By Stevan Harnad on April 19th, 2007
Green OA Self-Archiving Needs a Lobbying Organisation
Open Access (OA) means free online access to the articles published in the c. 24,000 peer-reviewed scholarly journals published annually in all disciplines, countries and languages.
The purpose of OA is to maximise research usage and impact, and thereby maximise research productivity and progress, by making all research findings accessible to all their potential users webwide, rather than just those whose institutions can afford subscription access to the journal in which they happen to be published.
There are two roads to 100% OA:
(1) The “Golden” Road of converting all journals from recovering their publishing costs, as now, from user-institution subscription charges, per journal, to recovering their publishing costs instead from author-institution publication charges, per article. (Gold OA is also called “BOAI-2″ — the second of the two roads to OA proposed by the Budapest Open Access Initiative, which first coined the term “Open Access” in 2002.)
(2) The “Green” Road of continuing to publish in the existing subscription-based journals — but the author of each article makes it OA by self-archiving a copy of the author’s peer-reviewed, final draft (the “postprint”) in the author’s OA Institutional Repository (IR). (Green OA is also called “BOAI-1″ — the first of the two roads to OA proposed by the Budapest Open Access Initiative, which first coined the term “Open Access” in 2002)
Gold OA and Green OA are clearly complementary, but there is considerable disagreement over which one should be given priority. The current level of OA worldwide is about 20%, of which about 5% is Gold and 15% is Green. This is because about 10% of journals are Gold (though mostly not the top journals), and because only about 15% of authors self-archive spontaneously.
So what is needed is either to increase the proportion of Gold OA journals (and their uptake) to 100%, or to increase the promotion of Green OA self-archiving by authors to 100% (or both).
The critical difference in the probability of increasing OA to 100% via Gold or Green is that Gold OA depends on two further factors: Converting journals to Gold and finding the money to pay authors’ Gold OA publication fees (particularly while most journals are subscription-based, and hence most potential publication funds are still tied up in subscriptions).
Publishers are reluctant to convert to Gold, and authors are reluctant to pay for Gold OA charges at this time.
The situation with Green OA is very different, because it does not depend on converting publishers, and it is virtually cost-free. Most institutions already have Institutional Repositories (IRs). The only problem is that they are largely empty because, as noted, only about 15% of researchers self-archive spontaneously — even though a series of recent studies have demonstrated OA’s dramatic benefits for all fields of scientific and scholarly research (doubled usage and citations).
There is, however, one fundamental advantage of Green OA over Gold OA: Gold OA requires converting publishers to Gold OA publishing and it also requires finding the funds for authors to pay for it. Green OA merely requires authors’ institutions and funders to mandate that they self-archiving their postprints. And Green OA mandates have been repeatedly demonstrated to work.
Swan, A. (2006) The culture of Open Access: researchers’ views and responses, in Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, chapter 7. Chandos.
Sale, Arthur (2006) Researchers and institutional repositories, in Jacobs, Neil, Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, chapter 9, pages 87-100. Chandos Publishing (Oxford) Limited.
Harnad, S. (2006) Opening Access by Overcoming Zeno’s Paralysis, in Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects, chapter 8. Chandos.
Moreover, if and when mandated 100% OA from Green self-archiving should ever go on to cause journal subscriptions to be cancelled, thereby forcing journals to convert to Gold OA publishing, the cancellations themselves will release the institutional subscription funds that can then be used to pay for institutional authors’ Gold OA publication charges.
So the pragmatics of the status quo and the goal would seem to indicate that mandating Green OA (by research funders and institutions) should be given priority, rather than focussing on trying to convert journals to Gold OA and trying to find the funds to pay for it. Journal publishing is in the hands of publishers, but Green OA self-archiving is in the hands of authors and their institutions and funders.
Green OA self-archiving mandates are beginning to be adopted by funders and institutions, but not nearly quickly enough, even though they could easily be extended to 100% adoption worldwide. There are two reasons for the delay: (1) lobbying against Green OA mandates by the publishing industry and (2) distraction from mandating Green OA arising from the parallel efforts to promote Gold OA.
The pragmatics are clear, however: The research community (researchers, their employers and their funders) have no leverage over the publishing industry and its policies, only over their own employees, fundees and policies. OA is vastly in the best interests of the research community (as well as the tax-paying public), and they are in 100% in a position to mandate it by mandating Green OA. They cannot mandate Gold OA.
