** Cross-Posted ** In Open Access News<http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/can-apa-policy-be-defended.html>, Peter Suber commented on my posting -- "In Defense of the American Psychological Association's Green OA Policy<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/433-guid.html>" -- which defended the APA from criticism<http://chronicle.com/news/index.php?id=4836&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en> for levying a $2500 fee on authors for compliance with the NIH mandate<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/fullinfo.php?inst=National%20Institutes%20of%20Health%20%28NIH%29> to deposit in PubMed Central (PMC) <http://www.pubmedcentral.gov/>. 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)<http://roar.eprints.org/?action=home&q=&country=&version=&type=institutional&order=name&submit=Filter>, because the APA has been a Green publisher<http://romeo.eprints.org/publishers.html> since 2002, endorsing deposit in the author's IR immediately upon acceptance for publication, with no fee. *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. What needs to be changed is one small detail of NIH's policy: the requirement to deposit directly in PMC. The locus of deposit should be the author's own IR. PMC can harvest the metadata and link to the full-text in the IR. This will cost NIH authors nothing. And APA has no plans to change its Green OA self-archiving policy. (It would certainly have put APA in a very bad light if, having given its authors the green light to self-archive in their own IRs, APA then decided to slap a $2500 traffic ticket on them for going ahead and doing so!) ------------------------------ *Date:* 15 Jul 2008 23:28:40 -0400 *To:* Gary Vandenbos<http://www7.nationalacademies.org/core/Gary_VandenBos_Bio.html> (Publisher, American Psychological Association Journals<http://www.apa.org/journals/> ) *Cc:* Alan Kazdin <http://www.apa.org/about/president/bio.html> (President, American Psychological Association <http://www.apa.org/>) *Subject:* In Defense of the American Psychological Association's Green OA Policy Hi Gary (and Alan), As long as APA does not dream of back-sliding on its 6-year green OA policy<http://www.apa.org/journals/authors/posting.html> on institutional self-archiving, you can count on my firm support in the forthcoming onslaught from OA advocates worldwide, and you will weather the storm and come out looking good. But please do reply to reassure me that back-sliding<http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4265.html> is not an option! Best wishes, Stevan *Date:* 16 Jul 2008 2:05:49 AM EDT (CA), *From:* Gary VandenBos Steven, *I expect no change in the existing policy. Have not ever heard anyone suggest it.* Gary *Date:* 16 Jul 2008 13:22:08 +0100 (BST) *To:* Gary VandenBos Splendid. Expect a spirited (and successful) defense that will leave APA looking benign and responsible (as it indeed is). The problem is in the well-meaning juggernauts (in this case, NIH OA policy-makers) that simply do not think things through. Best wishes, Stevan ------------------------------ *Peter Suber:* "*Stevan points to a 2002 APA policy statement<http://www.apa.org/journals/authors/posting.html>, still online, which allows self-archiving in IRs. But he doesn't point out that the APA's newer policy statement<http://www.apa.org/journals/authors/pubmed-deposit.html> 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 2002 APA policy statement is not only still online and still in effect, but we have the publisher's word that there is to be no change in that policy. *Peter Suber:* "*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<http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/apa-will-charge-authors-for-green-oa.html> on the face of it...things are not always as they seem." Not always, but this time."* Not this time, and never for a publisher that is Green on OA. Once a publisher is Green on OA, there is nothing more that can or should be demanded of them, by the research community. The ball is now in the research community's court. It is up to research institutions and research funders to design sensible policies that will ensure that the researchers they employ and fund actually provide Green OA for their joint research output. Not all research is funded (and certainly not all by NIH), but (virtually) all researchers have institutions. And all institutions are just a piece of free software <http://www.eprints.org/software/>, some server-space, and a few hours of sysad set-up and maintenance time away from having an IR, if they do not already have one <http://depot.edina.ac.uk/>. The sensible OA mandate, from both institutions and funders (like NIH) is to require deposit in the researcher's own IR, immediately upon acceptance for publication. If there is an embargo, the deposit can be Closed Access during the embargo. The IR's "email eprint request" button will provide almost-immediate, almost-OA for all user needs during any embargo. If funders or others want to create institution-external, central collections of already-OA content, based on subject matter, funder, nationality, or whatever, then they can harvest the metadata and link to the full-text in the IR in which it was deposited. But there is certainly no reason to insist that it be deposited directly in their collections. Google, for example, quietly harvests anything: no need to deposit things in Google. And no charge. *Peter Suber:* "*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<http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/07/apa-will-charge-authors-for-green-oa.html> to my blog post on the policy.)"* I don't doubt that well-meaning OA supporters who have not thought it through are now railing at APA instead of resolutely requesting that NIH make the minor modification in its otherwise admirable, timely, and welcome policy that would put an end to this nonsense and let researchers get on with the urgent task of providing OA by depositing their own research in their own OA IRs, free for all, webwide. (For the record, and the too literal-minded: *Of course a $2500 fee for depositing in PMS is absurd*, but what reduced us to this absurdity was needlessly mandating direct deposit in PMS in the first place. Time to remedy the absurdity and let researchers' fingers do the walking<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/10688/> so we can all reach 100% OA at long last.) *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) Optimizing OA Self-Archiving Mandates: What? Where? When? Why? How?<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html> (Sept 2006) 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>
