Definition of Open Access

PhiloWeb 2012 keynote: Stevan Harnad by PhiloWeb

Mike Taylor writes (on Nature Blog):

"BOAI intended OA to mean much more than just the freedom to read an article online, and the term is used in this stronger sense by most of the people writing about open access today.... That’s not to say that “gratis OA” is not a good thing. Of course, it is. But..."

The original BOAI statement -- drafted online collectively by the original BOAI 2001 attendees, but authored mostly by Peter Suber -- was something new that we were improvising as we went along. It became clear, as subsequent years went by, that practical developments since 2001 necessitated some rethinking, revising and updating.

The revised, refined definition was formulated in 2008.

I might add that I have been working toward (what we eventually dubbed) "OA" since the early 1990's, and for me the first and foremost goal had always been (and still is) immediate, permanent, toll-free online access to 100% of peer-reviewed journal articles, i.e., "Gratis OA". I also have to note that we did not have 100% Gratis OA in 1994, when I made my "Subversive Proposal" for providing it, and we still do not have 100% Gratis OA today, almost two decades later, even though it is fully within reach. We are only at about 20%, except where it is mandated, in which case it jumps to 60% and then climbs steadily toward 100% (if the mandate is effectively formulated and implemented!).

Now, to ask for Libre OA (Gratis OA plus some re-use rights, not yet fully agreed upon) today is to ask for more than Gratis OA at a time when authors are not even providing Gratis OA (except if mandated). Libre OA also brings with it numerous unresolved complications, among them the fact that although all authors want users to have free access to their papers (even though they don't bother -- or dare -- to provide it unless mandated), not all authors want to grant users further re-use rights,; nor is it agreed yet what those further re-use rights should be. In addition, publishers, the majority of whom have given their green light to Gratis OA, are far from agreeing to Libre OA.

Yes, further re-use rights are important, and desirable, in many (not all) cases. But they are even harder to agree on and provide than Gratis OA, and we have not yet even managed to mandate that in anywhere sufficient numbers. And access itself -- "mere" access -- is not just important, but essential, and urgent, for all peer-reviewed research.

Yet 100% Gratis OA is fully within reach (and has been for years): All institutions and funders need do is grasp it, by mandating it.

Instead, we have been over-reaching for years now -- for Libre OA, for Gold OA, for copyright reform, for publishing reform, for peer review reform -- and not even getting what is already fully within reach.

So I appreciate your point, Mike, that getting much more than Gratis Green OA would be better than getting just Gratis Green OA.

But I also think that it's time to stop letting the best get in the way of the better: Let's forget about Libre and Gold OA until we have managed to mandate Green Gratis OA universally.

After that, all the other good things we seek will come into reach, and will come to pass.

But not if we keep trying, like Stephen Leacock's horseman, to ride off in all directions, while we just keep getting next to nowhere…

Practically speaking, public access (i.e., free online access to research, for everyone) includes researcher access (free online access to research for researchers).

Moreover, free online access to research, for everyone, includes both public access and researcher access.

So what difference does it make what you call it?

The answer is subtle, but important:

The goal of providing "public access to publicly funded research" has a great deal of appeal (rightly) to both tax-paying voters and to politicians.

So promoting open access as "public access" is a very powerful and effective way to motivate and promote the adoption of open access self-archiving mandates by public research funders such as NIH and the many other federal funders in the US that would be covered by the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA).

That's fine for publicly funded research.

But not all research -- nor even most research -- is publicly funded.

All research worldwide, however, whether funded or unfunded, originates from institutions: The universal providers of research are the world's universities and research institutes.

To motivate institutions to adopt open access self-archiving mandates for all of their research output requires giving them and their researchers a credible, valid reason for doing so.

And for institutions and their researchers, "public access to publicly funded research" is not a credible, valid reason for providing open access to their research output:

Institutions and their researchers know full well that apart from a few scientific and scholarly research areas (notably, health-related research), most of their research output is of no interest to the public (and often inaccessible technically, even if accessible electronically).

Institutions and their researchers need a credible and valid reason for providing open access to their research output.

And that credible and valid reason is so as to provided access for all of the intended users of their research -- researchers themselves -- rather than just those who are at an institution that can afford to subscribe to the journal in which it was published.

Subtle, but important.

It has become obvious that the >75% of researchers who have not been providing open access to their research for over two decades now -- despite the fact that the Web has made it both possible and easy for them to do so -- will not do so until and unless it is mandated. That's why mandates matter.

The rationale for the mandate, however, has to be credible and valid for all research and all researchers. "Public access to publicly funded research" is not.

But "maximize researcher access to maximize research uptake and impact" is.

And it has the added virtue of not only maximizing research usage, applications and progress -- to the benefit of the public -- but public access to publicly funded research also comes with the territory, as an added benefit.

So Mike Rossner (interviewed by Richard Poynder) is quite right that the two are functionally equivalent.

It is just that they are not strategically equivalent -- if the objective is to convince institutions and their researchers that it is in their interest to mandate and provide open access.

A "Compromise" Worthy of Solomon:

'Split the Difference
Between the (Publicly-Funded Research) Dog
and the (Publishing) Flea on its Tail...'




New York Times, February 27, 2012: "Gulf on Open Access to Federally Financed Research" by Guy Gugliotta

"The debate between these two extremes has been remarkably vitriolic, in part, perhaps, because neither side has been completely honest. Mr. Adler would not discuss publishers’ profit margins, and open-access advocates frequently say that the journals are low-overhead cash cows that are gouging the public. Open-access scientists, on the other hand, are less than candid about how important it is to their careers to be published in prominent traditional journals. If scientists truly wished to kill the system, all they would have to do is withhold submissions."

This balanced midpoint between "extremes" is utter nonsense, of course.

(1) The need (and reasons) of researchers for publishing in journals with high peer review standards are no secret (and nothing to hide or apologize for!)

(2) The objective of OA is not to "kill the system" but to provide OA.

(3) As usual, the false assumption is that OA = Gold OA publishing.

(4) OA has nothing to do with "withholding submissions" or boycotting.

(5) Both bills (FRPAA and RWA) are about mandating Green OA self-archiving of published journal articles.

What's worth writing an article (or book) about is how this relentless misunderstanding of something so stunningly simple just keeps propagating itself, year after year after year.

And it looks like Congress will yet again wimp out this year on FRPAA, splitting the difference with RWA in much the same clueless spirit as the above sterling example of "balanced" journalism...

So it's back to yet another year of trying to talk sense into universities about mandating Green OA...

One thing the journalist got right: There is indeed something that researchers are less than candid about: not withholding submissions but withholding keystrokes...

Harnad, S. (2006) Opening Access by Overcoming Zeno's Paralysis, in Jacobs, N., Eds. Open Access: Key Strategic, Technical and Economic Aspects. Chandos.

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship

In "The Open Access Movement is disorganized; this must not continue," Peter Murray-Rust [PM-R:] wrote:

PM-R: “Stevan Harnad… argues inter alia that gratisOA (e.g. through Green, CC-restricted) rather than libreOA (e.g. through Gold, or CC-BY) should be adopted...”

Actually, I argue that Gratis Green OA rather than Libre OA should be mandated (by researchers’ institutions and funders), because: 

(1) 100% OA is reachable only if we mandate it;

(2) only Green OA self-archiving (not Gold OA publishing) can be mandated; 

(3) all researchers want to provide Gratis OA (free online access); 

(4) not all researchers want to provide Libre OA (free online access plus remix and republication rights);

(5) all disciplines need Gratis OA;

(6) not all disciplines need Libre OA;

(7) Gratis OA is much more urgent than Libre OA;

(8) 100% Gratis OA is already reachable, 100% Libre OA is not;

(9) publisher restrictions are less of an obstacle for Gratis OA; 

(10) mandating Green Gratis OA is not only the fastest, surest and cheapest way to reach 100% Gratis OA but it is also the fastest, surest and cheapest way to reach Gold OA and Libre OA thereafter.

PM-R: “If we restrict ourselves to STM publishing (where almost all of the funders’ efforts are concentrated) there is not a shred of evidence that any author wishes to restrict the re-use of their publications through licenses.”

(a) OA is not just for STM articles: it’s for peer-reviewed research in all disciplines

(b) It is not just funders who are mandating OA but also institutions, for all research, funded and funded, in all disciplines

(c) Ask, and you will find more than a shred of evidence that not all authors (not even all STM authors) want to allow their verbatim texts to be re-mixed and re-published by anyone, without restriction.

(d) What all authors want re-used and re-mixed are their ideas and findings, not their verbatim texts.

(e) STM authors do want their figures and tables to be re-used and re-published, but with Green Gratis OA, that can be done; it is only their verbatim texts that they don’t want tampered with.

PM-R: “Most scientists don’t care about Open Access. (Unfortunate, but we have to change that)”

Most still don’t know about it, and those who do are afraid to provide it, even though it has been demonstrated to be beneficial for them and their research (in terms of uptake, usage, applications, citations, impact, progress).

And that’s just why OA mandates are needed.

PM-R: “Of the ones that care, almost none care aboutdetails. If they are told it is “open Access” and fulfils the funders’ requirements then they will agree to anything. If the publisher has a page labeled “full Open Access – CC-NC – consistent with NIH funding” then they won’t think twice about what the license is.”

What they care about in such cases is not OA, but fulfilling their funders’ (and institution’s) requirements.

That’s why OA needs to be mandated.

Most funders mandate only Gratis Green OA because it has fewer publisher constraints and fewer and shorter embargoes. But the advantage of mandating that the author’s version be made OA is that it makes it easier to give permission to re-use (the author’s version of) the figures and tables.

If consensus can be successfully reached on mandating Libre OA rather than just Gratis OA, all the better. But on no account should there be a delay in adopting a Gratis OA mandate in order to hold out for Libre OA.

Gold OA (whether Gratis or Libre) cannot be mandated, either by funders or institutions, and is hence not an issue. Funders and institutions cannot dictate researchers’ choice of journal; nor can they dictate publishers’ choice of cost-recovery model.

PM-R: “Of the ones who care I have never met a case of a scientist – and I want to restrict the discussion to STM – who wishes to restrict the use of their material through licenses. No author says “You can look at my graph, but I am going to sue you if you reproduce it” (although some publishers, such as Wiley did in the Shelley Batts affair, and presumably still do).”

The discussion of OA cannot be restricted to just STM, any more than it can be restricted to just Chemistry.

Authors, mostly ignorant of OA as well as of rights and licenses, mostly haven’t given any of them much thought.

But I can only repeat, even if they have not yet thought about it, many authors, including STP authors, would not relish giving everyone the right to publish mash-ups of their texts.

Graphs and figures are a different story; authors are happy to have those re-used and re-published in re-mixes by others (with attribution), and, as noted, the fact that the Green Gratis OA version is the author’s final draft rather than the publisher’s proprietary version of record makes this much simpler. (For the graphs in their version-of-record, some publishers might conceivably think of suing for this; but authors certainly would never do it, for their Green Gratis OA versions. So that’s another point in favor of Green Gratis OA.)

PM-R: “the OA movement … Cannot agree on what “open access” means in practice”

They can agree, and they have agreed: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/08-02-08.htm#gratis-libre

PM-R: “the OA movement… Spends (directly or indirectly) large amounts of public money (certainly hundreds of millions of dollars in author-side fees) without changing the balance of the market

The OA movement spends no public money. Perhaps you mean Gold OA journal authors?

And the objective of the OA movement is not “changing the balance of the market.” Its objective is OA – Gratis, and, where needed, Libre.

PM-R: “the OA movement… Has no clear intermediate or end-goals”

The OA movement’s end-goal is Gratis OA (free online access) and, where needed, Libre OA (free online access plus re-use, re-mix re-publish rights).

Where Libre OA is needed, Gratis OA is an intermediate goal.

PM-R: “When I find an Open Source program, I know what I am getting. When I find an Open Access paper I haven’t a clue what I am getting”.

You can be almost 100% sure that what you are getting is the peer-reviewed, final, accepted draft.

And with that, researchers whose institution cannot afford access to the publisher’s version of record would be almost 100% better off than they are now.

And that’s why the first priority is mandating Green Gratis OA self-archiving.

(The disanalogies between Open Access and Open Source are too numerous to itemize.)

PM-R: “When I publish my code as Open Source I can’t make up the rules. I must have a license and it must be approved by OSI”

But OA is about peer-reviewed research, and there it is the refereed and editor that must approve the article.

PM-R: “the OS community cares about what Open Source is, how it is defined, how it is labelled and whether the practice conforms to the requirements…. By contrast the OA community does not care about these things”.