The only leverage that publishers have against Green OA mandates is (1) copyright, which they can try to invoke in order to embargo the provision of OA by their authors and (2) their claim that 100% Green OA would make subscriptions unsustainable.
As we have seen, (2) is not a valid deterrent to the research community, because if subscriptions did become unsustainable, this would merely mean a conversion to Gold OA publishing, which would be welcome.
As to (1) — the use of copyright and embargoes by publishers to try to prevent Green OA self-archiving and Green OA self-archiving mandates — there is a very simple compromise that provides 100% almost-OA immediately (a vast immediate benefit to research usage, impact, productivity and progress) and that will also usher in 100% Green OA very soon thereafter: The Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access (ID/OA) Mandate plus the “Fair Use” Button in Institutional Repositories.
Instead of trying to mandate both immediate deposit and immediate OA, funders and universities need merely mandate immediate deposit (of the postprint, immediately upon acceptance for publication). Sixty-two percent of journals already endorse immediate Green OA self-archiving, so access to at least 62% of these deposits can immediately be set to OA. For the remaining 38% of journals that have access embargoes, access to the deposit can be set as “Closed Access”: The metadata (author, title, journal, date, abstract, etc.) are all openly accessible immediately, webwide, but the full-text of the article (postprint) is not.
Instead, for the 38% of deposited postprints that are published in an embargoed access journal (embargoes range from 6 months to 3 years or more!), the would-be user, who has reached the link to the deposited article, based on its visible metadata, reaches a “Fair Use” Button, provided by the software of each Institutional Repository: The user need merely cut-paste his email address in a box and click on the button. This automatically emails an immediate EMAIL EPRINT REQUEST to the article’s author; the email indicate the request an provides a URL on which the author need merely click in order to authorize the automatic emailing of a single copy of the deposited postprint to the eprint-requester.
The difference between this compromise “almost-OA” and the current status quo is already the difference between night and day for all those would-be users worldwide who cannot afford access to the subscription version. It systematises and automatises email access to the author and the postprint, and it provides the required document almost immediately.
And it will very rapidly lead to 100% Green OA, as the universal benefits of OA became palpable to the entire research community.
So my ardent plea to this discussion group is to give priority to Green OA mandates by universities and funders. An immediate-deposit, immediate-OA mandate is obviously optimal, but if that cannot be agreed upon immediately, an ID/OA mandate is infinitely preferable to any further delay in adoption, and hence in access and usage and impact, while waiting either for a stronger Green OA mandate or waiting for Gold OA.
As far as I can tell, there are only four kinds of “high-level” OA goings-on that are being arranged periodically by various official organisations (librarians, universities, publishers, funders, government committees):
(1) Librarians and universities, who think OA is all about journal affordability, preservation, digital curation (IRs) and interoperability (OAI).
(2) “OA Publishers,” who insist that OA is all about conversion to Gold OA and the funding of Gold OA fees (CERN, etc.).
(3) Anti-OA publishers whose interest is in lobbying against Green OA mandates as a threat to their industry.
(4) Copyright reformers who think OA is all about reforming copyright law.
There is no recognized topic of Green OA, no Green OA-specific interest group recognized or invited to any of these high-level meetings.
So only two recourses are left to Green OA advocates: One is to do as we are doing, which is to keep on raising our voices on behalf of Green OA in writings and petitions and at the meetings we are invited to.
The other possibility is the one Richard Poynder and Napoleon Miradon and others have proposed, which is to organise an official Green OA lobby. I think that would be a splendid idea (but it would have to be carefully protected against dilution by well-meaning but blinkered proponents of (1) and (4), and perhaps even (3), which would defeat both its focus and its purpose).
One good thing, though: The fact (sub specie aeternitatis) is that (1) - (4), are, respectively, (1) irrelevant, (2) premature, (3) wrong-headed, and (4) premature, and that it is indeed Green OA and Green OA mandates that will win the day and usher in 100% OA, sooner or later.
Let us work to make it sooner, rather than later.
5 Responses to “Green OA Self-Archiving Needs a Lobbying Organisation”
Is this an error:
Did you mean to say: “and perhaps even (2), OA Publishers”?
In fact, when I proposed creating an OA Foundation it was not as specific as Stevan suggests — for I envisaged an organisation that would represent all shades of OA, not just green OA.
