Open and Shut?: HEFCE, Elsevier, the “copy request” button, and the future of open access

" ... Currently, the signs are not great. Eleven months after HEFCE’s announcement (and doubtless in response to it), Elsevier published a set of new sharing and hosting policies that, far from signalling the extinction of publisher embargoes, would seem more likely to set them in concrete. Most significantly, where previously authors were permitted to make papers they deposit in their institutional repository freely available from day one, henceforth Elsevier-published papers can only be made OA after the expiration of the specific journal’s embargo — as Harnad was quick to complain. But if Harnad is right to argue that the button moots any publisher embargo does this matter? It would seem so, for two reasons. First, it is far from clear that researchers routinely respond to copy requests. Certainly that would seem to be the conclusion of a 2010 study undertaken by a group of open access advocates (including Harnad). While by no means a detailed or extensive study (reporting as it does on the use of the button in just three institutional repositories) the findings are not encouraging. Approval rates [i.e. when authors responded positively to a copy request] in these institutions varied from 27% (University of Minho), through 47% (University of Southampton) to 60% (University of Stirling). Moreover, these rates have subsequently fallen at the University of Minho, to just 23% last year. We don’t know whether Southampton and Stirling have seen a similar drop, but the director of the University of Minho’s documentation services Eloy Rodrigues reports that researchers quickly get 'tired' of using the button. Second, it has yet to be satisfactorily established that it is lawful to use the 'copy request' button. Harnad and fellow OA advocates argue that its use is covered by the fair use/fair dealing rules associated with copyright. But not everyone agrees ..."