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Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Can the APA policy be defended?

Stevan Harnad, In Defense of the American Psychological Association's Green OA Policy, Open Access Archivangelism, July 16, 2008.

Summary:  So the American Psychological Association (APA) is trying to charge $2500 per article to fulfill NIH's Green OA mandate by proxy-depositing in PubMed Central on the author's behalf? So maybe if NIH had sensibly mandated depositing in the author's own Institutional Repository (IR), this awkward problem wouldn't have come up? Like the majority of journals, APA journals -- unlike ACS journals -- are Green on authors self-archiving in their own IRs. There's still time to fix the NIH mandate so good sense can prevail...

Comments

  • Stevan is mixing up unrelated issues.  The APA "deposit fee" had nothing to do with the distinction between disciplinary repositories (like PMC) and institutional repositories.  If the NIH mandated deposit in IRs instead of PMC, then the APA would demand a $2,500 fee for deposit in IRs, and the fee would be equally noxious and indefensible.  Even if the NIH's preference for PMC were as foolish as Stevan says it is (a criticism I do not share), it would not justify the APA fee. 
  • Stevan points to a 2002 APA policy statement, still online, which allows self-archiving in IRs.  But he doesn't point out that the APA's newer policy statement describing the "deposit fee" effectively negates the older green policy, at least for NIH-funded authors.  The new policy prohibits NIH-funded authors from depositing their postprints in any OA repository, disciplinary or institutional.
  • The title of Stevan's post suggests that he's defending the APA's 2002 self-archiving policy.  I join him in that.  But the body of his post attempts to defend the 2008 deposit fee as well:  "Although it looks bad on the face of it...things are not always as they seem."  Not always, but this time.
  • Both arguments are moot for a while, now that the APA has taken down the new policy statement for "re-examination".  (See the 7/16/08 update to my blog post on the policy.)

Update.  Stevan has responded to my comments and restated his position:  The OA Deposit-Fee Kerfuffle: APA's Not Responsible; NIH Is, Open Access Archivangelism, July 17, 2008.  Excerpt:

In Open Access News, my comrade-at-arms, Peter Suber commented on my essay "In Defense of the American Psychological Association's Green OA Policy," which defended the APA from criticism for levying a $2500 fee on authors for compliance with the NIH mandate to deposit in PubMed Central (PMC). I had said the problem was with NIH's stipulation that the deposit had to be in PMC rather than in the author's own Institutional Repository (IR): The APA has since 2002 been solidly among the majority of publishers that are Green on OA self-archiving, meaning they explicitly endorse deposit in the author's own institutional IR immediately upon acceptance for publication, with no fee....APA has now re-confirmed (see below) that it has no intention of back-sliding on that 6-year-old green policy (as Nature Publishing Group did 3 years ago, immediately upon the impending announcement of the NIH policy).

Peter Suber: "Stevan is mixing up unrelated issues.  The APA "deposit fee" had nothing to do with the distinction between disciplinary repositories (like PMC) and institutional repositories.  If the NIH mandated deposit in IRs instead of PMC, then the APA would demand a $2,500 fee for deposit in IRs, and the fee would be equally noxious and indefensible.  Even if the NIH's preference for PMC were as foolish as Stevan says it is (a criticism I do not share), it would not justify the APA fee."

Peter seems to be replying with a hypothetical conditional, regarding what the APA would have done. But the APA has already been formally endorsing immediate Open Access self-archiving in the author's own IR for six years now. Moreover (see below), the publisher, Gary Vandenbos, has confirmed that APA has not changed that policy, nor are there plans to change it....

[Quoting Gary VandenBos, Publisher, American Psychological Association Journals, in an email to Stevan, July 15, 2008:]  I expect no change in the existing [green] policy. Have not ever heard anyone suggest it....

For the record...: Of course a $2500 fee for depositing in [PMC] is absurd, but what reduced us to this absurdity was needlessly mandating direct deposit in [PMC] in the first place....

Comments on Stevan's July 17 post:

  • If the APA stands by its 2002 policy to allow self-archiving in institutional repositories, without fees or embargoes, then I will applaud it.  I see the evidence Stevan has elicited from the APA's Gary VandenBos that the APA intends to stand by that policy.  So far, so good.  (I thank Stevan for digging, and thank VandenBos for allowing him to publish his response.)  But when VandenBos says that the APA will stay green, he also says that he hasn't heard anyone suggest otherwise.  I'd feel better about his reassurance if it were more responsive to the policy the APA just took down for re-examination.  That policy said explicitly that NIH-funded authors could not self-archive anywhere, even in their own IRs.  For NIH-funded authors, it retracted the APA's green policy. 
  • At the moment, I see two conflicting APA statements and no evidence that either statement took the other into account.  So I'm still waiting for a definitive clarification from the APA.  But as I say, if the APA reaffirms the 2002 policy to allow no-fee, no-embargo self-archiving to IRs, then I will applaud it.
  • However, if the APA retains the "deposit fee" for NIH-funded authors, then I will continue to criticize it.  The APA will still be charging for green OA, which is utterly unnecessary.  It will still fail to deliver immediate OA or OA to the published edition, which fee-based OA journals always deliver in exchange for their fees.  If the APA reaffirms its 2002 green policy, then NIH-funded authors could bypass the deposit fee when self-archiving to their IRs.  But they couldn't bypass the fee when self-archiving to PMC, and they are bound by the NIH policy to deposit in PMC (or have their journal do so for them).  Stevan hopes that policies like the APA's will pressure the NIH to drop this requirement and allow deposits in an IR to suffice.  But even if that ought to happen, it won't happen soon and very likely won't happen at all.  One reason is simply that the requirement to deposit in PMC was mandated by Congress.  The NIH undoubtedly supports the Congressional directive, but it's not an in-house policy decision that the agency is free to reverse at will. 
  • But should Congress and the NIH prefer PMCs to IRs?  Maybe, maybe not.  I see good arguments on both sides.  But they are irrelevant here because (1) the APA deposit fee would still be unnecessary and (2) there's no evidence that the APA was motivated, as Stevan is, to protest the preference for PMC --as opposed to (say) mandatory OA.  (For the record, my position is close to Stevan's:  institutional and disciplinary repositories should harvest from one another; that would greatly lower the stakes in the question where an OA mandate should require initial deposit; if we got that far, I'd be happy to see a policy require deposit in IRs.)
  • Stevan does call the deposit fee absurd.  So we agree on that as well.  But he adds that the NIH preference for PMC over IRs "reduced us to this absurdity".  I'm afraid that's absurd too.  If the NIH preference for PMC somehow compelled publishers to respond with deposit fees, then we'd see many of them.  But in fact we see almost none.  Even if the NIH preference for PMC were a choice the agency could reverse at will, the APA deposit fee is another choice, not necessitated by the NIH policy and not justified by it.

Update (7/19/08).  Stevan has responded to my latest comments.  I'll let him have the last word.  But do see the APA's new interim policy, posted online this morning.