
California Can Lead the Way in Open Access - DiabloD3
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/06/california-can-lead-way-open-access
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RankingMember
The fact that intermediaries have been extracting fees from the public for
access to publicly-funded research is despicable. Full public access should've
always been the norm, and anything like this is at least a step in the right
direction.

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k2enemy
Mandating open access solves part of the problem (public access to research),
but doesn't address the rents extracted by publishers.

I would bet that the publishers are actually ok with this, as they can (and
do) make authors pay huge sums to make their articles open access. So now
authors are forced to pay those fees. For the author, that's fine if you have
a grant or institution that will pay those fees, but it is hard for others to
pay $1500 per article they want to publish. And it just shifts how
institutions are paying for journal access.

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Vinnl
Self-archiving (i.e. in a state-provided repository) does not typically
require additional charges.

However, I'd prefer mandating Open Access without providing those fees.
Authors are not _really_ forced to pay those fees, i.e. some authors will not
be able to and hence not publish their work in the traditional, expensive
journals. That would mean that they would be missing out on quality work,
leading to a diminished reputation, and even researchers who can pay
publishing fees to forego those journals.

Well, in theory at least.

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kodablah
> Under the bill, grantees would be required to put their works in a state-
> provided open access repository within a year of publication.

I was nodding along until I got to that quote. Why does it have to be in the
state-provided one? Can't you just set the rules and be done? And if you are
concerned that researchers have to maintain a website, then you can have an
optional state-provided repo. I hope this model is not adopted generally
across states and just requiring transparent access is enough. That way places
that comply with the spirit of the rule could arise without being run by the
government or concerned with publishing to each grantor's repository.

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slavik81
Is it really that onerous to do whatever it is you want with your paper, and
then just send a copy to the people who gave you your funding?

The State of California funds a lot of research, and having it all available
in one place should make things like archiving much easier.

My lab has all our papers available on our website, but my supervisor is old.
He's not going to live forever. It won't be too long after he goes that the
website will go too. The server needs security updates every once in a while.
The DNS will expire in ten years. We don't use HTTPS, but if we did, it would
expire within a couple years. All easy stuff, but when the only person
responsible for doing it has died, it won't get done.

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kodablah
If it is "just send a copy" of course it's not that onerous. But you
intentionally framed it in the most simple sounding way. I understand the
benefit of centralized hubs, I just also understand that governments are
rarely good at building them. At the very least it's a concern worth noting
instead of pretending everything will be perfect. I'd rather the law just stay
with rules and move towards required centralization as needed. For your lab,
it sounds like you'd leverage an optional system by choice.

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Vinnl
Some questions:

\- Does the research have to be funded solely by California, or is the
requirement also for research partly funded by California?

\- Do researchers have to manually take action a year after publication, or
can they deposit it now and tell the repository when to make it public?

\- Do researchers have to take action in the first place, or will the deposit
happen automatically by publishers?

All in all, it's clearly a step forward, though I wouldn't call it "leading
the way" \- at least not internationally. The embargo period is a shame
(whether it's six or twelve months), and it being in some state-provided
repository rather than at the primary point of publication really harms
discovery and hence its usefulness (though tools like Unpaywall [0] help). In
short, it doesn't tick all the right Open Access boxes [1], but at least it
doesn't let perfect be the enemy of the good.

[0] [https://unpaywall.org/](https://unpaywall.org/)

[1] [https://medium.com/flockademic/how-open-can-open-access-
be-c...](https://medium.com/flockademic/how-open-can-open-access-be-
cf6662565ecd)

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mistrial9
this may be contextually relevant :

[http://www.dgs.ca.gov/pd/Home/CloudComputing.aspx](http://www.dgs.ca.gov/pd/Home/CloudComputing.aspx)