As stated earlier, the OA (advocacy) community knows what OA (Gratis and Libre, Green and Gold) and what their respective “requirements” are.

It is not the OA advocates who don’t care enough about such things; it is, unfortunately, the researcher community: the ones who need to provide the OA content.

And what’s missing isn’t a definition of OA, but OA.

PM-R: ““Open Access” was defined in the Budapest and other declarations”.

And the definition – not etched in stone but evolving  – has been revised and updated: http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/08-02-08.htm#gratis-libre

PM-R: “Everyone (including Stevan) would agree that this is now consistent with what is (belatedly) being labelled as OA-libre. Note that Stevan was a signatory to this definition of Open Access”.

I signed and helped draft the first OA definition, but at that time I was not yet aware of nuances whose importance has since become apparent, requiring a revision of the definition.

PM-R: “My immediate concern is that unless we organize the definition, labelling and practice of Open Access we are simply giving OA-opponents or OA-doubters carte blanche to do whatever they like without being brought to account. We are throwing away hundreds of millions of dollars in a wasteful fashion. We are exposing people to legal action because the terms are undefined”.

I’m afraid I’m lost here: Who are “we”? OA advocates? What money are we throwing away? Perhaps you means authors and their funders, spending money on Gold OA that is Gratis rather than Libre? Well, I agree that’s a waste of money, but not because the OA’s Gratis but because Green OA needs to mandated before it makes sense to pay for Gold OA.

PM-R: “If you try to re-use non-libre material because it was labelled “Open Access” you could still end up in court”.

Highly unlikely (especially if you’re re-using graphics from the author’s draft rather than the publisher’s version-of-record).

But if you have access to it at all, you’re already better off than those researchers who do not: And that’s the primary problem OA was defined and designed to fix.

PM-R: “As a UK taxpayer I fund scientists to do medical research (through the MRC). The MRC has decided (rightly) that the results of scientific research should be made Open. But they are not Open according to the BOAI declaration”.

They are Gratis OA (after an embargo period). Once all research is Gratis OA (and immediately upon acceptance for publication), Libre OA’s day will come.

PM-R: “Individuals such as Stevan, Peter Suber, Alma Swan, [have] relatively little coordination and no bargaining power”

True. But we did coordinate on the updating of the definition of OA. And EnablingOpenScholarship (EOS) will attempt to guide and coordinate the OA policy-making of universities and research instititions, worldwide.

But OA advocates, individually and collectively, are not the ones with the power to provide OA: the ones with the power to provide it are researchers themselves. And the ones with the power to mandate that they provide it are their institutions and funders.

PM-R: “So my simple proposal is that we need an Open Access Institute

Let’s publish our papers in whatever is the best journal for them, but let’s concentrate on persuading institutions and funders to mandate that we make them Green OA.

I look forward to PM-R’s explanation of why he does not agree.

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

In 2006, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM) became the 1st North American University to sign the Berlin Declaration on Open Access.

Since then, thirty two more North American Universities have so far followed suit.

But not all of the signatories have yet mandated Open Access -- and that's really the only thing that counts.

The rest is just apple-pie approbation in principle, until and unless it is put into practice, as spelled out at Berlin 3 in 2005 at the University of Southampton.

Dear colleagues,

They just keep coming, almost daily, pre-emptively spamming all the people we had been hoping to win over to Open Access.

Not only is it regrettable that OA is so unthinkingly identified in most people's minds with gold OA publishing in general, but this growing spate of relentless fool's-gold junk-OA spamming in particular is now coalescing with that misconception -- and at the same time more and more universities and funders are reaching into their scarce funds to pay for this kind of thing, thinking this is the way to provide OA.

(Meanwhile, green OA mandates, the real solution, are still hovering at about 200 out of about 10,000 (2%!) -- and mostly needlessly watered-down mandates. I wish I could figure out a way to turn this liability -- fool's-gold spam and scam -- into an asset for spreading green mandates, but I'm afraid that even Richard Poynder's critical articles are being perceived mostly as critical of OA itself rather than just of fool's-gold OA.)

The real culprits are not the ones trying to make a buck out of this current spike in pay-to-publish-or-perish/gold-fever co-morbidity, but the researchers themselves, who can't put 2+2 together and provide green OA on their own, cost-free; and their institutions and funders, who can't put 2+2 together and mandate that they do it.

