On the Risks of Over-Reaching and Over-Defining

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

SUMMARY: (a) On the current BBB definitions, Green OA ("price-freedom") is not OA, hence Green OA mandates are not OA mandates. This is self-contradictory, and the definition needs to be updated.
      (b) I am of course in no way opposed to getting more than OA ("price&permission-freedom") ("p&p"): I am opposed to getting less than OA because of (prematurely) insisting on more than OA: to delaying or diminishing the good for the better.
      (c) I believe that consensus on adopting and applying Green OA self-archiving mandates (true and effective mandates, with no opt-out option) is within immediate reach globally and has already demonstrated (locally) that it will generate full Green OA.
      (d) I also believe that universal Green OA will in turn generate p&p OA as a natural matter of course.
      (e) I also believe that reaching consensus on adopting and complying with p&p OA mandates from the outset is highly unlikely, and that holding out for that, instead of immediately agreeing on mandating Green OA, will only delay reaching universal OA. This would amount to getting less than OA because of (prematurely) insisting on more than OA.
      (f) The same is true about (incoherently) arguing (on the basis of BBB) that Green OA is not really OA, hence Green OA mandates are not really OA mandates.
      (g) Peter Suber has understood, fully, that our tactical differences are only about priorities: about means, not ends. (Not everyone else has understood this.)
      (i) There is an interim pragmatic trade-off among embargoes, opt-out options and the payment of extra publisher fees that is adequately resolved for the immediate primary needs of research and researchers by the immediate deposit mandate plus the "email eprint request" Button, which provide interim "almost-OA" during any embargo. Universal ID/OA mandates will hasten the inevitable natural death of access embargoes and usage restrictions.

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Klaus Graf wrote:

"How many people must die because an OA guru says 'There is a need to update BBB' and denies the need of re-use?"

Umm, a bit shrill! But here's my (6-step) answer:

(1) We have neither price-freedom nor permission-freedom today. (So if people are dying because of that, they're dying.)

(2) I am as sure as I am of anything (short of Cartesian certainty) that universal price-freedom (Green OA) not only fulfills most of the immediate needs of researchers, but that it is also the fastest and surest way of eventually achieving permission-freedom too (let's call that "Gold OA," for simplicity -- it's not, but it'll do).

(3) Now price-freedom can be achieved by self-archiving, and self-archiving can be (and is being) mandated.

(4) Insisting now on wrapping permission-freedom (copyright-retention) into the mandate makes it much more difficult and less likely that consensus will be reached on adopting a mandate at all -- and if adopted, this stronger p&p mandate seems to require an opt-out option as a compromise (as in Harvard's p&p mandate), which means it is no longer a mandate at all, hence compliance is no longer assured. (This can be fixed by restricting the opt-out option to the permission clause, and adding an immediate deposit clause with no opt-out.)

(5) But (as Peter Suber has very fully understood) I have no reservations at all about stronger mandates (Green price-freedom plus Gold permission-freedom mandates) if they can be successfully agreed upon, adopted, implemented and fulfilled. More is always better than less if it can indeed be had; more is only an obstacle if it stands in the way of the less that is already within reach.

(6) Harvard's p&p copyright-retention mandate, with an opt-out, is not a mandate. If it nevertheless proves, in 3 years, to deliver nearly 100% p&p OA, then it will be a success (and I will have been proved wrong). If not, then yet another 3 years will have been lost by needlessly over-reaching -- because we already have evidence that weaker Green deposit (price-freedom) mandates, without opt-out, deliver nearly 100% (Green) OA within 3 years. (And if Harvard's p&p mandate with opt-out is widely imitated in the meanwhile, instead of just a price-freedom mandate without opt-out, without even knowing whether p&p with opt-out is destined to succeed or fail, then a lot more years of OA will be needlessly lost.)

So "How many people must die"? Klaus thinks it will be fewer if we reach further, trying for both price-freedom and permission-freedom in the same swoop (at the risk of getting neither). I think it will be fewer if we first grasp what is already within our reach, because that is not only sure to give us most of what we want and need immediately (price-freedom), but it is also the most likely way to get us the rest (permission-freedom) thereafter too.

(By the way, if we don't update BBB, then Green OA is not OA, and Green OA mandates are not providing what they say and think they are providing, but something else. Nor have I been talking about OA for a decade and a half now, but about something else. "If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever wooed...")

"Kripke (1980) gives a good example of how "gold" might be baptized on the shiny yellow metal in question, used for trade, decoration and discourse, and then we might discover "fool's gold," which would make all the sensory features we had used until then inadequate, forcing us to find new ones. [Kripke] points out that it is even possible in principle for "gold" to have been inadvertently baptized on "fool's gold"! Of interest here are not the ontological aspects of this possibility, but the epistemic ones: We could bootstrap successfully to real gold even if every prior case had been fool's gold. "Gold" would still be the right word for what we had been trying to pick out all along, and its original provisional features would still have provided a close enough approximation to ground it, even if later information were to pull the ground out from under it, so to speak." [Harnad 1990]

Amen.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum