Summary: Universities are adopting Open Access Self-Archiving Policies (which is a very good thing) but the policies are often not the optimal ones, and are sometimes even inadvertently reducing instead of enhancing the access potential of university research output. In this exchange with Prof. Andrew Colman of the University Leicester, and Prof. Diane Kornbrot of University of the University of Hertfordshire, the simple parametric tweaks are pointed out that can change an ineffective OA Policy into an effective one. They are: (1) requiring rather than requesting deposit (2) requiring deposit in the university's own Institutional Repository (IR) rather than in a central or discipline-based repository elsewhere (3) requiring deposit of the author's peer-reviewed, accepted final draft, rather than the publisher's PDF (unless the publisher endorses PDF deposit) (4) requiring deposit immediately upon acceptance for publication rather than after a publisher-imposed delay or embargo period (5) during any embargo, deposits can instead simply be made Closed Access rather than Open Access (and the IR's "Fair Use" Button can send and receive eprint requests and eprints semi-automatically)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/10/2007 11:44:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
