Open Access Archivangelism

Oxford University Press Journals has issued a highly misleading press release -- "Open Access Uptake: Five Years On," not making it clear that it is not Open Access (OA) uptake that is declining, but merely the uptake of OUP's pricey "Oxford Open (OO)" paid hybrid-Gold OA option. 

OUP offers its authors the option of paying (a sizeable sum) to have an article that has been published in OUP's subscription journals made OA (freely accessible online). Each OUP journal continues to collect subscription income, and the rest of its articles continue to be non-OA, but the paid-up OO articles are made OA by OUP -- along with a promise to lower OUP journal subscription costs proportionately, as hybrid Gold uptake increases. So this OUP press release is really just telling us that the uptake for the OO option is not increasing, but decreasing.

What is stated, however, is that it is OA uptake itself that is decreasing, which is the very opposite of the truth.

Globally, across all journals, "Green OA" self-archiving, by authors, of their own articles in OA repositories -- already 2-3 times the uptake of OUP's paid hybrid Gold OA option -- is increasing, not decreasing, in no small part because Green OA self-archiving mandates by authors' institutions and funders, requiring them to deposit their articles in OA repositories, are increasing.

The existence of the Green OA option is also the obvious explanation of why OUP's OO hybrid Gold uptake is low: Why should authors pay for Gold OA when they can provide Green OA for free (especially while subscriptions are still paying the costs of publication -- as well as tying up the potential funds to pay for Gold OA)? 

But OUP does not mention Green OA. Nor does it mention that OUP is among the minority of major publishers that have not yet given their green light to their authors to provide Green OA immediately upon acceptance for publication, instead attempting to impose an embargo of 12 to 24 months on Green OA (perhaps in the hope of forcing their authors to resort to paying for the OO option instead).

OUP is definitely not giving a good account of itself as the history of OA is writing itself today. Cambridge University Press (CUP), for example, among university publishers, The American Physical Society (APS) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Science magazine), among learned-society publishers, and even Elsevier and Springer, among commercial publishers are among the majority that are behaving far more responsibly and progressively than OUP, being on the "side of the angels" insofar as endorsing the immediate Green OA option for their authors is concerned.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum