In Defense of the American Psychological Association's Green OA Policy

In Defense of the American Psychological Association's Green OA Policy Stevan Harnad 15 Jul 2008 22:38 UTC
                               ** Cross-Posted **
In Defense of the American Psychological Association's Green OA
Policy<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/433-In-Defense-of-the-American-Psychological-Associations-Green-OA-Policy.html>

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*SUMMARY: **So the American Psychological Association
(APA)<http://www.apa.org/journals/authors/pubmed-deposit.html> is
trying to charge $2500 per article to fulfill NIH's Green OA
mandate<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?%3Cbr%20/%3Einst=National%20Institutes%20of%20Health%20%28NIH%29>
 by proxy-depositing<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/429-guid.html>
 in PubMed Central <http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/> on the author's
behalf? So maybe if NIH had sensibly mandated depositing in the author's
own Institutional Repository
(IR)<http://roar.eprints.org/?action=home&q=&country=&version=&type=institutional&order=name&submit=Filter>,
this awkward problem wouldn't have come up? Like the majority of
journals<http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php>
, APA journals <http://www.apa.org/journals/authors/posting.html> are
Green<http://romeo.eprints.org/publishers/12.html> on
authors self-archiving in their own IRs. There's still time to fix the NIH
mandate <http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/381-guid.html> so
good sense can prevail...*
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Although it looks
bad<http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/apa-will-charge-authors-for-green-oa.html>
on
the face of it -- the American Psychological Association
(APA)<http://www.apa.org/journals/authors/pubmed-deposit.html>
charging
the author's institution and/or research grant *$2500*, not for Gold OA
publishing, but for depositing the author's refereed final draft in PubMed
Central (PMC) <http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/> on the author's
behalf ("proxy
self-archiving<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/429-guid.html>"),
in order to fulfill the NIH
mandate<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?%3Cbr%20/%3Einst=National%20Institutes%20of%20Health%20%28NIH%29>
--
things are not always as they seem.

There is no culprit in this nonsense, but if I had to pinpoint its
provenance, it would be the foolish form in which the NIH -- despite
relentlessly<http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind04&L=AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM&F=l&P=92016>
 repeated advice and
reasons<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/381-guid.html>
to
the contrary -- insisted on drafting its policy:

To cut to the quick, there is no earthly reason NIH should insist on direct
deposit in PMC. The mandate should be (and should all along have been) to
deposit in the author's own Institutional Repository
(IR)<http://roar.eprints.org/?action=home&q=&country=&version=&type=institutional&order=name&submit=Filter>.
PMC can then harvest the metadata and link to the IR-deposited full-text
itself from there.

APA (and the majority of other journals) -- for reasons they would have
found it very hard to justify flouting -- have long given their green
lights<http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php> to
immediate deposit (no delay, no embargo, and of course no fee) in the
author's own IR:

------------------------------
*APA Policy on Posting Articles on the
Internet<http://www.apa.org/journals/authors/posting.html>
*

*Update effective June 1, 2002*

*Authors of articles published in APA journals may post a copy of the final
manuscript, as a word processing, PDF, or other type file, on their Web site
or their employer's server after it is accepted for publication. The
following conditions would prevail:*

*• The posted article must carry an APA copyright notice and include a link
to the APA journal home page.
• Further, the posted article must include the following statement: "This
article may not exactly replicate the final version published in the APA
journal. It is not the copy of record."
• APA does not permit archiving with any other non-APA repositories.
• APA does not provide electronic copies of the APA published version for
this purpose, and authors are not permitted to scan in the APA published
version.*

------------------------------

To repeat, a publisher that is
Green<http://romeo.eprints.org/publishers.html> on
immediate OA self-archiving in the author's own IR is
squarely<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/268-guid.html>
on
the side of the
angels<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/418-guid.html>.
(If that publisher seeks to profit from NIH's gratuitous insistence on
institution-external deposit, by treating PMC as a 3rd-party free-loader or
rival publisher<http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind03&L=american-scientist-open-access-forum&O=D&F=l&P=35931>,
hence legally requiring permission to re-publish, I would say that NIH drew
that upon itself. As noted many times, that technicality does not work with
an author's own institution.)

And it is remediable: Simply revise the NIH mandate to require institutional
IR deposit of the accepted final draft, immediately upon acceptance, with a
cap on the permissible embargo length, if any. That is the sensible policy
-- and nature will take care of the rest, with universal OA just around the
corner.

*
A Simple Way to Optimize the NIH Public Access
Policy<http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind04&L=AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM&F=l&P=92016>
(Oct
2004)

THE FEEDER AND THE DRIVER: Deposit Institutionally, Harvest
Centrally<http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/Harnad-driverstate2.html>
(Jan
2008)

Optimize the NIH Mandate Now: Deposit Institutionally, Harvest
Centrally<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/344-guid.html>
(Jan
2008)

How To Integrate University and Funder Open Access
Mandates<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html>
(Mar
2008)

NIH Invites Recommendations on How to Implement and Monitor Compliance with
Its OA Self-Archiving
Mandate<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/381-guid.html>
(Apr
2008)

Institutional Repositories vs Subject/Central
Repositories<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/414-guid.html>
(Jun
2008)*

*Stevan Harnad <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/>*
American Scientist Open Access
Forum<http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html>