On Mon, 26 Jun 2006, Rick Anderson wrote:

>> SH:
>> CNRS is mistaken in its worry that CNRS researchers would resist a
>> self-archiving mandate: Multiple author surveys -- international
>> and multisciplinary -- as well as repeated experience with actual
>> mandates have shown that there will be very high rates of compliance.
>
> While author surveys may certainly be suggestive of future behavior, I'm
> not sure they can be said to "show" what such behavior will be.  Ask
> authors whether they'll obey a mandate, and I imagine that few will say
> no.  Whether they'll really do so when the times comes, I think, remains
> an open question.

You're right that self-report surveys do not necessarily translate into
actual behaviour. But in fact the institutions that have gone ahead
and mandated self-archiving -- notably CERN, Southampton, Queensland
University of Technology and University of Minho -- have all confirmed
the high rate of compliance the surveys predicted.

See the growth rates in http://archives.eprints.org/
plus Arthur Sale's comparative studies, plus Joanne Yeoman's
CERN data (the latter two posted in AmSci, qv).

Compare also NIH's deposit rate (requested, 4%) with the Wellcome Trust's
(required).

> "Experience with actual mandates" is a different matter entirely, of
> course.  Has that experience been formally documented, Stevan, and if
> so, can you provide references to the documentation?  (You've probably
> already cited them in previous postings, but for those of us who may not
> have read those postings in their entirety...)

See above.

> It would also be interesting to see the results of the author surveys to
> which you refer.  I assume that they're publicly available online
> somewhere?

Yes; the most recent replication was Heather Morrison's posting of the
Canadian replication (see AmSci again). There is also Chawki Hajjem's
Quebec survey (in French, alas):
http://www.crsc.uqam.ca/lab/chawki/Auto-archivaeuqam.pdf

I think Jennifer de Beer did a replication too. And Swan & Brown
themselves did an independent replication. There may well be others.
(Alma may know, and if so will no doubt post.)

(To retrieve postings in amsci, just do a google query with
keywords and amsci.)

Cheers, Stevan