How might an institution monitor immediate deposit?

[Stevan Harnad]

On Tue, Aug 5, 2014 at 11:03 AM, wrote:

> Dear Professor Harnad
> How may institutions monitor their authors' deposits immediately on
> acceptance since isn't the date of acceptance normally known only to the
> author and the publisher?  Some journals publish each article's date of
> initial submission and date of acceptance, but this good practice is not as
> common as it should be in the journals I know.
> Regards


Glad you asked! (And I've anonymized this so I could post my reply too.)


The solution
<http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/04/28/inflated-subscriptions-unsustainable-harnad/>
is extremely simple: After submission, peer-review, revision, re-refereeing
and re-submission, the author always receives an acceptance letter
indicating that the final draft has now been accepted and no more revision
or re-refereeing is required.


That date-stamped letter should be deposited in the institutional
repository (in closed access) alongside the full-text of the final,
accepted draft (whether in closed or open access). The institution's
responsibility is to monitor and ensure that its authors deposit their
final drafts at or around the date of acceptance in order to comply with
the conditions of the funder. (Institutions are always extremely eager and
resourceful in making sure their researchers fulfill the conditions of
their funders.)


(Probably just the requirement to have the dated acceptance letter ready
for verification in comparing date of acceptance with date of deposit would
be sufficient to get researchers to do the right thing even without having
to deposit the acceptance letter. The date of acceptance is also the
natural point in their workflow for depositing the final draft: they still
have it, and they know it's been accepted.)


On no account should the publisher be relied upon to provide the data on
date of acceptance (just as they should not be relied upon to comply with
the requirement to provide open access, which is a requirement on the
fundee, not on the publisher, who has a conflict of interest, and an
interest in delaying OA as long as possible!)


Hope that helps,


Stevan Harnad
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