Instead of thinking, it's easier to shell out for fool's gold...

Richard's exposés are helpful, but I think they are not enough to open people's eyes.

So all we can do is hope that the spamming itself will become so blatant and intrusive that it will wake people up to the fact that this is not the way to provide OA...

Stevan

PS Not only do I not work on anything faintly resembling "proteomics/bioinformatics" but I have no "relationship with OMICS Group" (except possibly prior complaints about spam)! These spam disclaimers are a lark. They seem to be using professional spam services that try to appear respectable.

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From: "JPB"<editor.jpb@omicsgroup.co>
Date: October 28, 2011 4:29:28 AM EDT
To: "Stevan Harnad" 
Subject: Invitation for Special Issue: Journal of Proteomics & Bioinformatics
Reply-To: editor.jpb@omicsgroup.co

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Journal of Proteomics & Bioinformatics - Open Access

Dear Dr. Stevan Harnad, 

We are glad to announce the success of Journal of Proteomics & Bioinformatics  (JPB) an Open Access platform for proteomics, bioinformatics research and updates. 

To provide a rapid turn-around time regarding reviewing, publishing and to disseminate the articles freely for research, teaching and reference purposes we are releasing following special issues. 

Upcoming Special Issues Handling Editor(s)

Domain-Domain Interactions Dr. Chittibabu (Babu) Guda, University of Nebraska Medical Center, USA
Microarray Proteomics Dr. Qiangwei Xia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Canonical approach: Moleculomics Dr. Lifeng Peng, Victoria University, China
Shifts and deepens : Biomarkers Dr. Kazuyuki Nakamura, Yamaguchi University, Japan
Membrane Protein Transporters Dr. Mobeen Raja, University of Alberta, Canada
Structural and Functional Biology Dr. Viola Calabró, University of Naples "Federico II", ITALY
HLA-based vaccines Dr. Mario Hugo Genero, Universidad Austral, Republica Argentina
Insulin Signaling & Insulin Resistance Dr. Zhengping Yi, Arizona State University, USA
Proteomics for Cancer chemoprevention Dr. Imtiaz Siddiqui, University of Wisconsin, USA
Membrane Proteomics Dr. Yurong Lai, Groton Laboratory, Pfizer, Inc, UK
We would like to request a contribution from you for any of these special issues or regular issues of the Journal to improve the Open Access motto in this field. 

For more details PS : http://www.omicsonline.com/SpecialissueJPB.php 

Why to submit and benefits : http://www.omicsonline.org/special-features.php 

Submit your article online at : http://www.editorialmanager.com/proteomics/ 
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We shall look forward to hear from you. 

Sincerely, 

Editors, Journal of Proteomics & Bioinformatics 

Dr. Chittibabu (Babu) Guda, University of Nebraska Medical Center, USA 
Dr. Qiangwei Xia, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA 
Dr. Lifeng Peng, Victoria University, China 
Dr. Kazuyuki Nakamura, Yamaguchi University, Japan 
Dr. Mobeen Raja, University of Alberta, Canada 
Dr. Viola Calabró, University of Naples "Federico II", ITALY 
Dr. Mario Hugo Genero, Universidad Austral, Republica Argentina 
Dr. Zhengping Yi, Arizona State University, USA 
Dr. Imtiaz Siddiqui, University of Wisconsin, USA 
Dr. Yurong Lai, Groton Laboratory, Pfizer, Inc, UK 

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My friend Eric Van de Velde, who did so much for the growth of Open Access at Cal Tech across the years, has just (over)generously credited the birth of the Open Access (OA) Movement to the birth of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI).

I hate to have to throw a blanket on this 12th birthday parade, but the birth of the Open Archives Initiative (OAI)  (a protocol for making online bibliographic databases -- initially called "archives," later re-baptised "repositories"-- interoperable) in 1999 certainly was not the birth of the Open Access Movement.

Either the Open Access Movement began (as I prefer to think) in the '80s or perhaps even the '70s, when (some) researchers first began making their papers freely accessible online in anonymous FTP archives, or it began with the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) (2001), where the term "Open Access (OA)" was first coined (a few months after the first meeting, just as "Open Archives" had been coined a few months after the Santa Fe meeting).

