To
appear in Liinc em Revista http://revista.ibict.br/liinc/index.php/liinc
Stevan Harnad
Chaire de recherche du Canada en science cognitives, Université du Québec à Montréal and Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK
Les Carr
Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK
&
Yves Gingras,
Chaire de recherche du Canada en histoire et sociologie des sciences, Université du Québec à Montréal
1.
Research is done (mostly at universities) and funded (publicly and
privately)
in order to advance scientific and scholarly knowledge as well as to
produce
public benefits (technological and biomedical applications as well as
educational and cultural ones).
2.
Research and researchers are accordingly funded not only to conduct
their
research, but to make their findings public, by publishing them. Their
employment, salaries, careers and research funding depend on publishing
their
findings. This is often called "publish or perish."
3.
Research is not solitary but collaborative, collective, self-corrective
and
cumulative. The reason research is published is not because it can
immediately
be applied (only a small portion of research leads to actual
applications) but
so that other researchers can check whether it is correct, and use and
build on
it in their own research.
4. Even
before it is published, research is checked by qualified specialists to
ensure
that it is correct. This is called peer review; the research that is
published
is not just raw research findings, but validated, peer-reviewed
research
findings.
5. The
peers are the researchers themselves. It is they who conduct the
research,
review the research, and use and apply the research.
6. The
research is published in peer-reviewed journals. There are about 25,000
such
journals, across all scientific and scholarly fields, across all
languages, and
all nations, publishing about 2.5 million journal (and peer-reviewed
conference-proceedings) articles per year.
http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/
7. The
peer-reviewed journals vary in the rigor and selectivity of their peer
review,
and hence the quality of their articles. Some journals maintain very
high
standards, and accept only the very best research; others are less
selective,
and a few at the bottom of the quality hierarchy are virtually vanity
presses.
These differences are well-known in the research community, based on
the
journal's name and past track record for quality.
8.
Access to these peer-reviewed journals is based largely on
institutional
subscriptions, paper and online. Some of the journals are very
expensive. And
there are so many journals that not even the richest of institutions
can afford
to subscribe to all, most, or even many of the 25,000 journals.
http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/arlbin/arl.cgi?task=setupstats
9. As a
consequence of the number or peer-revewed journals and the fact is is
unaffordable for institutions to subscribe to most of them, access is
denied to
many would-be users (perhaps the majority of potential users, if
considered on
a planetary scale).
10. Yet
the research itself is given away by its authors for free -- both to
their
journals, for publication, without the payment of royalties, and to any
would-be user who writes to the author to request a reprint. The peers
also
review for the journals for free.
11. The
reason researchers give away their research for free is that that is
the way
they contribute to research progress, and that is what they are paid
and funded
to do, according to the publish-or-perish rule: Their salaries, funding
and
prestige depend in large part on the degree to which their research
findings
prove to be important and useful to researchers worldwide, and to the
progress
of the research itself. This is called "research impact."
12.
Research impact is becoming increasingly measurable; the growing number
of rich
and diverse research impact metrics include citation counts, download
counts,
co-citations, hub/authority metrics, growth and longevity metrics,
interdisciplinarity metrics, and semantic metrics.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12453/
13.
These metrics will be increasingly monitored and used in research
assessment
for funding and performance review.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/14778/
14.
Research impact metrics are minimized by access-denial, and maximized
if the
research is made openly accessible online to all potential users.
http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html
15.
This is the rationale for the Open Access (OA) movement.
http://www.soros.org/openaccess/
16.
There are two ways for researchers to provide OA (free online access)
to their
peer-reviewed research publications, the 'Green' and 'Gold' way:
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html
17. 'Gold OA' is provided
by publishing in OA journals, which make all their
articles accessible free online.
18. 'Green
OA' is provided by publishing in conventional non-OA journals, but also
self-archiving the author's final, peer-reviewed draft in the author's
Institutional Repository (IR), making it freely accessible online.
19.
About 15% of journals today are Gold OA journals (including Brazil's
SciELO
journals) this includes few of the highest quality international
journals, and
those few high quality OA journals charge an author-institution fee for
publication. This fee is not affordable to most institutions while
their
potential funds to pay for it are still committed to subscribing to
non-OA
journals (90%), so Gold OA fees usually have to be taken from scarce
research
funds. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm
17.
Articles published in non-OA journals, howeverm can likewise be made
OA,
through Green OA self-archiving by their authors. Over 90% of non-OA
journals
already endorse some form of self-archiving, with 62% of them already
endorsing
immediate self-archiving of the author's peer-reviewed final draft.
http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
18. For
articles where the publisher has not yet endorsed immediate Green OA
self-archiving, the peer-reviewed final draft can still be deposited in
the IR
immediately upon acceptance for publication, and the IR's
semi-automatic
"email eprint request" button then allows would-be users to request
and authors to provide access to the eprint with one click : this
in not
OA, but it is almost OA and provides for research needs during any
access
embargo by the publisher.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html
19. But
although Green OA self-archiving can immediately provide 62% OA plus
38%
almost-OA, only about 15% of researchers are actually self-archiving
their
research today. The reasons for this inaction are many and include
(groundless)
worries about copyright, peer review, and the time and effort authors
imagine
is involved in self-archiving.
