 
Archiving of Publicly-Funded Research 
<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/78-guid.html> 
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/78-guid.html

*APPENDIX *

*Why it is so important that research should be deposited immediately, 
rather than delayed/embargoed*

The reasons are six:

(1) Science is done (and funded) in order to be used, not in order to be 
embargoed. 

(2) For fast-moving areas of science especially, the first few months 
from publication are the most important time for usage and progress 
through immediate uptake and application to further ongoing research 
worldwide. Studies show that early usage has a large, permanent effect 
on research impact (Kurtz et al. 2004; Brody & Harnad 2006). Limiting 
the possibility of early usage therefore means a large and permanent 
loss of potential research impact. 

(3) If the metadata of all Restricted Access articles are visible 
worldwide immediately alongside all Open Access articles, individual 
researchers emailing the author for an eprint of the full text will 
maximise early uptake and usage almost as rapidly and effectively as 
setting access privileges to Open Access immediately. The OAR software 
is designed to simplify and accelerate this to just a few keystrokes. 

(4) For this, it is critical that the deposit of both the full-text and 
bibliographic metadata should be immediate (upon acceptance for 
publication) and not delayed. 

(5) If the EC policy were instead to allow the deposit to be delayed for 
6-12 months or more, the result would be to entrench instead of to 
eliminate usage-denial for research findings that were made and 
published in order to be used, immediately. 

(6) Publisher copyright agreements concern making the full text publicly 
accessible, whereas authors depositing their full-texts in their own OAR 
without public access -- and emailing individual eprints on request from 
fellow-researchers -- constitutes Fair Use.

(a) Self-archiving increases research usage and impact by 25-250% 
http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html

(b) But only 15% of researchers as yet self-archive 
spontaneously http://citebase.eprints.org/isi_study/

(d) 95% of researchers report they will comply if self-archiving is 
mandated by their institution and/or research 
funder http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/

(d) 93% of journals already officially endorse author 
self-archiving http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php

(e) For the remaining 7% of articles, immediate deposit can still be 
mandated, and for the time being access can be provided by emailing the 
eprint 
<http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0604&L=jisc-repositories&T=0&O=D&P=1908>http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0604&L=jisc-repositories&T=0&O=D&P=1908 
<http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A2=ind0604&L=jisc-repositories&T=0&O=D&P=1908>

Open Access maximises research access, usage, impact and progress, 
maximising benefits to research itself, to researchers, their 
institutions, their funders, and those who fund the funders, i.e., the 
tax-paying public for whose ultimate benefit the research is done. 
Access to the research corpus also provides secondary benefits to 
students, teachers, the developing world, industry, and the general public.

*ROAR* (Registry of Open Access Repositories) tracks the Institutional 
and Central Open Access Repositories (OARs) worldwide as well the 
individual growth of each http://archives.eprints.org/ (see also 
OpenDOAR* *(Directory of Open Access Repositories) 
http://www.opendoar.org/ , which  provides a human-confirmed subset of 
ROAR plus classification details coverage in alliance with DOAJ, the 
Directory of Open Access Journals http://www.doaj.org/ ).

*ROARMAP* (Registry of Open Access Repository Material Access Policies) 
tracks the adoption of Open Access Self-Archiving Policies in 
institutions worldwide http://www.eprints.org/signup/fulllist.php

*ROMEO* (Directory or Journal Open Access Self-Archiving Policies): 
tracks the growth in the number of journals giving their “green light” 
to author self-archiving: 93% of the over 9000 journals so far endorse 
some form of immediate author 
self-archiving: http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php

*REFERENCES*

Brody, T. and Harnad, S. (2006) Earlier Web Usage Statistics as 
Predictors of Later Citation Impact. /Journal of the American 
Association for Information Science and Technology. 
/http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10713

Harnad, S. (2006) Publish or Perish ? Self-Archive to Flourish: The 
Green Route to Open Access. /ERCIM News/ 
6 http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw64/harnad.html Kurtz, 
M. J., Eichhorn, G., Accomazzi, A., Grant, C. S., Demleitner, M., 
Murray, S. S. (2004) The Effect of Use and Access on Citations 
/Information Processing and Management/ 41 (6): 1395-1402 
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~kurtz/IPM-abstract.html 
<http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/%7Ekurtz/IPM-abstract.html>

Swan, A., Needham, P., Probets, S., Muir, A., Oppenheim, C., O’Brien, 
A., Hardy, R., Rowland, F. and Brown, S. (2005) Developing a model for 
e-prints and open access journal content in UK further and higher 
education. /Learned Publishing/ 18(1) pp. 
25-40. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11000 

* ABSTRACT:*/ //A study carried out for the UK Joint Information Systems 
Committee examined models for the provision of access to material 
institutional and subject- based archives and in open access journals. 
Their relative merits were considered, addressing not only technical 
concerns but also how e-print provision (by authors) can be achieved -- 
an essential factor for an effective e-print delivery service (for 
users). A "harvesting" model is recommended, where the metadata of 
articles deposited in distributed archives are harvested, stored and 
enhanced by a national service. This model has major advantages over the 
alternatives of a national centralized service or a completely 
decentralized one. Options for the implementation of a service based on 
the harvesting model are presented.///

 "Central vs. Distributed Archives" 
(1999-2003) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#294 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#294>

 "Central versus institutional self-archiving" 
(2003-2006) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3207 
<http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/%7Eharnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3207>

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