[open-science] clarification on effectiveness of mandates

Mon Apr 2 18:19:03 UTC 2012

[whoops, to the list this time]

Peter, thanks for this discussion.

I'd say it is important to keep the following three distinctions really
clear when talking about open data mandates and their effectiveness:

*what is mandated*:  OA to literature and open data are very different,
with different motivations and hurdles for the researcher.  Making
parallels to mandates for OA literature risks confusing people on data, and
should perhaps be done only when making these differences very clear.

*who does the mandating*:  journals or funders.  There is evidence that *
journal* mandates are quite effective, and evidence they are one of the
most effective tools for encouraging public data archiving.  I'm not
familiar with any evidence on *funder* mandates.  There may be some, say
with GWAS data funded by the NIH?

*how mandates are monitored*:  Clearly mandates to "share on request" are
likely much less effective than mandates to "provide an accession
url/number before we'll consider your contract complete."

Heather

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 12:48 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> ...
> Compliance with (say) Wellcome mandates for Open Access full text is
> probably about 60%. (The figure is not known). MRC is probably less in my
> small experience. There are few University mandates that seem to be
> enforced - I'd be surprised if 10% of UK universities had effective OA
> mandates for fulltext.
>
>>
>>>
>>> ...
>>
> PDB and Genbank have worked because the community require it, not the
> funders. I wouldn't call that a mandate in the current political sense.
>
>
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