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32-worries
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/12094/
20.
Researchers themselves have already indicated exactly what would
liberate them
from their worries about self-archiving. International, pandisciplinary
surveys
have shown that 95% of researchers report that they would self-archive
if
self-archiving were mandated by their institutions and/or their funders
(14%
reluctantly, 81% willingly).
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/
21. The
survey results have been confirmed by comparing the self-archiving
rates for
institutions (1) that merely provide the Institutional Repository (IR)
(self-archiving reaches 15%), (2) that provide the IR as well as
incentives and
help (self-archiving reaches 30%) to authors, and (3) that provide the
IR,
incentives and help, as well as a Green OA self-archiving mandate,
requiring
deposit (self-archiving approaches 100% within two years of adoption of
the
mandate).
http://fcms.its.utas.edu.au/scieng/comp/project.asp?lProjectId=1830
22.
Forty-eight institutions and funders worldwide have already adopted
Green OA
self-archiving mandates, including Southampton, Harvard and Stanford
among
universities and NIH, RCUK and ERC among funders; 12 more have proposed
mandates (including Brazil's proposed Law n¼ 1120/2007) under
consideration
today.
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/
23.
Among the incentives to self-archive are the usage and citation impact
metrics
that OA IRs provide to authors -- as well as to research evaluators.
Software
also exists to track and compare changes in different versions of the
same
article, validating content.
http://trac.eprints.org/projects/irstats
25. IRs
also preserve a record of an institution's research output and provide
visibility to the institution for attracting researchers, students and
funding.
26. The
only thing still needed in order to achieve universal Green OA is
universal
adoption of Green OA self-archiving mandates by research institutions
worldwide, complemented and reinforced by research funder Green OA
mandates.
Here is a draft institutional mandate policy, applying the points made
above:
(a)
In the print on paper era it was the policy of all universities to
publish in
peer-reviewed journals so that their research output could be accessed,
used,
applied, cited and built upon. (This policy has often been referred to
as
"publish or perish.")
(b)
In the online era it is no longer sufficient to publish in a
peer-revewed
journal: The published article's impact has to be maximized, so not
only those
users whose institutions can afford access to the journal in which it
was
published can access it, but all would-be users webwide can do so.
(c)
Our University is hence joining the ranks of a growing number of
universities
worldwide (including Harvard, Stanford, Southampton, Stirling, QUT,
U.
Tasmania, Charles Sturt, Liege, Zurich) as well as a growing number of
funding
councils (including ARC, NIH, ERC, and RCUK) to mandate that our
refereed
research output must be deposited ("self-archived") in our
University's Institutional Repository (IR).
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/
(d)
The mandate is merely to deposit the
author's refereed, revised, final draft in our IR, immediately
upon
acceptance for publication; it will then be used for internal
record-keeping
and performance evaluation purposes.
(e)
However, it is strongly recommended that access to the deposit should
be made
Open Access, so that any would-be user on the web can access the full
text.
(f)
The majority of journals already endorse making the author's
self-archived
draft Open Access immediately. (See http://romeo.eprints.org )
Authors are
encouraged to negotiate with their journals to obtain this endorsement,
if they
do not have it already.
(g)
For articles published in journals that do not yet endorse Open Access
self-archiving, or who impose an access embargo, access to the deposit
can be
set as Closed Access during the embargo. This means only the author has
access
to the full text. The metadata (author, title, date, journalname, etc.)
are
visible to all users webwide.
(h)
To fulfill user needs during the Closed Access embargo period, the IR
has an
"Email Eprint Request" Button. Any would-be user webwide can press
the button to send an automatic eprint request to the author, who
instantly
receives an email with a URL on which the author can click to send one
individual eprint to the requester. (This is Fair Use, and has been in
practice
by researchers for a half century, originally with paper reprints,
today with
electronic eprints. The Button and the Repository software make it much
eprint
requests much easier to make and easier to fulfill.)
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html
(i)
Scientometric studies have demonstrated repeatedly that Open Access
significantly increases the citation metrics of articles, as well as
enhancing
other metrics of research usage and impact, in all disciplines.
http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html
(j)
Our IR will be used as the source of submissions for research
performance
assesment, as well as to generate CV publication lists for grant
applications
and other forms of evaluation and assessment.
There
is a sample policy in the OSI Eprints Handbook:
http://www.eprints.org/documentation/handbook/universities.php
See
also:
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html
(27)
Brazil is in the forefront of the worldwide movement for Open Access,
thanks to
IBICT, SciELO, proposed Law n¼ 1120/2007, and the dedicated and
tireless
efforts of Sely Costa and HŽlio Kuramoto, Barzil's two prominent OA
advocates.
(28) What Brazil needs now is for all of its universities to adopt Green OA self-archiving mandates, setting a national and international example for the rest of the world to emulate.