Gratis Open Access Vs. Libre Open Access

The following commentary on Mike Carroll's GOAL posting on Taylor & Francis's press release is intended neither as an endorsement nor as a critique of T&F's (or any publisher's) gold OA offerings. It is just an attempt to clarify an important point about OA needs from the standpoint of researchers, who are both the providers and the primary intended users of peer-reviewed research articles:

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MC: "[The T&F] press release is misleading and should be corrected. You say that T&F is now publishing " fully Open Access journals", but unless I've misread the licensing arrangements this simply is not the case."

As far as I know, there is no such thing as "fully OA."

There is Gratis OA and there is Libre OA:

T&F are selling Gratis OA. That means (1) immediate, permanent online access, free for all on the Web -- to peer reviewed research journal articles.

(Note that along with free online access, the following also automatically comes with the territory:

(2) clicking,
(3) on-screen access,
(4) linking,
(5) downloading,
(6) local storage,
(7) local print-off of hard copy, and
(8) local data-mining by the user,

as well as global harvesting and search by engines like google.)

Mike Carroll is speaking about Libre OA, which means immediate, permanent online access, free for all on the Web (i.e., Gratis OA) plus certain further re-use, re-publication and re-mix rights.

(Note that many peer-reviewed journal article authors may not want to allow others to make and publish re-mixes of their verbatim texts. Journal article texts are not like music, videos, software or even research data, out of which creative modifications and remixes can be valuable. All scholars and scientists desire that their findings and ideas should be accessed, re-used, applied and built-upon, but not necessarily that their words should be re-mixed or even re-published -- just accessible free for all online, immediately and permanently.)

Today, the only peer-reviewed research journal articles to which researchers have access are those to which their institutions can afford subscription/licensed access. That means research is losing the uptake and impact of all those potential users who are denied access to it.

All researchers want free online access to all research they may need to consult or use, not just the research to which their institutions can afford subscription access.

All researchers want their research to be accessible to all researchers who may need to consult or use it, not just to those whose institutions can afford subscription access.

It is not at all it clear, however, that researchers want and need the right to make and publish re-mixes of other researchers' verbatim texts.

Nor is it clear that all or most researchers want to allow others to make and publish re-mixes of their verbatim texts.

Hence Gratis OA clearly fulfills an important, universal and longstanding universal need of research and researchers.

But it is not at all clear that this is true of Libre OA -- at least not for the very special case of the peer-reviewed research journal article texts that are the primary, specific target content of the OA movement.

Hence it is not at all clear that there is anything T&F need to correct.

MC: "A fully open access journal is one that publishes on the web without delay and which gives readers the full set of reuse rights conditioned only on the requirement that users provide proper attribution."

I believe that is not the definition of a fully OA journal but of a Libre OA journal.

MC: "T&F's "Open" program and "Open Select" offer pseudo open access."

Gratis OA is not pseudo open access. It is the difference between night and day for researchers who are denied access to the publisher's version of record because their institutions cannot afford access.

And night is the current state of affairs for 80% of research, and has been for the past 20 years, even though the means to provide Gratis OA (fully) have been available for at least that long.

Gratis OA can be provided in two different ways:

Gold OA journals like the T&F journals offer Gratis Gold OA, for which the author -- meaning the author's institution or funder -- must pay a publication fee. But most journals are not Gold OA journals, and hence the potential funds to pay for Gold OA are still locked up in institutional subscriptions to non-OA journals.

That means that not only can most research not be made OA by publishing it in Gold OA journals (since most journals are non-OA), but even for the Gold OA journals, the money to pay the publication fees (of those,like T&F, that charge a publication fee) is tied up in paying for non-OA subscription journals).

(This is equally true irrespective of whether the Gold OA journals offer Gratis OA or Libre OA.)

The second way to provide Gratis OA is through Green OA self-archiving (i.e., depositing the author's peer-reviewed final draft in the author's Institutional OA Repository immediately upon acceptance for publication).

Unlike Gold OA, Green OA does not require paying a publication fee. And Green OA can be provided for all articles, not just articles published in Gold OA journals.

And, most important, Green OA self-archiving can be mandated by researchers' institutions and funders, whereas publishing in Gold OA journals cannot be mandated. (Publishers cannot be compelled to convert to Gold OA; reserchers cannot be told which journal to publish in; and the money to pay for Gold OA is locked into journal subscriptions, which cannot be cancelled until and unless the contents of those subscription journals are otherwise accessible.)

Most Green OA (and Green OA mandates) are Gratis Green OA -- free online access.

But that is still the difference between night and day for researchers.

And Gratis Green OA self-archiving (but not Libre Green OA self-archiving) is already endorsed by over 60% of journals -- including the top journals in most fields.

So please let us not belittle Gratis OA as not "fully" OA (and certainly not before we have it!). Let us provide it, and mandate providing it.

And let us not keep focusing on Gold OA: The fastest, surest and cheapest way to full OA is for institutions and funders to mandate Gratis Green OA self-archiving.

(And, as a bonus, that's also the fastest, surest and cheapest way to Gold OA as well as Libre OA, thereafter.)

Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition. In: The Culture of Periodicals from the Perspective of the Electronic Age, pp. 99-105, L'Harmattan.
ABSTRACT: What the research community needs, urgently, is free online access (Open Access, OA) to its own peer-reviewed research output. Researchers can provide that in two ways: by publishing their articles in OA journals (Gold OA) or by continuing to publish in non-OA journals and self-archiving their final peer-reviewed drafts in their own OA Institutional Repositories (Green OA). OA self-archiving, once it is mandated by research institutions and funders, can reliably generate 100% Green OA. Gold OA requires journals to convert to OA publishing (which is not in the hands of the research community) and it also requires the funds to cover the Gold OA publication costs. With 100% Green OA, the research community's access and impact problems are already solved. If and when 100% Green OA should cause significant cancellation pressure (no one knows whether or when that will happen, because OA Green grows anarchically, article by article, not journal by journal) then the cancellation pressure will cause cost-cutting, downsizing and eventually a leveraged transition to OA (Gold) publishing on the part of journals. As subscription revenues shrink, institutional windfall savings from cancellations grow. If and when journal subscriptions become unsustainable, per-article publishing costs will be low enough, and institutional savings will be high enough to cover them, because publishing will have downsized to just peer-review service provision alone, offloading text-generation onto authors and access-provision and archiving onto the global network of OA Institutional Repositories. Green OA will have leveraged a transition to Gold OA.

Harnad, S. (2010) The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now. Prometheus 28 (1): 55-59.
ABSTRACT: Among the many important implications of Houghton et al’s (2009) timely and illuminating JISC analysis of the costs and benefits of providing free online access (“Open Access,” OA) to peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific journal articles one stands out as particularly compelling: It would yield a forty-fold benefit/cost ratio if the world’s peer-reviewed research were all self-archived by its authors so as to make it OA. There are many assumptions and estimates underlying Houghton et al’s modelling and analyses, but they are for the most part very reasonable and even conservative. This makes their strongest practical implication particularly striking: The 40-fold benefit/cost ratio of providing Green OA is an order of magnitude greater than all the other potential combinations of alternatives to the status quo analyzed and compared by Houghton et al. This outcome is all the more significant in light of the fact that self-archiving already rests entirely in the hands of the research community (researchers, their institutions and their funders), whereas OA publishing depends on the publishing community. Perhaps most remarkable is the fact that this outcome emerged from studies that approached the problem primarily from the standpoint of the economics of publication rather than the economics of research.

Harnad, S. (2010) No-Fault Peer Review Charges: The Price of Selectivity Need Not Be Access Denied or Delayed. D-Lib Magazine 16 (7/8).
ABSTRACT:Plans by universities and research funders to pay the costs of Open Access Publishing ("Gold OA") are premature. Funds are short; 80% of journals (including virtually all the top journals) are still subscription-based, tying up the potential funds to pay for Gold OA; the asking price for Gold OA is still high; and there is concern that paying to publish may inflate acceptance rates and lower quality standards. What is needed now is for universities and funders to mandate OA self-archiving (of authors' final peer-reviewed drafts, immediately upon acceptance for publication) ("Green OA"). That will provide immediate OA; and if and when universal Green OA should go on to make subscriptions unsustainable (because users are satisfied with just the Green OA versions) that will in turn induce journals to cut costs (print edition, online edition, access-provision, archiving), downsize to just providing the service of peer review, and convert to the Gold OA cost-recovery model; meanwhile, the subscription cancellations will have released the funds to pay these residual service costs. The natural way to charge for the service of peer review then will be on a "no-fault basis," with the author's institution or funder paying for each round of refereeing, regardless of outcome (acceptance, revision/re-refereeing, or rejection). This will minimize cost while protecting against inflated acceptance rates and decline in quality standards.

MC: "Could you please explain why T&F needs to reserve substantial reuse rights after the author or her funder has paid for the costs of publication?"

This question is valid -- but it is beside the point for the first and most important objective of the OA movement (still not reached in over a decade of trying), namely, immediate, permanent online access, free for all on the Web (i.e., Gratis OA).

T&F's Gratis Gold OA would provide that; but even if T&F provided Libre Gold OA, that would not be the fastest, surest or cheapest way to reach full OA -- by which I mean free online access to all 2.5 million articles published annually in the planet's 25,000 peer-reviewed journals. See the growth curves in Richard Poynder's "Open Access By Numbers."

Free online access is what research and researchers need most. Mandating Gratis Green OA self-archiving will provide just that -- and Gold OA, and as much Libre OA as researchers actually need and want -- will be not far behind.

But not if we keep over-reaching for Libre OA or Gold OA instead of providing and mandating Gratis Green OA.

MC: "If your response is that the article processing charge does not represent the full cost of publication, what charge would? Why aren't authors given the option to purchase full open access?"

Even the money to pay for Gratis Gold OA is still tied up in subscriptions, while subscriptions are still being paid for (and thereby paying for publication costs in full).

And mandating Gratis Green OA can provide free access at no extra cost, while subscriptions are still being paid for (and thereby paying for publication costs in full).

So why think about paying even more for Libre Gold OA today, when it's not at all clear that researchers want or need it -- whereas it's certain that they want and need Gratis OA (and they don't yet have it, even though it's fully within reach)?

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship