Using UBC's open-access archive

I was just reading about the Wellcome Trust's open-access policy; only about 55% of grantees are complying with it.  One of the commentors suggested making academic institutions (e.g. universities) responsible for the compliance of their researchers, specifically having each institution provide an open-access repository for its researchers' papers.

I know that UBC's librarians are very much in favour of open access, and I think there's some kind of repository.  But I have no idea how it works, or how easy it would be for other researchers to find my papers if I put them there.  So I started trying to find out.

First step:  Google "UBC open access archive":

 

OK, a five-year-old blog post, a link to the 2009 Open Access Week page, a library-science course, a blog post last summer about Open Access Week, a wiki about a digital access system...

A page called Scholarly Communication at UBC looks promising.

I clicked on the Authors link, which got me general information about open access and the following:

 

OK, the Open Access resource page got me this:

 

OK, it looks like ciRcle might be UBC's open-access repository.

OK.  Reading various ciRcle pages answers some of my questions.  Materials deposited there are indexed by Google, Google Scholar, etc, so I guess they would show up when colleagues search for my papers.  But putting stuff there might be a big pain.  First, I have to belong to a 'Community' .

Hmm.  The Faculty of Science is a Community on ciRcle, but my department (Zoology) isn't.  My granting agency CIHR has Communities (or maybe they're Collections) for Research Outputs from 2008, 2009, and 2010 (to allow compliance with their open access policy), but nothing for 2011 or 2012.  OK, now I'll try to deposit something to either the Faculty of Science Community or the 2010 CIHR Community.  Then I can see how quickly it shows up in Google.

Well, it looks like I first have to register:

 

Registering was easy - it just wanted my name, email address and a phone number.  But now I'm at step 6, which says I'm supposed to send them an email.  OK, the email link goes to one of the librarians, so I'm asking her what I have to do next.

Later:  Registering was pretty easy, and the librarian quickly set up a '2011 CHIR' community for my submission.  And within a few days the submission was showing up on Google Scholar.  This particular paper is open access anyway, so readers can get it at the source (PLoS Pathogens).

Now I just have to figure out what else I want to post here.  Should I post all the same pdfs we've put on the 'What we've done' page of our web site?  That might make them easier for readers to find.  But will this be a more blatant form of copyright infringement, for papers that aren't open access? `

Open Access and other sliminess at Elsevier

Our latest paper on CRP sites has been accepted by the Journal of Molecular Biology. This is great, but now I'm dealing with the messy post-acceptance issues.

First, our page proofs have gone astray. The Elsevier manuscript-tracking page (yes, JMB is part of the evil empire of scientific publishing) says that page proofs were sent out on Aug. 27. They should have been sent by email, but I've seen no sign of them so far. Usually page proofs are supposed to be corrected and returned within 48 hrs; I've just emailed a person at JMB about them.

While looking for the proof email I discovered that I'd ignored other bureaucratic requirements. I needed to complete an on-line document assigning all copyright to Elsevier. This document made no mention of an open-access option, but I accepted it anyway. It did say that I am allowed to post the Elsevier-created pdf of the manuscript version on my own web page or on a public server, and that I can use the final Journal-quality pdf for teaching (but I can't post to any publicly available sites).

Then I dug around looking for the "authors-pay" open access option. I had been assuming that this would give me a creative-commons-type license to do anything I want with the final pdf and data it contains, but no. All that I get for paying Elsevier $3000 US is access to the paper on the JMB web site by people who don't have subscription access (who don't pay the ~$1000 for a personal JMB subscription or belong to institutions paying ~$8000 for a subscription).

So, should I give Elsevier the $3000? That way nobody will need to search around to find out if I've posted a free (unformatted) copy on my home page (or linked to this blog). But Elsevier will still hold the copyright.