Shrewd University OA Policy Advice from the Antipodes

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

Professor Arthur Sale of University of Tasmania has rapidly 
become the planet's premiere strategist of successful University 
OA Self-Archiving Policy. Apologies for cross-posting -- but 
ignore at your own peril! -- SH

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 2 May 2006 10:57:59 +1000
From: Arthur Sale <ahjs@ozemail.com.au>
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: Ian Gibson on open access

Effective author support policies involve a plethora of 
activities, and are well exemplified by the activities undertaken 
at QUT, Queensland University and here. No doubt in many other 
places. They include (but no university does all):

* Assistance with uploading the first document (hand-holding). 
Maybe devolve this out to departments/faculties/workshops.

* Fall-back positions which allow a subject-librarian, or a 
department/faculty office professional, to upload on behalf of an 
author who is not computer literate.

* Provision for turning final manuscripts into pdf format (info 
about free OSS options and/or a library service).

* Provision of as much [automated] statistical use information as 
authors find useful. See for example 
http://dlist.sir.arizona.edu/es/index.php?action=show_detail_eprint;id=460;y 
ear=2006

* League tables of document downloads (Do NOT publish or put on 
the Web league tables of academics by totals of downloads. This 
is counter-productive as the same few people are always at the 
top {sometimes because of extraneous discipline or popularity 
reasons}, and everyone else feels aggrieved). Document download 
info seems ok as it is anonymized and variable. See for example 
http://eprints.otago.ac.nz/es/index.php?action=show_detail_date;range=4w

* Encouragement (or stronger) from a head of school or research 
coordinator - they need to be converted and they are 
intra-university competitive as well as being 
discipline-competitive.

* Integration of the repository into school and university 
websites (eg instead of a list of publications on a web-page 
(always out of date) put a php/perl query on the repository for 
the particular author or authors (always up to date). Possibility 
needs promotion and education to web-page designers (may be 
academics).

* Professional development workshops for PhD candidates to put 
their publications up (Important: these are Trojan horses. Maybe 
you can get a mandate for them ahead of academics/faculty)

* Development of repository software to provide extra information 
to authors and possibly readers, such as citation counts.

* Briefing meetings with heads of departments, deans and research 
directors. Keep it as routinized as possible: we are not trying 
to do something radical but to smooth something that should be a 
routine part of research activity.

* When you have a mandated policy, act on selected 
departments/faculties in a sequential strategy. Do not attempt a 
scattergun approach. Again, it is routinization that you are 
after.

* Some universities have introduced financial benefits for 
depositing.

* Do not worry about metadata quality, nor bother authors about 
it. Authors are often as good as librarians, if not better. In 
any case the most popular discovery techniques are not dependent 
on metadata.

* Provide a service for authors who are worried about copyright. 
It generally isn't important nor is the service onerous.

* I am sure that there are more I have forgotten for the moment.

Getting back to the requirement (mandatory) policy. I well 
understand that most universities do not yet have such a policy. 
I think I know exactly how many do. However, unless it is in your 
kitbag (like a field-marshal's baton) the university is wasting 
its money even having a 5-15% full repository. Striving to 
achieve such a policy is understandable and laudable, but it must 
be a continuous and strong push.

However, expending money on author support policies without a 
mandate is like pushing a large rock up a hill. It does not work 
and is demonstrated not to work. Precisely because of what I 
wrote earlier: the vast majority of academics (85%+) are 
non-participants and will seize any excuse however spurious to 
avoid doing any extra work. They are incapable of being persuaded 
in the mass. Remember that I am a researcher, not a librarian. I 
know the mindset of researchers.

So to summarize:

* Try to get the mandate before the repository.

* If you've got the repository before the mandate, make it 
crystal-clear to everyone (especially in higher management) that 
a mandate is in your sights and you are not going to let go of it 
until you get what you want and the forces of reaction are 
defeated. Use the word "luddite" if you have to.

* Don't expend significant amounts of time and money on 
author-support until you've got the mandate. It is pretty much 
wasted anyway, like flushing dollar notes down the toilet.

* After you've got the mandate, go for full-on author-support. It 
will speed up the transition which will take 1-3 years.

Arthur Sale

_____

> From: Lesley Perkins
> Sent: Monday, 1 May 2006 2:18 PM
> To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
>
> Hello Arthur,
>
> Point well taken. You make a strong argument, and the results 
> of your research are, as you say in your article, "striking." A 
> mandatory deposit policy is the holy grail.
>
> As you know, there are still universities with IRs but no such 
> policy. When I'm speaking with academic librarians who are 
> enthusiastic about OA and are working at universities with IRs 
> but no mandatory deposit policy (at least, not yet), I need to 
> give them a little something else to go on, a glimmer of hope. 
> They need concrete examples of how to, as you say, "put effort 
> into making researchers like doing it." So, I guess some of us 
> are, unfortunately, stuck for the time being with going at it a 
> bit backwards -- give researchers reasons to like depositing, 
> and then force them to do it!
>
> In your firstmonday article you use the phrase "effective 
> author support policies." I'm curious to know what these are, 
> specifically. If you think everyone else on this listserv 
> already knows, maybe you would be so kind as to reply to me 
> off-list (if you have time, of course).
>
> Lesley Perkins