Given what we have subsequently learned, however, Stevan is right to revisit the idea, and he is right to suggest a more focused approach in doing so. Indeed, now might be a better time for establishing such an organisation than when I first suggested it.
Why? Because of what we have learned over the last year.
When I made my suggestion it generated an (offline) discussion, and there was clearly some enthusiasm for following it up. Based on that discussion, however, I think we can safely assume that, had it been created, the resulting organisation would have been dominated by OA publishers, and other gold enthusiasts, not by advocates of green self-archiving.
And what has become increasingly apparent is that the interests of OA publishers and the interests of researchers are at sufficient variance that any organisation attempting to represent both groups would eventually founder, or be subverted by gold enthusiasts — to the point where its objectives were seriously watered down.
Stevan argues that no green OA-specific interest group is recognised or invited to any of the high-level meetings about OA any more. Had the organisation I envisaged a year ago been created, therefore, little might have changed.
What is apparently needed, therefore, is an organisation driven by researchers (and/or those with researchers’ interests at heart), not by publishers (be they gold publishers or hybrid traditional publishers). After all, the primary objective of publishers is to further the interests of publishing, not to disseminate research (and we have learned that these are not necessarily the same thing). For researchers, by contrast, OA is exclusively about disseminating research.
In short, what is needed now is not an OA Foundation, but a Green OA Foundation — or at least, as Stevan suggests, an official green OA lobby.
What is needed, in short, is a bottom-up initiative; one moreover, not capable of being subverted by those with a different agenda. Given that their interests are also often at variance with those of researchers, one might want to suggest that there is little role in such an organisation for librarians either.
But the question is: who would create such organisation, and how would it be funded? Unlike publishers, researchers do not have access to marketing budgets, or to PR consultants.
Richard Poynder
Significant flaws with this description of the universe:
- what about those people who don’t think that it is “all about” open access publishing, but think that OA publishing needs to be developed in parallel with archiving?
- what about those people who don’t think that it is “all about” reforming copyright law, but think that without efforts for this reform OA archiving will be endangered or at least grow slower?
Your (Stevan’s) underlying hypothesis is that efforts in these other directions are wasting time, energy and resources. Human motivation does not work according to this hypothesis. The daily demonstration of the benefits of OA publishing does a lot to convince researchers to do at least OA archiving. The copyright reform efforts give them more courage to ignore or fight ungrounded warnings that “they can’t do it”.
(a) Kimmo Kuusela is quite right that I meant to caution against dilution of a Green OA lobbying organisation by (2) (Gold OA publishing) and not (3) (which is no kind of OA at all, but merely publisher opposition to OA, hence excluded a priori from a Green OA lobbying organisation).
(b) I of course agree completely with Richard Poynder’s comments (indeed my own suggestion to form an OA lobbying organisation at all originated from his earlier suggestion along similar lines).
(c) I am afraid I cannot entirely agree with Philippe Aigrin, however:
There is a profound and practical underlying issue of priorities and probabilities here. The quest for OA did not start yesterday, and the alternatives vying for our attention and energy today are far from new. I very specifically meant to urge that in the proposed Green OA lobbying organisation the focus should be on Green OA and not on (2) (Gold OA publishing).
So, no, OA is not all about Gold OA (2), nor is it all about about reforming copyright law (4). And a specific Green OA lobbying organisation certainly should not allow its focus to be diluted by either of these parallel strategies, as the overall OA movement has done.
Even less is it true that Gold OA induces Green OA self-archiving (nothing of the sort).
And there being no legal obstacle whatsoever to an immediate-deposit/optional-access mandate of the kind I described for 100% of research output as of today, it is not the case that “copyright reform efforts give… more courage” to deposit. On the contrary, they distract from depositing and mandating deposit, slowing rather than accelerating both.
What is apparently needed, therefore, is an organisation driven by researchers
Unfortunately, these are the same researchers who do not self-archive without a mandate forcing them to do so. I am but a lowly postdoc, but I think I know my tribe — and they are a selfish and short-sighted lot.
The Green OA Lobby (GOAL!) is a good idea, but I doubt that it will emerge from any sort of bottom-up, researcher-driven initiative. Some proportion of researchers (including, of course, myself) would join a GOAL and pay membership fees, but I also doubt that such fees could sustain the organization.
What might work is an appeal to organizations that fund research — Soros, Wellcome, Gates and so on.
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