[Open-access] An anti-RWA bill

Tue Jan 31 20:12:57 UTC 2012

Can someone with first-hand experience of the NIH OA mandate clarify
how it is working at the moment?  My understanding is that a
publication goes through one of the usual channels, with some sort of
twist on the copyright transfer (e.g. a prior license having been made
and not nullified by the transfer), and papers are also then submitted
to PMC (within 12 months etc).  And, if I understand correctly, the
same is approximately true for all papers from  some institutions
which have an institutional OA mandate (Harvard?).  The traditional
journals put up with it because they have to (the NIH and the
institutions being the larger gorilla).  This is what I imagine when I
say "universal OA mandate": extend this tried-and-tested NIH system to
all other US federal funding agencies.  The fact that it has been in
place for several years without the sky falling ought to help
considerably with enacting something like that.

It's hardly the golden uplands of the future (and it certainly
wouldn't be the end of the road), but it's not Björn's vision of hell
either.
-- 
Nick Barnes, Climate Code Foundation, http://climatecode.org/