Open Access Archivangelism: Publisher Embargoes, Immediate-Deposit Mandates, and the Request-a-Copy Button

"On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 Bo-Christer Björk wrote in GOAL: 'The idea that publishers would tolerate large scale mandate driven green OA (say 50-60 %) of articles with no embargoes or counteractions is pretty naive. Elsevier has shown the way with rules stipulating that Green OA is OK, unless its mandated, in which case they require special deals with the the institutions in question. And many publishers who previously had no embargo periods are starting to define such.' Björk's comment, unfortunately completely misses the point. Yes, publishers can and will try to impose embargoes on Green OA, especially encouraged by the perverse effects of the UK's Finch/RCUK preference and subsidy for Gold. That is not being denied, it was being affirmed: 'Joint 'Re-Engineering' Plan of UK Government and UK Publisher Lobby for 'Nudging' UK Researchers Toward Gold Open Access' But the immediate-deposit (HEFCE/Liege) mandates are immune to these publisher embargoes. They are the compromise mandate that fits all funders and institutions, regardless of how long a maximal publisher embargo they allow. (Green OA after one a one-year embargo has been pretty much conceded by all publishers, whether or not they admit it, so that's the worst case scenario; one year of access-denial is now the figure to beat: The HEFCE/Liege mandates get everything deposited in institutional repositories immediately upon acceptance for publication, whether or not it is made OA immediately. And that means that access to everything immediately becomes at most 2 keystrokes away, one from the requestor, one from the author, thanks to the repositories' automated "Almost-OA" Button: see more below.) As to Elsevier's "special deals" for mandating institutions: sensible institutions will politely inform Elsevier that they are, as always, quite prepared to negotiate with publishers about subscription pricing ('Big Deals') -- but definitely not about university internal record-keeping and archiving policy, which is none of publishers' business. As to Elsevier authors (who -- not their universities! -- are the ones negotiating rights agreements with their publishers): They can rest assured that Elsevier is still completely on the Side of the Angels in its explicit, formal recognition of their authors' right to provide immediate, unembargoed (Green, Gratis) OA to their final drafts, by self-archiving them online, accessible free for all, in their institutional repositories -- a right that Elsevier has formally recognized ever since 2004. Let me repeat that very clearly: All Elsevier authors today retain the right to make their papers OA immediately upon publication -- no embargo -- by depositing their final refereed drafts in their institutional repositories and setting access to them as OA immediately. The recently added Elsevier double-talk about 'voluntariness' and 'systematicity' has absolutely no legal force or meaning. As it stands, it is just vacuous, pseudo-legal FUD and can and should be safely ignored by authors ..."