Nothing here to compete in primacy for, however, since the progress of the OA movement has been dismayingly slow, ever since, and still is, to this very day.

But it's particularly ironic to see the origins of the OA movement (warts and all) attributed to OAI when in fact the idea of freeing the refereed research literature from access toll barriers was very explicitly (and exceedingly rudely) disavowed by the prime organizer of the three organizers of the Santa Fe meeting. The archival record for this seems to have disappeared, but I've saved the two postings from which the following is excerpted:

Tue, 30 Nov 1999 20:14:30 -0700

"…someone also forwarded me from the times higher ed supp 12 nov 1999:

"Harnad, who attended the Santa Fe meeting, said all conference participants agreed that scientific and scholarly publishing was being 'held hostage' and needed to be freed. 'They all felt ... . Most wanted...'"

"i don't remember anyone saying anything about hostages (though i did miss the end of the first day) -- isn't it demagoguery to impute words and sentiments?..."

The rest of the posting expands on these sentiments:

http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/oai1.htm
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/oai2.htm

30 November will also be the 12th anniversary of the last time I ever exchanged words with the prime organizer in question.

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship

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Reply to:
Jennings, David (October, 2011) "What's Holding Open Access Publishing Back?"

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Yes, it is an indisputable fact that open access (OA) is not growing nearly as quickly as it can and should, despite (1) OA's equally indisputable benefits to research, researchers, research institutions, research funders, the R&D industry, and the tax-paying public that supports the research, and despite (2) the likewise indisputable fact that 100% OA has been fully and easily within the reach of the worldwide research community -- at no extra cost and only a extra few keystrokes' worth of effort -- for over two decades now.

But one of the big things holding back OA progress is calling it, thinking of it and treating it as "OA publishing." It is not. OA means providing free online access to research journal articles, but trying to reform publishing by converting the journals into OA journals ("Gold OA") is just one of the ways to provide OA, and certainly neither the simplest, the easiest, the surest, the fastest nor the most direct way.

The simplest, easiest, surest, fastest and most direct way of making journal articles OA is for their authors to make them freely accessible online by self-archiving them on the web, free for all, immediately upon acceptance for publication by whatever journal they publish them in ("Green OA").

Yes, it still remains a puzzle -- indeed a koan -- why authors have not been doing this spontaneously, ever since the advent of the web, of their own accord. (Only about 20% of them have been doing so.) The persistent misconception and misrepresentation of OA as being synonymous with just Gold OA publishing is one of the reasons ("gold fever").

And yes, providing more information, and more accurate information, rather than misinformation to the researcher-authors and the research community certainly helps. But neither information-gathering (through researcher surveys) nor information dissemination (through researcher alerting) will solve the problem of the glacially slow growth of OA. Nor will further brain-storming among "stake-holders" -- (1) researchers, (2) their institutional management, (3) their institutional libraries, (4) their research funders, (5) the tax-payers who support the research and, least of all, (6) publishers (who are not really stake-holders in OA and its benefits at all, but just service-providers trying to preserve their current, ample revenue streams while trying to avoid conflict with their authors' expressed and perceived interests).

The solution to the problem of authors' slowness in providing OA spontaneously is already known, and has already been tried, tested, and proven to work: institutions (2) and funders (4) need to mandate (i.e., require) Green OA self-archiving by their researchers (1) for their own good, as well as for the good of research impact and progress:

After 20 years of needless, cumulative loss in research impact and progress, there's no need for still more surveys and soul-searching. The hand-writing is on the wall (not in the anecdotal musings of an individual surveyed chemist or classicist):

Green OA self-archiving simply has to be made into official policy by the only two stake-holders in a position to do so: institutions (2) and funders (4). Librarians (3) already know this; researchers (1) are clearly waiting for an official policy from their institutions and funders, making Green OA self-archiving mandatory in the online era, otherwise they will not bother (or dare) to do it for yet another 20 years; tax-payers (5) can do nothing directly; and publishers (6) are just reluctantly along for the ride: Mandating Green OA is in the hands of the research community alone.

See:
No Need To Renounce High-Impact Non-OA Journals To Provide OA: OA Not = OA Journals (July 2011)

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship (EOS)
http://www.openscholarship.org