Best practices for university OA policies: Difference between revisions

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* This is a guide to best practices for university OA policies. 
#REDIRECT[[Guide to best practices for university open-access policies]]
* Currently the guide is private in the sense that no web pages deliberately link to it.  I believe that some pages automatically created by the wiki software will link to it.  Is that private enough for our purposes?
* When we decide it's ready, we can make all or some of it public.
* Incorporate ideas and language from these docs:
** Harvard's annotated [http://osc.hul.harvard.edu/modelpolicy Model OA Policy]
** PS article on [http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/02-02-09.htm#choicepoints OA policy options for funding agencies and universities]
* ''All the entries to date are tentative. The doc is under way but far from complete. Undecided questions are marked with three slashes (///).''
* To do list
** Elaborate each entry with some rationale, including (as far as possible) links to literature and evidence.
Before release, get other key partners to make their own suggestions and sign on to the result, e.g. SPARC and EOS. 
** Consider writing an executive summary of the guide, for rapid orientation or busy committees. Or consider making two editions, a short one for busy committees and the full-length version for everyone else.
** Consider including a (dynamic) section on frequently asked questions and frequently heard objections and misunderstandings
** Eventually make a second guide for funder policies. It could be a separate doc, or it could be a new section of this doc ("Follow all the recommendations above but with these subtractions and additions based on the different circumstances of universities and funders").
 
 
{| align="right"
  | __TOC__
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== Drafting a policy ==
 
* '''Grant of rights to the institution'''
** The policy should be worded so that the faculty vote adopting the policy thereby grants the university certain non-exclusive rights to their future publications. It should not merely ask/encourage/require faculty to retain certain rights when they sign future publishing contracts.
 
* '''Deposit in the repository'''
** The policy should require faculty to deposit a certain version of their future journal publications in the institutional repository.
** The version to be deposited is the final version of the peer-reviewed manuscript, incorporating all revisions made during the peer-review process.
 
* '''Deposit timing'''
** Faculty should deposit their peer-reviewed manuscripts at the time of acceptance for publication.
** If the policy respects an embargo decision (from the author or publisher), the deposit should still be made at the time of acceptance. But it will be a ''dark deposit'' until the embargo period runs.
 
* '''Waiver option'''
** The waiver option should apply to the grant of rights to the institution, not to the deposit requirement.
** The policy should make clear that waiver request will always be granted, no questions asked.
 
* '''Scope of coverage, by content category'''
** The policy can require deposit for some kinds of content (e.g. manuscripts published in peer-reviewed journals) and encourage deposit of other kinds (e.g. conference presentations, books or book chapters, datasets, theses and dissertations).
 
* '''Scope of coverage, by time'''
** Neither the grant of rights nor the deposit requirement should be retroactive. But the policy might encourage deposit of works published prior to the adoption of the policy.
 
* '''Licensing'''
** Institutions with Harvard-style policies have the rights needed to put open licenses (such as CC-BY) on faculty works deposited under the policy. But they need not take advantage of those rights, or need not do so right away.
 
* '''Separating the issues'''
** Some points that belong under this head are included below under "Adopting a policy" ("Educating faculty about the policy before the vote"). But certain explanations belong in the policy itself, to help deter misunderstandings.
** A university with a green OA policy may (and we think, should) also launch a fund to help faculty pay publication fees at fee-based OA journals. But the green OA policy should make clear that it is separate from the journal fund. Otherwise faculty may think that the policy itself requires faculty to submit new work to OA journals (a common and harmful misunderstanding).
** A university requiring green OA may also encourage gold OA. But it should be careful about doing both the same document. Where it has been tried, faculty too easily come to believe that the policy requires gold OA.
 
== Adopting a policy ==
 
* '''Adopting authority'''
** Policies should be adopted by faculty vote, not by administrative fiat.
** The campus entrepreneurs leading the campaign for a policy should be faculty. If the idea and initial momentum came from librarians or administrators, th ey should find faculty members willing to lead the effort.
 
* '''Educating faculty about the policy before the vote'''
** Make clear that the policy requires deposit in an OA repository, not submission to an OA journal. (It's about green OA, not gold OA.) It does not limit faculty freedom to submit work to the journals of their choice.
** Make clear that the waiver option guarantees that faculty are free to decide for or against OA for every one of their publications. The policy merely shifts the default from non-deposit and non-OA to deposit and OA.
** Make clear that "softening" the policy to ''opt-in'' is pointless. All institutions without opt-out policies already have opt-in policies.
** Make clear that the waiver option also gives publishers the right to require a waiver as a condition of publication. Hence, publishers who decide that the costs exceed the benefits may protect themselves, at will, and may do so without refusing to publish faculty at institutions with OA policies. Hence, faculty who worry about protecting certain vulnerable publishers, such as society publishers, should understand that the policy already gives those publishers the means to protect themselves, if they see the need to do so. Faculty needn't paternalize those publishers by voting down the policy, and they needn't decide on the publisher's behalf that publishing authors without waivers would harm. However, faculty should explain to the publishers they wish to protect that the waiver option provides all the protection they need. Many publishers do not understand that.
 
== Implementing a policy ==
 
* '''Facilitating deposits'''
** If the budget permits, the institution should train student workers to make deposits on behalf of faculty.
** The repository should make traffic data available to authors. Evidence suggests that this encourages deposits.
** The repository should publicize the "most viewed" or "most downloadaded" articles, and the "most viewed" departments, e.g. on the repository front page or in a regular column in the school newspaper.
 
* '''Multiple deposits'''
** If a faculty member deposits a paper in a non-institutional repository (e.g. arXiv, PubMed Central, SSRN), the repository should harvest a copy. To avoid diluting the traffic numbers at the several repositories, all should comply with the (evolving) [http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/pals3/pirus.aspx PIRUS] standards for sharing traffic data.
** If a faculty member is subject to two OA policies (e.g. one from the institution and one from the funder), the institution should offer to make the deposit required by the funder. For example, most faculty at Harvard Medical School are subject to the NIH policy; if they deposit in the HMS repository, then HMS will insure that a copy is deposited in PubMed Central. If faculty think that an institutional policy will double their administrative burden, they will vote against it; the institution should make clear that a local policy will actually reduce their burden.
 
* '''Dark deposits'''
** If a deposit is dark (not yet OA), at least the metadata should be OA.
** If the repository software will support it, dark deposits should be set to open up automatically at the future date determined by the author decision or embargo period.
** If an author deposited a manuscript and obtained a waiver, then the institution does not have permission to make it OA ''under the policy''. But the repository should make the manuscript OA if it can obtain permission from another source, such as a standing policy of the publisher's to allow OA after a certain embargo period.
 
* '''Repository indexing'''
** The repository should be configured to support crawling by search engines.
** Repository managers should check to see whether the contents are discoverable through major search engines, and follow-up any indexing failures.
 
* '''Repository withdrawals'''
** If a publisher sends a reasonable take-down request to the repository, the repository should always comply. (///But should the article be removed or merely go dark?)
** If the author wishes to withdraw an article already on deposit (e.g. because it is mistaken, embarrassing, superseded by a newer version, etc.), then ///??
 
== Other best-practice guides ==
 
* PS has many in his offline notes.  Will add them soon.

Latest revision as of 11:55, 15 August 2012