Commission study addresses Europe's scientific publication system
Stevan Harnad
harnad at ECS.SOTON.AC.UK
Tue Apr 18 15:40:54 EDT 2006
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" 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 (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:
Depositing the full-text of all journal articles in the author's OAR
is mandatory immediately upon acceptance for publication for all EC-
funded research findings, without exception.
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.
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 to authors to provide immediate Open Access through self-
archiving (as 93% of journals 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:
2002: "Evolving Publisher Copyright Policies On Self-Archiving"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#2351
2003: “Draft Policy for Self-Archiving University Research Output”
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#2550
"What Provosts Need to Mandate" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3241
"Recommendations for UK Open-Access Provision Policy" http://
www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3292
2004: "University policy mandating self-archiving of research
output" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/
subject.html#3292
"Mandating OA around the corner?" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/
Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3830
"Implementing the US/UK recommendation to mandate OA Self-Archiving"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3892
"A Simple Way to Optimize the NIH Public Access Policy" http://
www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4092
2005: "Comparing the Wellcome OA Policy and the RCUK (draft) Policy"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4549
"New international study demonstrates worldwide readiness for Open
Access mandate" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/
subject.html#4605
"DASER 2 IR Meeting and NIH Public Access Policy" http://
www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4963
"Mandated OA for publicly-funded medical research in the US" http://
www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4982
2006: "Mandatory policy report" (2) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4979
"The U.S. CURES Act would mandate OA" http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/
~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#5046
"Generic Rationale and Model for University Open Access Mandate""
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/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
"A Simple Way to Optimize the NIH Public Access Policy" 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
"Optimizing MIT's Open Access Policy" 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
Optimizing the European Commission's Recommendation for Open Access
Archiving of Publicly-Funded Research 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 eprinthttp://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
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
"Central versus institutional self-archiving" (2003-2006) http://
www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#3207
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.asis.org/pipermail/sigmetrics/attachments/20060418/c5f94c18/attachment.html>
More information about the SIGMETRICS
mailing list