** Cross-Posted **

The US Alliance for Tax-Payer Access and other sponsors have just
launched a US counterpart to the highly successful and still-growing
EU Petition calling for Open Access to be mandated by research funders
and institutions.

    US Petition: http://www.publicaccesstoresearch.org/
    EU Petition: http://www.ec-petition.eu/

The EU Petition already has over 23,000 signatories, including over 1000
organisations (universities, research funders, academies of sciences,
scholarly societies, research and development industries, publishers).

If you are officially signing for an organisation, please don't just
sign the petition! Do locally what you are petitioning for: Adopt an
OA self-archiving mandate at your institution, as the Rector of the
University of Liege, Professor Bernard Rentier has just done (see
below) and register your mandate in ROARMAP (the Registry of Open Access
Material Archiving Policies):

    http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

Liege's is the latest of 9 institutional mandates, 3 departmental
mandates, and 11 research funder mandates already adopted worldwide,
plus 5 funder mandates and 1 multi-institution mandate proposed.

Not only has Universite de Liege adopted a Green OA self-archiving
mandate, but it has adopted the ID/OA (Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access)
mandate recommended by EURAB and specifically designed to immunise
the policy from all the permissions problems (imagined and real) and
embargoes that have been delaying adoption of Green OA mandates or have
led to the adoption of sub-optimal mandates (that allowed deposit to be
delayed or not done at all, depending on publisher policy).

    Generic Rationale and Model for University Open Access Self-Archiving
    Mandate: Immediate-Deposit/Optional Access (ID/OA)
    http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html

    EURAB's Proposed OA Mandate: Strongest of the 20 Adopted and 5
    Proposed So Far
    http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/196-guid.html

The key to the ID/OA mandate's success and power is that it separates the
mandatory component (deposit of the final peer-reviewed draft immediately
upon acceptance for publication -- no delays, no exceptions) from the
access-setting component. (Immediate setting of access to the deposit as
Open Access is strongly recommended, but not mandatory: provisionally
setting access as Closed Access is an allowable option where judged
necessary.)

    ---------- Forwarded message ----------
    Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2007 16:35:15 -0400
    From: Bernard Rentier <brentier--ULG.AC.BE>
    To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
    Subject: The University of Liege (Belgium) adopts ID/OA mandate

    The University of Liege (ULg), Belgium, has now adopted mandatory
    institutional deposit of all its publications.

    1. Every publication (article in a journal) by a ULg member must
    now be posted in the Institutional Repository ("La Digitheque"). By
    publication it is meant the author's version of the article after
    peer review and acceptance for publication by the editor (either in
    a print journal or/and in an electronic version, either in a Gold
    or Green Open access journal or in a non-OA journal).

    2. Access to the IR is closed by default, unless opening up is
    authorised by the publisher. If the access is closed, it remains
    available to the author(s) only.

    3. Metadata of the article are immediately available and they
    constitute a showcase of the University productivity. The accepted
    version deposited in the IR can be delivered via the e-mail e-
    print request button of the IR.

    4. As soon as conditions are fulfilled, the author will open access
    to his accepted version.

    The mandate will start as soon as the technical set up will be ready.

    B. Rentier
    Rector of the ULg
    -----------------------------------------

It is to be hoped now that the ULg policy will first spread to the other
francophone universities of Belgium, then to the rest of Belgium, Europe,
and worldwide. University OA self-archiving mandates are an essential
complement to the researcher funder OA self-archiving mandates. University
mandates cover unfunded as well as funded research, and provide the
all-important locus for the deposit (whether mandated by the funder or the
university): the researcher's own university's Institutional Repository.

    Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates: What? Where? When? Why? How?
    http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html