Estimating open access mandate effectiveness: The MELIBEA score

Abstract

MELIBEA is a directory of institutional open-access policies for research output that uses a composite formula with eight weighted conditions to estimate the "strength" of Open Access mandates (registered in ROARMAP). We analyzed total Web of Science-(WoS)-indexed publication output in years 2011-2013 for 67 institutions where OA was mandated in order to estimate the mandates' effectiveness: How well did the MELIBEA score and its individual conditions predict what percentage of the WoS-indexed articles is actually deposited in each institution's OA repository, and when. We found a small but significant positive correlation (0.18) between the MELIBEA "strength" score and deposit percentage. For three of the eight MELIBEA conditions (deposit timing, internal use, and opt-outs), one value of each was strongly associated with deposit percentage or latency (1: immediate deposit required; 2: deposit required for performance evaluation; 3: unconditional opt-out allowed for the OA requirement but no opt-out for deposit requirement). When we updated the initial values and weights of the MELIBEA formula to reflect the empirical association we had found, the score's predictive power for mandate effectiveness doubled (.36). There are not yet enough OA mandates to test further mandate conditions that might contribute to mandate effectiveness, but the present findings already suggest that it would be productive for existing and future mandates to adopt the three identified conditions so as to maximize their effectiveness, and thereby the growth of OA.

Where Are We Now? Survey on Rates of Faculty Self-Deposit in Institutional Repositories

“…Xia's 2008 follow-up focused on a single repository and found that many authors who participated heavily in disciplinary repositories did not deposit their own papers in their own depository, although liaisons might do so on their behalf. Vincent-Lamarre, Boivin, Gargouri, Larivière, and Harnad (2015) found "a small but significant positive correlation" between percentage of Web of Science (WoS)-indexed material deposited by faculty and open access (OA) policies that included the following three points: (a) immediate deposit required; (b) deposit required for performance evaluation; and (c) unconditional opt-out allowed for the OA requirement but no opt-out for deposit requirement (p. 3). Because the 67 institutions they studied were crawled, not surveyed, researchers were unable to gather information about the extent to which these deposits were facilitated by those maintaining the repository.…”

It Takes More than a Mandate: Factors that Contribute to Increased Rates of Article Deposit to an Institutional Repository

“…Furthermore, the authors emphasize that an OA policy needs to reward faculty who deposit their articles in an OA repository as part of the tenure process. Vincent-Lamarre et al (2014) recently explored whether specific characteristics of a policy impact policy effectiveness. The authors crawled 68 IRs at universities with an OA policy to determine the rate of deposit over time.…”

“…Although the specific reason for the lack of increased uptake at OSU is not known, local anecdotal evidence as well as the experiences of other institutions (Chen, 2014;Kim, 2010;Vincent-Lamarre et al, 2014) point to lack of awareness of the policy, understanding of the policy, and time constraints as possible reasons.…”

“…The question of what motivates faculty to deposit articles in OA repositories has been investigated previously (Kim, 2010;Vincent-Lamarre, Boivin, Gargouri, Lariviere, & Harnad, 2014). However, the findings and discussions primarily focus on author copyright concerns and faculty perceptions of deposit difficulty.…”

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“…The Pasteur4OA report on open access policies [Swan et al, 2015] highlights the need for aligned policies, noting that researchers may receive funding from more than one funder, and if there is a significant difference between policies, there may be conflicts. Due to the large variety of open access policies and the lack of evidence about what constitutes a good one, there are ongoing efforts to compare policies and develop a measure of the "strength" of a policy [Vincent-Lamarre et al, 2016]. This could then help R&D funders develop more unified and effective policies.…”