Academia Bound? - Open Access Archivangelism

"If, in the print-on-paper era, it was not a constraint on academic freedom that universities and research funders required, as a condition of funding or employment, that researchers conduct and publish research -- rather than put it in a desk drawer -- so it could be read, used, applied and built upon by all users whose institutions could afford to subscribe to the journal in which it was published ("publish or perish"), then it is not a constraint on academic freedom in the online era that universities and research funders require, as a condition of funding or employment, that researchers make their research accessible online to all its potential users rather than just those whose institutions could afford to subscribe to the journal in which it was published ('self-archive to flourish'). However, two kinds of Open Access (OA) mandates are indeed constraints on academic freedom: 1. any mandate that constrains the researcher's choice of which journal to publish in -- other than to require that it be of the highest quality whose peer-review standards the research can meet 2. any mandate that requires the researcher to pay to publish (if the author does not wish to, or does not have the funds) The immediate-deposit/optional-access (ID/OA) mandate requires authors to deposit their final refereed draft in their institutional repository immediately upon acceptance for publication, regardless of which journal they choose to publish in, and regardless of whether they choose to comply with an OA embargo (if any) on the part of the journal. (If so, the access to the deposit can be set as Closed Access rather than Open Access during the embargo, and the repository software has a facilitated copy-request Button, allowing would-be users to request a copy for research purposes with one click, and allowing the author the free choice to comply or not comply, likewise with one click.) Since OA is beneficial to researchers -- because it maximizes research downloads and citations, which universities and funders now count, along with publications, in evaluating and rewarding research output -- why do researchers need mandates at all? Because they are afraid of publishers -- afraid their publisher will not publish their research if they make it OA, or even afraid they will be prosecuted for copyright infringement. So OA mandates are needed to embolden authors to provide OA, knowing they have the support of their institutions and funders. And the ID/OA mandate is immune to publisher embargoes. Over ten years of experience (of 'performing a useful service by giving faculty a vehicle for voluntary self-archiving') have by now shown definitively that most researchers will not self-archive unless it is mandatory. (The only exceptions are some fields of physics and computer science where researchers provide OA spontaneously, unmandated.) So what is needed is a no-option immediate-self-archiving mandate, but with leeway on when to make the deposit OA. This is indeed in a sense 'optional Green OA,' but the crucial component is that the deposit itself is mandatory ..."