« Performance measurement is of great importance for scientists because both their career and the reputation of their institution are affected by it. This contribution describes why Open Access publications tend to be disadvantaged by evaluation processes, which is especially true for processes focusing on citation based impact metrics. Assuming that this effect is not caused by a poorer quality of Open Access publications but by methodological biases of the evaluation mechanisms, it is discussed whether alternative performance measurement concepts could make Open Access more attractive for scientists. »
URL : http://eprints.rclis.org/19008/

Frankel & Nestor’s helpful advice to authors about rights retention is very well-informed and valuable, except for this:

« Finally, we must be careful to distinguish between a license mandate and a deposit mandate. Whereas a licensewhether exclusive or nonexclusivetransfers some amount of rights in the article, a deposit mandate merely allows for (or requires) a physical copy of the article to be given to the institution. Simply handing over a physical copy of an article, or draft of that article, is not sufficient under copyright law to constitute a grant of any rights, as physical possession of an article does not give the owner of that copy any copyright rights in work embodied in the copy.

« Deposit mandates certainly are useful for institutions to retain the knowledge and scholarship of its faculty members. Indeed, some journals already permit institutional depositories. But such permissions do not address the increasing loss of knowledge in the academic community caused by the ever- increasing costs of journal subscriptions and the inability for academic institutions to keep up with shouldering the burden of those costs. The open access policy goes beyond a simple university depositorylimited in size, scope, and, most universal scope and accessibility. By combining the nonexclusive license discussed in this paper with a deposit policy, an institution can create open access. »

Simon J. Frankel and Shannon M. Nestor (2010) Opening the Door: How Faculty Authors Can Implement an Open Access Policy at Their Institutions. http://sciencecommons.org/wp-content/uploads/Opening-the-Door.pdf

(1) Most authors are not providing Open Access (OA) to their refereed research output at all today. (Only 20% are providing it.)

(2) OA Mandates are coming, but still extremely slowly.

(3) It is much harder to mandate more than less.

(4) A license mandate is much more than a deposit mandate.

(5) The majority of journals (60%+) already endorse immediate Open Access self-archiving of the author’s refereed final draft.

(6) A deposit mandate will immediately provide OA to 60%+ instead of just 20% of refereed research.

(7) The repository’s eprint-request button can provide almost-OA to all the rest for the time being.

(8) So what is urgently needed is at least a deposit mandate, today.

(9) Re-use rights are not urgent, and will be much easier to get once we already have universally mandated OA.

The Gratis Green OA self-archiving door is open already: All institutions and funders need do is mandate entry. Rights retention and Libre OA can come later.

Harnad, S. (2008) Waking OA’s “Slumbering Giant”: The University’s Mandate To Mandate Open Access. New Review of Information Networking 14(1): 51 – 68
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/17298/3/giantpaper1.pdf

Harnad, S. (2008) Which Green OA Mandate Is Optimal? Open Access Archivangelism December 7 2008. http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html

Harnad, S. (2010) The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now. Prometheus, 28 (1). pp. 55-59. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18514/

Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2010) Open Access Mandates and the « Fair Dealing » Button. In: Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online (Rosemary J. Coombe & Darren Wershler, Eds.) http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/

Suber, Peter (2008) Green/gold OA and gratis/libre OA. Open Access News August 2, 2008 http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/08/greengold-oa-and-gratislibre-oa.html

« La diffusion par accès direct reçoit l’aval de nombreux chercheurs et praticiens du domaine de l’éducation à distance parce que celle-ci s’inscrit dans la lignée de leur mission fondamentale qui est d’augmenter l’accès aux opportunités d’apprentissage. Toutefois, un doute subsiste quant à savoir si cet accès accru se réalise ou non au coût d’une diminution du prestige, de la valeur (souvent déterminée au cours des entrevues de promotion et de titularisation) ou de la référence aux travaux par les autres auteurs. Dans cet article, nous examinons 12 revues d’éducation à distance (dont 6 sont à accès direct et 6 sont publiées en format fermé par des éditeurs commerciaux). À l’aide d’un sondage en ligne rempli par des membres des comités de rédaction de ces 12 revues et d’une revue systématique du nombre de citations par article (N = 1,123) et par édition de revue parue entre 2003 et 2008, nous examinons l’impact et la valeur perçue des 12 revues. Nous calculons ensuite les différences entre les revues à accès direct et les revues fermées. Les résultats révèlent que les éditeurs de l’éducation à distance ne perçoivent pas les revues à accès direct comme étant significativement plus ou moins prestigieuses que les revues fermées. Il y a aussi peu de différences au niveau du nombre de citations par journal et par article. Toutefois, nous notons une tendance vers un nombre plus élevé de citations par article dans les revues à accès direct. Les articles dans les revues à accès direct sont cités plus tôt que ceux des revues à accès non direct. »
URL : http://www.jofde.ca/index.php/jde/article/viewArticle/661/1170