Plan B for NIH Public Access Mandate: A Deposit Mandate

["Stevan Harnad" <amsciforum@gmail.com>]

[Apologies for Cross-Posting]

Re: "Bill Would Block NIH Public Access Policy" (Science, 11 
September) 
http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/911/1

Conyers Bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d110:h6845:

Plan B for NIH Public Access Mandate (And It's Stronger Than Plan 
A!): A Deposit Mandate

I hope the Conyers Bill, resulting from the publisher lobby's 
attempt to overturn the NIH Public Access Mandate, will not 
succeed.

But in case it does, I would like to recommend making a small but 
far-reaching modification in the NIH mandate and its 
implementation that will effectively immunize it against any 
further publisher attempts to overturn it on legal grounds. And 
this Plan B will actually help hasten universal OA more 
effectively than the current mandate:

(1) NIH should mandate deposit of the refereed final draft of all 
NIH-funded research, immediately upon acceptance for publication. 
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html

(2) But access to that deposited draft need only be made Open 
Access when there is no publisher embargo on making it Open 
Access; otherwise it may be made Closed Access.

(3) Open Access means that the full text of the deposited draft 
is freely accessible to anyone, webwide, immediately.

(4) Closed Access means that the full text of the deposited draft 
is visible and accessible only to the depositor and the 
depositor's employer and funder, for internal record-keeping and 
grant-fulfillment purposes. (Publishers have no say whatsoever in 
institutional and funder internal record-keeping.)

(5) For all deposits, however, both Open Access and Closed 
Access, the deposited article's metadata (author, title, journal, 
date. etc.) are Open Access, hence visible and accessible to 
anyone, webwide.

(6) Now the essence of this strategy: NIH should also implement 
the "Email Eprint Request" Button, so that any would-be user, 
webwide, who reaches a link to a Closed Access article, can 
insert their email address in a box, indicate that a single copy 
of the postprint is being requested for research or health 
purposes, and click. 
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html

(7) The eprint request is then automatically transmitted 
immediately by the repository software to the author of the 
article, who receives an email with a URL that can then be 
clicked if the author wishes to have the repository software 
automatically email one individual copy of that eprint to that 
individual requester.

(8) This is not Open Access (OA). But functionally, it is 
almost-OA.

(9) Many journals (63%) already endorse immediate OA. 
http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php

(10) Closed Access plus the Button will provide almost-OA for the 
remaining 37%.

(11) That means an NIH Deposit Mandate guarantees either 
immediate OA (63%) or almost-OA (37%) for 100% of NIH-funded 
research.

(12) In addition, an NIH Deposit Mandate will encourage 
universities in the US and worldwide to adopt Deposit Mandates 
too, for all of their research article output, not just 
NIH-funded biomedical research output. 
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html

(13) The spread of such Deposit Mandates across institutions and 
funders worldwide will inevitably lead to universal OA for all 
research output eventually, once the mandates ensure the 
universal practice of immediate deposit.

(14) In addition, because it makes the almost-OA Button even more 
powerful and easier to implement -- NIH should stipulate that the 
preferred locus of deposit is the author's own Institutional 
Repository, which can then export the deposit to PubMed Central 
using the automatized SWORD protocol. 
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/repositories/digirep/index/SWORD

The fact is (and everyone will see this clearly in hindsight) 
that, all along, the online medium itself has made OA a foregone 
conclusion for research publications. There is no way to stop it 
legally.

It is only technological short-sightedness that is making 
publishers and OA advocates alike imagine that the outcome is a 
somehow a matter of law and legislation. It is not, and never has 
been.

It is only because we have been taking an obsolete, paper-based 
view of it all that we have not realized that when authors wish 
it to be so, the Web itself has made it no longer possible to 
prevent authors from freely distributing their own writings, one 
way or the other. There is no law against an author giving away 
individual copies of his own writing.

And NIH need only mandate that authors deposit their (published 
research journal) writings: giving them away for free can be left 
to the individual author. The eventual outcome is obvious, 
optimal and inevitable.

I strongly urge OA advocates to united under this back-up 
strategy. It will allow us to snatch victory from the jaws of 
defeat.

Stevan Harnad
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/