Re: Open Access vs. NIH Back Access and Nature's Back-Sliding

From: <Ray.English_at_OBERLIN.EDU>
Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2005 22:46:55 -0500

Stevan,

I think the assertion you express here isn't quite right:

> (2) If the author did have to request permission from the publisher
> to make his own article OA (by self-archiving it) previously, then
> the author would still have to request permission subsequently (since
> presumably NIH cannot grant permission on the part of the publisher),
> and hence again the NIH policy is neither here nor there.


As I understand it, the NIH status overrides any question of publisher
permission. It's a prior condition stemming from NIH having funded the
research in the first place. So the policy would allow some research to be
made openly accessible where that would otherwise not be possible (in the
small percentage of journals that don't allow self archiving).

I would also point out that the NIH does not require deposit into PubMed
Central. But by allowing it, they do create some additional opportunities
for OA that don't exist outside the NIH context. It remains to be seen
what the overall effect of the policy will be. While it's certainly not
ideal, I do think it's a significant step forward in terms of access to
research.


Ray English
Director of LIbraries
Oberlin College



--On Sunday, January 30, 2005 11:46 PM +0000 Stevan Harnad
<harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:

> Ray English wrote:
>
>> In response to Stevan Harnad's comment below, I think it's important
>> to note that the revised NIH policy (as best we can determine it,
>> since it hasn't been officially announced yet) is actually closer to
>> OA than the policy that NIH vetted earlier. As Peter Suber noted in
>> an earlier message today, It gives the researcher control over when
>> the article will be made openly accessible, without having to
>> request permission from the publisher.
>
> Please consider the logic underlying this inference:
>
> Either the author (1) did or (2) did not have to request permission
> from the publisher to make his own article OA (by self-archiving it)
> before there was any NIH policy.
>
> (1) If the author did not have to request permission from the publisher
> to make his own article OA (by self-archiving it) previously, then the
> author does not have to request permission subsequently, and the NIH
> policy is neither here nor there.
>
> (2) If the author did have to request permission from the publisher
> to make his own article OA (by self-archiving it) previously, then
> the author would still have to request permission subsequently (since
> presumably NIH cannot grant permission on the part of the publisher),
> and hence again the NIH policy is neither here nor there.
>
> What is true is that the NIH had added an extra, unnecessary and
> counterproductive complication to the process of trying to make the
> author's own article OA (by self-archiving it) -- by insisting that it
> must be self-archived in PubMed Central. For that, one does indeed have
> to ask permission -- but not from the publisher: from NIH! So the new
> (proposed) NIH policy differs from the old one only in that NIH has
> over-ridden its own prior refusal to grant the author the permission to
> self-archive in NIH's own archive, PubMed Central!
>
> "A Simple Way to Optimize the NIH Public Access Policy"
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4091.html
>
> This is a rather circular and empty gain, since there is no particular
> reason that an author should want to make his article Open Access by
> self-archiving it in PubMed Central in particular -- except that that is
> what NIH happens to be specifically bidding him to do (for no good
> reason). The author could have self-archived it in his own institutional
> archive all along, from day 1, with or without NIH's permission, and with
> the blessing of 92% of journals:
>
> http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
>
> So the new NIH policy is only "closer" to OA in the sense that it is
> less-far than it had arbitrarily distanced itself from OA in the first
> place. And it is still nowhere near OA. Nor has it given the researchers
> "more control" over anything except their ability to fulfill NIH's
> arbitrary stipulations (about PubMed Central), which have nothing
> whatsoever to do with OA (and instead make OA more unlikely).
>
>> Authors have the clear option to make their work openly accessible
>> immediately at the time of publication.
>
> They had that option all along, irrespective of NIH: The NIH policy had
> been intended to induce them to *use* that option; instead, it added
> further constraints, then removed some of them, without inducing the
> author to provide OA at all. (By the way, OA, by definition, can only be
> provided immediately; delayed access is not OA but Back Access.)
>
>> (The policy also calls for articles that are deposited to become openly
>> accessible after 12 months, if the author did not choose earlier open
>> access.)
>
> The idea had been to induce authors to provide OA (the OA that they were
> already able to provide if they chose, without NIH, but they were
> not yet choosing to). Instead, NIH would induce them to provide access
> within 12 months, and in PubMed Central. The result is not only a policy
> that would not induce authors to provide OA, but it would (and already
> has) induce publishers to renege on giving authors the green light to
> provide OA by immediate self-archiving, back-sliding to Back Access --
> in the name of NIH, in the service of OA!
>
>> I think it remains to be seen if this will turn out to be better or
>> worse than the original NIH proposal that had a six-month delay, with
>> earlier open access only with permission of the publisher.
>
> Both versions are bad, but whether increasing the needless delay from
> 6-12 offsets NIH's initial needless and arbitrary refusal to allow
> self-archiving in PubMed Central before 6 is a minor matter: the policy
> would not require authors to provide OA by self-archiving immediately
> and it already does induce publishers to back-slide on their prior green
> light to immediate self-archiving. I don't think we need to wait several
> years to pronounce the policy as bad and ill-conceived.
>
>> It will be possible to measure the outcome based on the percentage of
>> research articles funded by NIH that are deposited in PubMed Central
>> and the average time from publication to open access.
>
> One can always measure outcomes. In the meantime, however, I hope other
> institutions and other nations will adopt a genuine solution for inducing
> immediate self-archiving rather than sitting around waiting to see whether
> there is any net benefit at all from the ill-conceived NIH proposal.
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
> Stevan Harnad wrote:
>
>> > These developments are not a blow to the OA movement, they are merely a
>> > challenge, a challenge that can and will be met in the following way:
>> >
>> > (1) The NIH Proposal -- provisionally supported by the OA movement,
>> > will now no longer be supported as it stands by the OA movement:
>> >
>> > NIH's 6-12 month embargoed access is not Open Access but Back Access,
>> > and if it had continued to be supported by the OA movement as a step
>> > toward OA it would have had the exact opposite effect, locking in a
>> > 6-12-month access delay for years to come, and providing a pretext to
>> > publishers like Nature to Back-Slide from their prior policy of giving
>> > their authors the green light to self-archive immediately -- a policy
>> > that had been adopted to accommodate the expressed wishes of the
>> > research community to maximise access -- to a policy of 6-month
>> > embargo and mere Back Access.
>> >
>> > (2) Nature's Back-Sliding, like NIH's Back Access Policy, will be
>> > portrayed as exactly what it is:
>> >
>> > Nature's is a recent policy change adopted so as to minimize possible
>> > risk to publishers' revenue streams even though all actual evidence is
>> > the opposite: that toll-access and self-archiving can co-exist
>> > peacefully for years to come, with no effect on journal revenue
>> > streams. Hence Nature's back-sliding is entirely contrary to the
>> > interests of research and researchers, minimizing a minimal
>> > hypothetical risk, against all evidence, at the expense of maximal
>> > benefits to research and researchers for which there is a growing body
>> > of evidence -- and done on the NIH-supplied pretext of being in the
>> > service of research and researchers and a step toward OA!
>> >
>> > Stay tuned.
>> >
>> > Stevan Harnad
Received on Mon Jan 31 2005 - 03:46:55 GMT

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