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Budapest Open Access Initiative: BOAI Forum Archive [BOAI] [Forum Home] [index] [prev] [next] [options] [help]boaiforum messages[BOAI] Re: OA policies and their "weight"From: Remedios Melero <rmelero AT iata.csic.es>
Good morning! Thanks Stevan for your comments, in fact I did not expect so much controversial discussion, but I prefer this since it serves to think about some aspects that one has not considered or has misssed. I will revise your comments and see how we can implement some improvements to avoid any missunderstanding. However, something I would like to make clear is: 1. The CSIC ranking of repositories and universities is nothing to compare, that is a ranking build on "visibility" of an institution ↵ in the web. A graphic representation has not to mean necesarily a ranking but a measurement 2. MELIBEA is not a directory of repositories, but OA policies, there ara a lot of repositories but few OA policies, obviously most of the policies are associated with the deposit in an insituttional or subject repository. 3. The model is based on the weights of some variables, you are right, they could be different because it will be always an approach, however they have been tested, changed and modified before MELIBEA was publicly announced. I will take the advantage of summer holidays to think about all these issues and hopefully after them I can show some changes aimed to improve the tool. I wil start with the colors which I see were more important than thought! Reme El 19/07/2010 15:56, Stevan Harnad escribió: > Dear Reme, if I may also make an intervention in your exchange with Steve ↵ Hitchcock about the MELIBEA OA policy evaluator: > http://www.accesoabierto.net/politicas/ > > The MELIBEA service is extremely timely and promising, and could be ↵ potentially useful and even influential in shaping OA mandates -- but that ↵ makes it all the more important to get it right, rather than releasing MELIBEA ↵ prematurely, when it still risks increasing confusion rather than providing ↵ clarity and direction. > > You are right to point out that -- unlike the CSIC's University Ranking ↵ and the Repository Ranking -- the policy evaluator is not really a ranking. But ↵ you have set up the composite algorithm and the graphics to make it a ranking ↵ just the same. > > You are also point out, correctly, that the policy criteria for ↵ institutions and funders are not (and should not be) the same. Yet, with the ↵ MELIBEA coding as well as the algorithm, they are treated the same way. > > You also point out, rightly, that gold OA publishing policy is not central ↵ to institutional OA policy making, yet there it is, as part of the MELIBEA ↵ algorithm. > > You also point out that the color code has nothing to do with the ↵ "green" OA coding -- yet there it is, competing with the widespread ↵ use of green to designate self-archiving, and thereby causing confusion, both ↵ overt and covert. > > I would be more than happy to give you feedback on every aspect of MELIBEA ↵ -- it could be a useful and natural complement to the ROARMAP registry of OA ↵ policies. > > But as it is designed now, I can only agree with Steve Hitchcock's points ↵ and conclude that consulting MELIBEA today would be likely to induce confusion ↵ and would not help in bringing the all-important focus and direction to OA ↵ policy-making that I am sure CSIC, too, seeks, and seeks to help bring about. > > Here are just a few prima facie points: > > (1) Since MELIBEA is not, and should not be construed as a ranking of OA ↵ policies -- especially because it includes both institutional and funder ↵ policies -- it is important NOT to plug it into an algorithm until and unless ↵ the algorithm has first been carefully tested, with consultation, to make sure ↵ it weights policy criteria in a way that optimizes OA progress and guides ↵ policy-makers in the right direction. > > (2) For this reason, it is more important to allow users to generate ↵ separate flat lists of institutions or funders on the various policy criteria, ↵ considered and compared independently, rather than on the basis of a ↵ prematurely and arbitrarily weighted joint algorithm. > > (3) This is all the more important since the data are based on