Open Access Archivangelism

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[Update: See new definition of "Weak" and "Strong" OA, 29/4/2008]

SUMMARY: Not one, not two, but three of my valued OA comrades-at-arms have so far publicly registered their disagreement with my position on "re-use" rights. Here is my summary of the points at issue: Judicet Lector.
   Individual re-use capabilities: If a document's full-text is freely accessible online (OA), that means any individual can (1) access it, (2) read it, (3) download it, (4) store it (for personal use), (5) print it off (for personal use), (6) "data-mine" it and (7) re-use the results of the data-mining in further research publications (but they may not re-publish or re-sell the full-text itself: "derivative works" must instead link to its URL).
   Robotic harvestability: In addition, (8*) robotic harvesters like Google can harvest and index the freely available Web-based text, making it boolean full-text searchable. (9*) Robotic data-miners can also harvest the full-text, machine-analyse it, and re-use the results for research purposes (but they may not re-publish or re-sell the full-text itself: "derivative works" must instead link to its URL).
   OA is about access and use, not re-publication or re-sale: Online re-publishing or re-sale rights were never part of OA, any more than on-paper re-publishing or re-sale rights were; nor do they need to be, because of all the capabilities that come with the free online territory.
   The Green OA territory: Capabilities (1)-(9*) all come automatically with the Green OA territory. Hence there is no need to pay for Gold OA to have these capabilities, nor any need for further re-use rights beyond those already inherent in Green OA. Sixty-two percent of journals today already endorse immediate Green OA self-archiving.
   Gold OA includes Green OA: If you do elect to pay a publisher for Gold OA, you also get the right to deposit your refereed final draft ["postprint"] in your own OA Institutional Repository. Hence even here there is no need for further "re-use rights." (If you pay for "Gold OA" without also getting this Green OA, you have done something exceedingly foolish.)
   "Harvesting rights"? If authors self-archive their articles on the web, accessible freely (Green OA), then robots like Google can and do harvest and data-mine them, and have been doing so without exception or challenge, for years now.
   What about Gray publishers? With Gray publishers (i.e., neither Green nor Gold) the interim solution today is (i) Immediate Deposit (IDOA) Mandates, (ii) Closed Access deposit for Gray articles, and (iii) reliance on the semi-automatized "Email Eprint Request" ("Fair Use") Button to provide for individual researchers' usage and re-usage needs for these Gray articles during any Closed Access embargo interval (but note that the Fair Use Button cannot provide for robotic harvesting and data-mining of these embargoed full-texts).
   Extra Gold OA rights? For those articles published in the 38% of journals that are still non-Green today, I think that to rely on (i)-(iii) above is a far better interim strategy for attaining 100% OA globally than to pay hybrid Gray/Gold publishers for Gold OA today. But regardless of whether you agree that (i)-(iii) is the better strategy in such cases, what is not at issue either way is whether Gold OA itself requires or provides "re-use" rights over and above those capabilities already inherent in Green OA -- hence whether in paying for Gold OA one is indeed paying for something further that is needed for research, yet not already vouchsafed by Green OA.

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As not one, not two, but no fewer than three of my valued OA comrades-at-arms have so far publicly registered their disagreement with my position on one (possibly two) points of detail concerning "re-use" rights, it is perhaps worthwhile taking a closer look at these points to see exactly what is and is not at issue:

Individual re-use capabilities. The concern is about "re-use rights," but I prefer to speak of "re-use capabilities." My OA comrades suggest that these consist of more than just the ability to read, and they are certainly right about that: If a document is OA -- i.e., if its full-text is freely accessible online, immediately and permanently, webwide -- then that means that any individual, webwide, can (1) access the document online, (2) read it, (3) download it, (4) store it (for personal use), (5) print it off (for personal use), (6) "data-mine" it and (7) re-use the results of the data-crunching in further research and research publications (however, they may not re-publish or re-sell the full-text itself, in "derivative works," either online or in print, without permission, beyond a reasonable number of quoted/cited excerpts: instead, they may only link to the OA full-text's URL in such derivative works, leaving the user to click to access it).

Robotic harvestability. In addition to the individual re-use capabilities (1-7), there are the following: (8*) Robotic harvesters like Google can harvest the freely available Web-based text (exactly as they harvest all other texts that are freely available on the Web) and inverse-index it, thereby making it searchable by boolean full-text search in their search engines. (9*) Robotic data-miners can also harvest the text, machine-analyse it, and re-use the results of their data-crunching for research purposes in further research and research publications (however, they may not re-publish or re-sell the full-text itself, in "derivative works," either online or in print, without permission, beyond a reasonable number of quoted/cited excerpts: instead, they may only link to the OA full-text's URL in such derivative works, leaving the user to click to access it).

The Green OA territory. All the above -- (1)-(7) plus (8*)-(9*) -- already come automatically with the (Green) OA territory when a full-text is made freely accessible online, immediately and permanently, webwide. It is for this reason that I continue to insist -- and this is the fundamental point of disagreement with my three OA comrades -- that there is no need whatsoever for any further re-use rights beyond what already comes automatically with the Green OA territory. In particular, there is no need to pay extra for Gold OA, in order to "purchase" these "extra" re-use rights. Nor is there any need to add any further re-use rights to Gold OA copyright agreements (although formalizing the rights is always fine, and a good idea).