less then ↵ 200 institutions, whereas the CSIC University Rankings are based on thousands. ↵ Since the population is still so small, MELIBEA risks having a disproportionate ↵ effect on initial conditions and hence direction-setting; all the more reason ↵ NOT to amplify noise and indirection by assigning untested initial weights ↵ without carefully thinking through and weighing the consequences. > > (4) A potential internal cross-validator of some of the criteria would be ↵ a reliable measure of outcome -- but that requires much more attention to ↵ estimating the annual size and growth-rate of each repository (in terms of OA's ↵ target contents, which are full-text articles), normalized for institution size ↵ and annual total target output. Policy criteria (such as request/require or ↵ immediate/delayed) should be cross-validated against these outcome measures ↵ (such as percentage and growth rate of annual target output). > > (5) The MELIBEA color coding needs to be revised, and revised quickly, if ↵ there is to be an algorithm at all. All those arbitrary colors in the display ↵ of single repositories as ranked by the algorithm are both unnecessary and ↵ confusing. The objective should be to order and focus clearly and intuitively. ↵ Whatever is correlated with more green OA output (such as a higher level or ↵ faster growth rate in OA's target content) should be coded as darker or bigger ↵ shades of green. The same should be true for the policy criteria, separately ↵ and jointly: in each case, request/require, delayed/immediate, etc., the ↵ greenward polarity is obvious and intuitive. This should be reflected in the ↵ graphics as well as in any comparative rankings. > > (6) If you include repositories with no OA policy at all (i.e., just a ↵ repository and an open invitation to deposit) then all you are doing is ↵ duplicating ROAR and ROARMAP, whereas the purpose, presumably, of MELIBEA, is ↵ to highlight, weigh and compare specific policy differences among (the very ↵ few) repositories that DO have policies. > > (7) The sign-up data -- ↵ http://www.accesoabierto.net/politicas/nueva.php?directorio=politicas -- are ↵ also rather confusing; the criteria are not always consistent, relevant or ↵ applicable. The sign-up seems to be designed to make a funder mandate the ↵ generic option, whereas this is quite the opposite of reality. There are far ↵ more institutions and institutional repositories and policies than funders. ↵ There should be separate criterial lists for institutional policies and for ↵ funder policies; they are not the same. There is also far too much focus on ↵ gold OA policy and payment. If included at all, this should only be at the end, ↵ as an addendum, not the focus at the beginning, and on a par with green OA ↵ policy. > > (8) There is also potential confusion on the matter of ↵ "waivers": There are two aspects of a mandate. One concerns whether ↵ or not deposit is required (and if so, whether that requirement can be waived) ↵ and the other concerns whether or not rights-reservation is required (and if ↵ so, whether that requirement can be waived). These two distinct and independent ↵ requirements/waivers are completely conflated in the current version of ↵ MELIBEA. > > I hope there will be substantive consultation and conscientious redesign ↵ of these and other aspects of MELIBEA before it is can recommended for serious ↵ consideration and use. > > Stevan Harnad > > > On 2010-07-19, at 5:18 AM, Remedios Melero wrote: > > >> Dear Steve, >> >> I apologize for the delay in my response, but I will try to give some ↵ explanations to make clear some issues you raised in your message (my comments ↵ are in capital letters, to distinguish them from yours) >> >> >> >> El 15/07/2010 11:22, Steve Hitchcock escribió: >> >>> Reme, Thank you for bringing this new service to our attention. ↵ OA policies are vitally important to the development of institutional ↵ repositories, and services that can highlight and bring attention to this ↵ development can be valuable. >>> >>> There are a few aspects of the validation aspects of the new ↵ MELIBEA service that confuse, and possibly trouble, me. The first is the main ↵ indicator, %OAval, which is the most visible result for a policy. What do you ↵ expect this will tell people about a given policy? I randomly selected a couple ↵ of policies, one of which was for my own school, to find they each scored about ↵ 50%. I would expect these to be among the leaders in terms of OA policies, so ↵ this seems a surprisingly unhelpful score. >>> >>> So what's the explanation? Note that the objects being evaluated ↵ are institutional OA policies; they are effectively being presented in relation ↵ to institutional repositories when the policy specifies where to archive is an ↵ IR with a URL. It seems that the scores include ratings for OA publication ↵ policy, libre vs gratis OA, publisher pdf, sanctions (score if Yes), incentives ↵ (score if Yes), etc., some of which an institution might specify but which ↵ might not apply to an IR >>> http://www.accesoabierto.net/politicas/politicas_estructura.php >>> . However you weight these factors they are still contributors to ↵ the overall score, so a policy that is specific to an IR is immediately ↵ handicapped, or appears to be unless there is more context to understand the ↵ scores. >>> >>> >>> >>> >> AS I WROTE BEFORE THIS IS NOT A RANKING, IT IS NOT THE AIM OF MELIBEA ↵ BUT TO HAVE A KIND OF REFERENCE ON WHAT TOPICS, ISSUES OR MATTERS TO BE ↵ INCLUDED IN AN OA POLICY. WE ARE TALKING ABOUT INSTITUTIONAL POLICIES OF ↵ DIFFERENTE NATURE, NOT ABOUT REPOSITORIES POLICIES. IF THE POLICY ONLY TALKS ↵ ABOUT THE REQUIREMENT TO DEPOSIT IN A REPOSITORY, IT SHOULD SPECIFY WHAT, WHEN ↵ AND UNDER WHAT CONDITIONS, IF ANY. IT IS NOT THE SAME TO SAY WHAT DOCUMENTS ↵ AND WHAT VERSIONS AND WHEN THAN SIMPLY SAY " ANY" OR "AS SOON AS ↵ POSSIBLE" (this could be a month after publication or years after ↵ publication, depending on one's criteria). GOLD ROUTE, NEVER IS REQUIRED ↵ ACCORDING OUR APPROACH ("Gold (Recommended in OA journals") AND NOT ↵ ALL OA JOURNALS ARE SUPPORTED BY SAME ECONOMIC MODEL. >> >> >> >>> Which leads me to another question on the visualisation of the ↵ validator, and its use of green, gold (and red) in the meter. Do the green and ↵ gold refer the the classic OA colours? This would be quite convenient, since it ↵ would appear that the green repository policies I mentioned above are achieving ↵ almost full scores in the green zone of the meter. However, I suspect this ↵ cannot be the case, because it would assume that institutions must have a green ↵ AND gold policy, but not simply gold (whatever argument could be put for that). >>> >>> >>> >> COLORS DO NOT MEAN THAT, WE WANTED JUST TO DISTINGUISH ZONES LIKE IT ↵ WERE A SPECTRA. >> >> >>> It is important that new services should help reveal and promote ↵ OA policies, as you seek to do, but at the same time not to prejudice the ↵ development of such policies by mixing and not fairly separating the ↵ contributing factors, especially where these relate to different types of OA. >>> >>> >>> >> I DO NOT THINK WE ARE MIXING, IN FACT THERE TWO MODELS, ONE FOR UNIV. ↵ AND RESEARCH CNETRES AND ANOTHER FOR FUNDERS AND GOV. INSTITUTIONS AND THE ↵ QUESTIONS FOR THEM ARE DIFFERENT, for instance, FOR A FUNDER THE QUESTION ABOUT ↵ DEPOSIT O THESIS IS NOT APPLICABLE. >> IN SUMMARY, OUR MODEL COULD NOT BE "PERFECT" BUT I IS ONE, ↵ WHICH COULD DETECT DIFFERENCES BETWEEN REQUEST AND REQUIRE, WHO, WHAT , WHEN IF ↵ THERE ARE ANY INCENTIVES OR SANCTIONS ( this has not to be a negative point ↵ but to remember we should assume reponsible attitudes). >> >> However we will revise the model to see if we can make any improvement ↵ to make it clear, we are working also in a graph interface to show some data in ↵ graphical form. >> Best wishes >> Reme >> >> >>> >>>> R. Melero >>>> IATA, CSIC >>>> Avda Agustín Escardino 7, 46980 Paterna (Valencia), Spain >>>> TEl +34 96 390 00 22. Fax 96 363 63 01 >>>> E-mail >>>> rmelero AT iata.csic.es >>>> >>>> >>>> http://www.accesoabierto.net >>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> >>>> >>>> >> >> -- >> To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: >> http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f >> > > > -- > To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f > -- To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f [BOAI] [Forum Home] [index] [prev] [next] [options] [help]
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