Gold OA includes Green OA. If you have paid a publisher for Gold OA, you have, among other things, certainly paid for the right to deposit your refereed final draft ["postprint"] in your own OA Institutional Repository (along with any XML tagging you may wish to add to facilitate usage, search, harvesting and data-mining): hence you already have (1)-(9*). Hence what you are paying for, if you elect to pay for Gold OA, is not extra re-use rights, but simply Gold OA, which already includes Green OA, which in turn already provides all the requisite re-use capabilities.

Gold OA without Green OA? If any author (or funder) were ever to pay for "Gold OA" without thereby also getting the publisher's blessing to deposit the refereed final draft (postprint) in the author's own Institutional OA Repository (Green OA), then that author (or funder) would be doing something exceedingly foolish. (I know of no "Gold OA" today that does not automatically include Green OA.) But, apart from that, paying for Gold OA is still an unnecessary expenditure today for all except those to whom money is no object and who consider paid Gold OA to be worth the cost because it helps promote Gold OA, reinforcing the fact that it is a potentially viable cost-recovery model. Gold OA itself is certainly not necessary for any re-use needs that are purportedly not fulfillable through Green OA alone.

Pay for Green OA rights? The second possible point of disagreement with my three OA comrades, a more minor one, would be about whether it is worth paying for Gold OA to a hybrid Gray/Gold publisher who does not endorse Green OA self-archiving except if paid for Gold OA: I'm inclined to say that Closed Access self-archiving in your Institutional Repository (IR), along with the IR's "Email Eprint Request" Button, is a much better strategy than paying such a hybrid Gray/Gold publisher for Gold OA in such cases, because it facilitates exception-free IDOA Deposit Mandates. But this is a less important point of disagreement than the logical, practical point about whether paid Gold OA is indeed needed for certain re-use rights.

"Harvesting rights"? I will close on the sole potentially substantive matter on which my three OA comrades do have at least a theoretical point -- but, I will argue, a point that has no practical import: The reason I put an asterisk after 8* and 9* is that it can be argued that whereas the individual uses (1) - (7) do indeed come with the territory if one makes a document freely accessible on the web, this does not necessarily cover robotic uses such as harvesting.

"Could?" is trumped by "Does." I will give a very simple and pragmatic answer: "Can," "could," "cannot" and "could not" are all trumped here by "does." My OA comrades are needlessly reasoning hypothetically in this case, when the objective evidence is already in: "If authors were to self-archive their articles on the web, freely accessibly (Green OA), as described above, could robots like Google harvest and data-mine them?" The answer is a resounding "yes": they could, and can, as demonstrated by that fact that they already do, without exception or challenge, and have been doing so for years now!

Articles vs. books. We are not talking here about the full-texts of books, ambivalently provided to Google by their publishers (and authors), or scanned directly by Google, with certain conditions imposed by their publishers and authors on their re-use. We are talking about authors' final drafts (postprints) of their peer-reviewed journal articles, self-archived free for all by their authors in order to maximize their accessibility, usage and impact. In the case of books, there can be and have been contentious harvesting issues. But in the case of self-archiving, not a single article's harvestability has been contested, and we already have a decade and a half of precedent and practice behind us in this. So those who are worrying about the need to formally guarantee Google's (and other harvesters') "right" to do what they are already doing, without exception or challenge, since the advent of the Web, are worrying about a notional obstacle, not a real one.

OA is not about or for re-publication or re-sale, online or in print; OA is about access and use. Before replying to insist that I am wrong about about "re-use" being a nonproblem for self-archived postprints, may I ask my readers please to recall (i) the parentheticals I carefully inserted earlier, concerning both individual users and harvesters: "(though they may not re-publish or re-sell the full-text itself, in "derivative works," either online or in print, without permission, beyond a reasonable number of quoted/cited excerpts: instead, they may only link to the OA full-text's URL in such derivative works, leaving the user to click to access it)". None of that is part of OA, nor has it ever been ("BBB" Declarations to the contrary notwithstanding). OA is a brand new possibility, opened up by a brand new medium: the Web. "Online re-publishing or re-sale rights" were never part of OA, any more than on-paper re-publishing or re-sale rights were -- nor do they need to be, because of everything that comes with the OA territory (i.e., with being freely accessible to one and all online).

What about Gray publishers? Recall also that (ii) Gold OA already includes Green OA (as part of what you are paying for) and that (iii) with Gray publishers (i.e., those that are neither Green nor Gold) the interim solution for now is Immediate Deposit mandates plus the semi-automatized "Email Eprint Request" (or "Fair Use") Button for any Closed Access deposits. That does provide for individual researchers' uses and re-uses even for this "Gray" literature (meaning non-Green, non-Gold journal articles) -- although it does not provide for robotic harvesting and data-mining of the (Closed Access) full-texts, just their metadata.

IDOA and the Button -- or Paid Gold OA? Here, as I said, my colleagues and I may agree to disagree on the second, minor point, as to whether (a) it is a better strategy to rely, for now, on mandated IDOA and the Button for articles published in non-Green journals (38%), trusting that that will eventually force those journals to go Green (62%)? or, rather, (b) it is a better strategy to pay for Gold OA right now? But note that what is not at issue either way is whether Gold OA itself requires or provides "re-use" rights over and above those capabilities already provided by Green OA -- hence whether in paying for Gold OA one is indeed paying for something further that is needed for research, but not already vouchsafed by Green OA.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum