Definition of Open Access

Well, either everyone was so inspired by my 14 points on "What is open access and how to provide it?" that they are busy implementing them right now, or else my 14 points did not even succeed in inspiring objections!

In any case, here are the replies to the 14 prima facie objections to my own 14 points that I myself raised:

1. What evidence is there that "research is losing potential usage and impact" because "articles are only accessible to users at institutions that can afford to subscribe to the journal in which they were published"?

The evidence (longstanding) that institutions can only afford to subscribe to a small and shrinking fraction of journals is here.

The evidence that making articles OA significantly increases both downloads and citations is here.

2. Who says "there are two ways to provide OA" [green OA self-archiving of non-OA journal articles or publishing in a gold OA journals]? Why can't researchers just post articles online instead of publishing them in a journal at all?

Because OA's target content is peer-reviewed research publications, not unrefereed self-publication

3. Why is only green OA "in the hands of the research community"? Can't the research community just stop publishing in and subscribing to journals that don't convert to gold OA?

34,000 biologists tried the latter, 10 years ago, and it failed (predictably, because there was no viable alternative -- and there still isn't one).

4. Why is it that only "green OA can be mandated by the research community"? Can't the research community just stop publishing in and subscribing to journals that don't convert to gold OA?

See 3, above.

5. Why are publication costs paid only by "institutions, through journal subscriptions." What about individual subscribers?

Individual subscriptions provide a only a small fraction of journal income; it is institutional subscriptions that sustain peer-reviewed journals.

6. What ensures that the "funds to pay for gold OA" will be used for that purpose, if they are no longer "locked into institutional journal subscriptions"?

Necessity is the mother of invention. If and when mandated green OA makes subscriptions unsustainable, some of the annual windfall cancellation savings will be spent on books and other institutional necessities, but paying for publication will become an institutional necessity too. Its cost, however -- my guess is about $200 per round of refereeing, with "no-fault peer review" -- will be low enough so the solution will be a no-brainer.

7. Why is it "a waste of… funds to pay pre-emptively for gold OA today." OA is OA, isn't it?

OA is OA, but publication is already being paid for by institutional subscriptions. And green OA can be provided for free, by mandating it, whereas the money to pay for gold OA is still locked in subscriptions.

(But if an institution or funder has the extra cash to spare, there's no harm in paying pre-emptive gold OA fees for as much research output as they can afford today -- as long as they mandate green OA for all of it first.)

8. Why does "the research community… need to… mandate green OA"? If they need/want OA so much, can't they just provide it, unmandated?

This is a fair question -- indeed it amounts to a koan. The malady is known as " Xeno's Paralysis." There are at least 38 known causes, all easily curable. The problem is rampant symptom transfer, and pandemic recidivism... The virus seems to be a rapidly mutating one. Oa difficile.

9. How is it that "universal green OA" makes "journal affordability… far, far less important and urgent"? Journals still need to be paid for, don't they?

Institutional subscriptions are paying the cost of journal publication today. If and when mandated green OA makes subscriptions unsustainable, it will release those funds to pay for gold OA.

10. How do institutions know whether "users find universal green OA sufficient for their usage needs" so they can "cancel the subscriptions in which they were locked"?

When their users tell them they don't need the subscriptions any more, because they can access the free green OA versions online, and that is enough for their purposes. (This will not happen journal by journal, because green OA grows anarchically, across journals; it will only happen once green OA is at or near 100%, globally.)

11. How do we know that all "institutions will have the… subscription [cancelation] savings [to] pay the gold OA publishing costs for their individual outgoing articles"? Won't those that have more "individual outgoing articles" be paying more?

After green OA has becomes universal, the essential publication costs will shrink radically (no more need for paper edition, online edition, access-provision, or archiving). The sole remaining essential cost will be peer review. Once this is charged on a no-fault basis (per round of review) rather than per publication (charging all the rejected papers to the accepted authors, like a shop-lifting surcharge). Its annual cost -- my guess is about $200 per round of refereeing, with "no-fault peer review" -- will be far lower than the annual windfall subscription cancelation savings of even the most research-active universities.

12. If publishers "phas[e] out… print editions… and offload access provision and archiving (and their costs) onto… institutional repositories…[and] the green OA version… becom[es] the… version of record," don't institutions still bear the costs? And is the author's final draft fit for the record?

Institutions pay only the costs of peer review. The costs of producing the publisher's print and online editions are gone. And the costs of access-provision and archiving are distributed across the global network of institutional repositories, which are a part of essential institutional online infrastructure (serving many other purposes besides OA). The fraction of that infrastructure cost per paper will be negligible.

13. "If publishing costs… scale down to just… peer review," what keeps those costs from rising -- and keeps the peer review quality standards from falling?

Peers review for free. Charging for peer review on a no-fault basis (per round of review) rather than per publication (charging all the rejected papers to the accepted authors) eliminates the publisher's temptation to lower standards so as to publish more papers and make more money. The charge per round of no-fault peer review (about $200) will be kept fair by inter-journal competition. If anything, it will be the higher-standard peer review that will cost more, because meeting the standards of the higher quality journals will confer more value.

14. Why do "institutions and funders [need to] mandat[e] green OA first, rather than [just] paying… for gold OA? Can't the research community just stop publishing in and subscribing to journals that don't convert to gold OA?

See 3, above.

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship

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Comments invited -- but please don't post them here but in the Higher EDucation Development Association (HEDDA) blog.

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In the Hedda Blog, Reme Melero said:

"I think we should start thinking on a more wider concept, i.e. Open Knowledge and Open Scholarship..."

Yes, Open Scholarship and Open Knowledge are both desirable. But unlike Open Access to the annual 2.5 million articles published in the planet's 25,000 peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific journals, they are not within immediate reach.

Why not?

Because (1) not all authors of all scholarly and scientific writings -- let alone of all "knowledge" -- want to give their writings away, free for all online. (2) Not all (or even most) book and textbook authors want to put their chances of earning royalties at risk. (3) Most novelists and poets don't give away their writings in order to advance knowledge and to maximize the "research impact" that earns their reputations, pays their salaries, and funds their grants, as researchers do. Rather, novelists and poets (like playwrights, musicians, artists, journalists and trade authors) try to sell their works in order to put bread on the table (or maybe even to get rich).

Besides, nothing is stopping any give-away author (of book, textbook, treatise or verse) who wants to make his work free for all online from making it free for all online. No one can mandate that he must do it. But no one can stop him from doing it either.

That makes it all the more ironic that it is in the one knowledge domain in which every single author, of every single refereed journal article, without exception, wishes his work to be accessible not just to those whose institutions can afford subscription access to it, but to all its potential users -- so that they can read, use, apply, build upon and cite it in their own subsequent work -- that these special authors nevertheless feel that there is something stopping them from giving their work away free for all online.

What this special, exception-free population of give-away authors feel is stopping them from being able to give away their work free free for all online varies from author to author. There are at least 38 different groundless worries paralyzing them, copyright worries being perhaps foremost among them:

But it is precisely in order to free these authors from their Zeno's Paralysis that green OA self-archiving mandates are needed from their institutions and funders.

For other kinds of authors, it's only the fact that they may wish to earn revenues from its sale, rather than to give it away gratis, that prevents them from making the words they have to offer "open." (It's not their knowledge they are concerned to sell, remember, it's their words.)

Let us therefore first grasp what is already within reach -- by mandating green open access self-archiving -- rather than holding out for even more, thereby letting the unreachable Best get in the way of reaching the reachable Better.

And remember that the very first essential PostGutenberg distinction is to distinguish the author give-away work from non-give-away work so please let us not conflate them.

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

Abstract: Open Access (OA) means free access for all would-be users webwide to all articles published in all peer-reviewed research journals across all scholarly and scientific disciplines. 100% OA is optimal for research, researchers, their institutions, and their funders because it maximizes research access and usage. It is also 100% feasible: authors just need to deposit ("self-archive") their articles on their own institutional websites. Hence 100% OA is inevitable. Yet the few keystrokes needed to reach it have been paralyzed for a decade by a seemingly endless series of phobias (about everything from piracy and plagiarism to posterity and priorities), each easily shown to be groundless, yet persistent and recurring. The cure for this "Zeno's Paralysis" is for researchers' institutions and funders to mandate the keystrokes, just as they already mandate publishing, and for the very same reason: to maximize research usage, impact and progress. 95% of researchers have said they would comply with a self-archiving mandate; 93% of journals have already given self-archiving their blessing; and those institutions that have already mandated it are successfully and rapidly moving toward 100% OA.

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Comments invited -- but please don't post them here but in the Higher EDucation Development Association (HEDDA) blog.

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Across the eight years since its launch in 2003, SHERPA Romeo's importance and value as a resource have been steadily increasing. The most recently announced upgrade covers 18,000 journals and is (1) More up to Date, with (2) More Accurate Journal Level Searching, (3) More Search Options, (4) Electronic ISSNs, and (5) Faster Performance.

In addition to congratulating SHERPA Romeo, let me use this occasion to repeat the plea I made eight years ago to adjust the colour code to provide the information that users need the most (and at the same time bring the colour coding in line with the terminology that has since gained wide currency: "Green OA"):

Although the distinction between journals that endorse the immediate OA self-archiving of both the refereed postprint and the pre-refereeing preprint (P+p) and journals that endorse the immediate OA self-archiving of the refereed postprint but not the pre-refereeing preprint (P) is not completely empty, it is of incomparably less importance and relevance to OA than the distinction between journals that do and do not endorse the immediate OA self-archiving of the refereed postprint (P vs. not-P).

It is OA self-archiving of the refereed postprint that the OA movement is about and for. And it is OA self-archiving of the refereed postprint that is meant by the term "Green OA."

And yet SHERPA Romeo continues to code P+p as "green" and P as "blue"!

There is no "Blue OA." And the over 200 funders and institutions that have already mandated Green OA have not mandated "Blue OA": They could not care less whether the journals endorse the self-archiving of the unrefereed preprint in addition to the refereed postprint: Green OA only concerns the refereed postprint.

It is for this reason that EPrints Romeo has steadfastly generated a colour-corrected version of the SHERPA Romeo summary statistics pie-chart across these eight years -- in addition to generating the statistics for journals as well as for publishers. (SHERPA Romeo originally covered only publishers, but the statistics for journals are much more informative -- and positive -- than the statistics for publishers, since one publisher might publish one journal and another might publish 2000!.)

To see the immediate gain in clarity and consistency from suppressing the P+p/P ("green"/"blue") distinction in the summary statistics, compare the SHERPA Romeo and EPrints Romeo summary pies for publishers below. (Note that the EPrints Romeo data are static, because they have not been updated for several years. The eye will show that for publishers the proportions are much the same, but have gotten somewhat better in recent years.)

I beg SHERPA Romeo to add the simplified, colour-corrected pie alongside its particoloured one (with the explanation that in the OA world, "Green" means P, not just P+p.). It would make a world of difference for user understanding.

In addition, now that SHERPA is covering the data at the individual journal level, I urge providing the journal-level pie too, for it not only gives a more realistic picture, but an even more positive one.


SHERPA Romeo's current "Green = Green" & "Blue = Green" publisher pie-chart (based on proportions of publishers):

EPrints Romeo's colour-corrected publisher pie-chart, in which Green = Green OA (and preprints-only endorsements are coded as "pale green") (based on proportions of publishers, but out of date by several years):

EPrints Romeo's colour-corrected journals pie-chart, in which Green = Green OA (and preprints-only endorsements are coded as "pale green") (based on proportions of journals). Note that the overall proportions are even better (but these data are out of date by several years, hence need updating, though they will not change much, as they already covered most of the big publishers, with the largest number of journals):

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship

Comments on Open Access FAQ of Allianz der deutschen Wissenschaftsorganisationen (German Alliance of Scientific Organisations)

The ADW OA FAQs are very timely and welcome, but they need a little more work to make them fully accurate and authoritative.

All the comments are jointly archived here.

1: Definition OA
comment: GRATIS AND LIBRE OPEN ACCESS

2: Vorteile von Open Access
comment: DIFFERENCE BETWEEN RESEARCH ARTICLES AND RESEARCH DATA

3: Open Access und Qualitätssicherung
comment: POSTPUBLICATION OPEN PEER COMMENTARY ≠ OPEN PEER REVIEW

5: Goldener Weg
comment: GOLD OA GROWTH RATE

6: Grüner Weg
comment: GREEN OA SELF-ARCHIVING: NOT REPUBLICATION BUT ACCESS PROVISION

7: Verlage und Grüner Weg
comment: NO COPYRIGHT OBSTACLE TO MANDATING IMMEDIATE DEPOSIT

8: Rechtliche Probleme beim Grünen Weg
comment: NO LEGAL OBSTACLES TO MANDATING GREEN OA

9: unabdingbares Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht
comment: BASIC ACCESS NEEDS PRECEDE REPUBLICATION RIGHTS

10: Vorteile des Zweitveröffentlichungsrechts
comment: DISADVANTAGES OF DEMANDING MORE RATHER THAN LESS

11: Wissenschaftsdisziplinen und Open Access
comment: ALL AUTHORS AND ALL DISCIPLINES WANT MAXIMAL UPTAKE AND USAGE

12: Embargofristen
comment: OA EMBARGOES AND THE SUSTAINABILITY OF THE SUBSCRIPTION MODEL

13: Deutsche WissenschaftlerInnen und Open Access
GREEN OA IS NOT A "PUBLISHING MODEL"

14: Wissenschaftliches Publizieren
comment: MANDATE IMMEDIATE DEPOSIT BEFORE TRYING COPYRIGHT RETENTION

15: Geschäftsmodelle und Open Access
comment: NEEDED NOW: GREEN OA MANDATES, NOT GOLD OA MODELS

16: Kosten von Open Access-Modellen
comment: COST/BENEFIT RATIO OF MANDATING GREEN OPEN ACCESS

17: Open Access und kommerzielles Publizieren
comment: GREEN IS THE ECONOMICAL PATH TO OA AS WELL AS TO GOLD OA

19: Bedeutung für Wissenschaftsverlagswesen
comment: GREEN IS THE ROAD TO BOTH OA AND GOLD OA

20: internationale Verlage
comment: PRACTICAL OA STRATEGY NEEDED, NOT ECONOMIC SPECULATION
class="p7">
21: Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht und internationale Verlage
comment: OA ≠ GOLD OA PUBLICATION AND GREEN OA ≠ REPUBLICATION
class="p8">
23: Alternativen zu unabdingbarem Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht
comment: MANDATE GREEN OA FIRST, SECONDARY PUBLICATION RIGHTS SECOND

24: Rolle der Wissenschaftsorganisationen
comment: SIGNING THE BERLIN DECLARATION IS NOT ENOUGH

26: Informationen zu Open Access
comment: FURTHER INFORMATION ON OPEN ACCESS POLICY MAKING

27: Unterstützung durch Wissenschaftsorganisationen
comment: THE BEST INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT IS A GREEN OA MANDATE

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship

Peter Murray-Rust, in his valid and important advocacy for data-archiving and data-mining, has been arguing for the advantages of Libre Gold OA (LiGoOA: free online access + re-use rights + publication in a Gold OA journal) over Gratis Green OA (GrGrOA: free online access). I argue that since GrGrOA asks for less, faces fewer obstacles, and is immediately reachable today if mandated, we should not miss that opportunity by trying to over-reach instead directly for LiGoOA, since it is not within reach.

The practical advantages of grasping gratis Green OA before trying to reach Libre Gold OA
Peter Murray-Rust (PMR) misses the main advantages of Gratis Green OA (GrGrOA):

(1) Immediate GrGrOA has far smaller obstacles, being already endorsed by over 60% of journals (including almost all the top journals).

(2) Hence GrGrOA can already provide at least 60% GrGrOA plus 40% almost-OA (with the repository’s automated email-eprint-request button) today.

(3) Hence immediate 60% GrGrOA plus 40% almost-OA can already be mandated.

This contrasts with Libre Gold OA (LiGoOA):

(1') LiGoOA is not yet endorsed by any journal other than the small proportion of LiGoOA that already exist (say, about 10%, and that does not include most of the top journals).

(2') Hence LiGoOA can only provide 10% LiGoOA today.

(3') LiGoOA cannot be mandated (today, or ever).

All the LiGoOA advantages PMR seeks will come, but before we reach LiGoOA we have to reach GrGrOA, and we won’t reach it by over-reaching: GrGrOA will simply inherit LiGoOA’s bigger obstacles.

(And what comes with the territory with GrGrOA is searching, downloading locally, reading, saving locally, data-crunching, printing off; that’s all. But it’s incomparably more than what we have now, without GrGrOA.)

No axioms: Just evidence, logic and pragmatics

PMR: "There is a difference between the size of an obstacle and the number of obstacles. I agree that there is quantitatively more opportunity for self-archiving than LiGo."

And for mandating 100% of it. And that's what OA is about: Reaching 100% OA, at long last.

PMR: "I do not understand the phrase “almost-OA”."

Articles deposited as Closed Access but semi-automatically requestable via the repository's email eprint request Button.

Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2012) Open Access Mandates and the "Fair Dealing" Button. In: Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture OnlinePMR: "This figure [ % Gold OA] is growing"But not fast enough. And unlike Green, cannot be accelerated with mandates.

Poynder, Richard (2011) Open Access by Numbers, Open and Shut, 19 June 2011

PMR: "You assert opinions [SH: 'LiGoOA cannot be mandated']

Please describe how (and who) you propose to mandate (i.e. require) LiGoOA, that is, require authors to publish in Libre Gold OA Journals.

PMR: "Another axiom [SH: 'before we reach LiGoOA we have to reach GrGrOA, and we won’t reach it by over-reaching: GrGrOA will simply inherit LiGoOA’s bigger obstacles']"

Please describe how you propose to persuade authors who are not even providing GrGrOA to their articles, published in their journals of choice, for free, to pay instead to publish them in LiGoOA journals. (And then describe how you propose to mandate it, if they demur.)

PMR: "You and I differ as to what is formally allowable [with GrGrOA]"

If it's not "searching, downloading locally, reading, saving locally, data-crunching, printing off" as I said, then what is formally allowable with GrGrOA, by your lights?

Priorities and pragmatics

PMR: "I don’t see why the amount of something alters the rate of growth"

It doesn't. It's just that the rate of growth of Gold OA is way too slow. The current growth rate will not even reach 60% Gold OA before 2026, whereas Green OA mandates have been reaching 60% Green OA within two years of adoption for years now:

Poynder, Richard (2011) Open Access by Numbers, Open and Shut, 19 June 2011

PMR: "Libre costs the reader nothing. Yes, we have a prisoner’s dilemma, or a transition process. I would argue that the final state of full Libre will cost less than the current toll-access. But we are in the land of opinions, not logic."

It is the author who pays for Gold OA, not the reader. And it is the author who provides Gold OA, not the reader. So it is not a Prisoner's Dilemma but an Escher Impossible Figure. Green OA mandates can cure the paralysis for Gratis Green OA, and this is a matter of evidence and logic, not opinion. What's your alternative, for curing paralysis for Libre Gold OA?

PMR: "I would urge funders to insist on Libre content"

Good luck! But reality is that most funders don't even insist on Gratis content yet. Might it not be better to start to try to succeed in urging them to insist on at least that, first?

PMR: "authors to insist on financial support from either funders or their institutions"

If authors want, and can provide Gratis Green OA for free (and don't even bother to do it until/unless mandated), what leverage do they have with their funders (when research funds are already scarce) or with their institutions (whose spare funds are locked into subscriptions) -- even if authors bother to insist at all on what they don't even bother to do themselves for free?

PMR: "libraries cancelling as many toll-journals as possible"

Libraries are already cancelling as many toll journals as possible, but they can't cancel the must-have ones until/unless their institutional users can get access to their contents some other way. That's the Escher Impossible Figure (not a Prisoner's Dilemma). And what will resolve it is mandating Green OA, which, once Green OA is universal, allows the libraries to cancel their subscriptions, releasing the institutional windfall savings to pay for a universal conversion to Gold (and Libre!) OA.

PMR: "development of new and imaginative and lower-cost ways of publishing"

Gold OA publishing -- once all access-provision and archiving (and their costs) have been offloaded onto the worldwide network of Green OA institutional repositories -- will already reduce the cost of publishing to just the cost of peer review. All it takes to see this is a little imagination (but for that, you have to be able to defer immediate gratification on Libre OA!).

PMR: "Stevan has asserted [SH: 'if we start with an objective of 100% OA… we need to start by backing green OA, which has a clear strategy…. Ultimately we want the same thing, but it’s how we get there, and how quickly… that really matters'] as an axiom for 10 years. I don’t agree. And as important, Gratis OA is no use to me, while continuing to legitimise the ownership of material inappropriately"

But perhaps you'll allow that Gratis OA may be of use to many other would-be users, in many fields -- and that the fields for which Libre OA is more urgent than Gratis OA, if any, may be far fewer…

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship

Unfortunately the first draft of the "Frequently asked Questions zu Open Access und Zweitveröffentlichungsrecht (FAQ)" of Germany's Allianz der deutschen Wissenschaftsorganisationen (ADW) perpetuates several widespread and longstanding misunderstandings about Open Access.

The misunderstandings are mostly in the form of two unreflective reversals of practical and strategic priorities, insisting, prematurely, on far less urgent and important and much less reachable OA goals, while neglecting or even rejecting far more urgent and important OA goals that are already fully within reach.

(1) Gratis OA vs Libre OA: Gratis OA is (1a) free online access to refereed journal articles. Libre OA is (1a) free online access to refereed journal articles (1b) plus certain further re-use and re-publication rights.

We do not yet even have Gratis OA (1a), but it is already fully within reach; yet the ADW FAQ insists on Libre OA (1b), rejecting Gratis OA (1a) as not good enough.

(2) Green OA vs Gold OA: Green OA is (2a) Gratis OA to the author's final refereed drafts of all refereed journal articles, provided through author self-archiving of all refereed journal articles. Gold OA is (2b) Gratis or Libre OA to articles published in OA journals.

We do not yet even have Green OA (2a), but it is already fully within reach; yet the ADW FAQ insists on Gold OA (1b), rejecting Green OA (1a) as not good enough.

This kind of counterproductive over-reaching is a formula for yet another decade of attaining minimal OA of any kind.

For correctives, see the longstanding BOAI Self-Archiving FAQ and especially #23 ("Version Control"), #31 ("Waiting for Gold"), #36 ("Re-Use") and #37 ("Permissions").

The ADW FAQs need to be corrected and updated to explain and advocate that the worldwide research community should first grasp what is already fully within its immediate reach, namely, Green Gratis OA self-archiving -- through institutional and funder Green Gratis OA self-archiving mandates (requirements). Only after the immensely valuable immediate benefit for research that is already within reach (universal Green Gratis OA) has been grasped should we be thinking of going on to Gold OA publishing and Libre OA re-use/republication rights.

Figure 1. Springer Gold OA growth curve S (20% per year) and simulated Björk growth curve B (30% per year) (Laakso et al 2011) equated for year 2009. Note that the Björk curve would reach 100% Gold OA for all journals (ISI + non-ISI) in 2022, at a time when the Springer curve would not yet have reached 40% for ISI journals. Laakso et al's estimate of 30% Gold OA growth and Springer's estimate of 20% Gold OA growth can be reconciled if we note that the 30% rate was as of 2000, and has slowed to 20% as of 2005. More important, either way, the Björk curve would not reach 60% till 2019, and the Springer curve would not reach 60% till 2025, whereas the four mandated repositories had already reached 60% in 2004-2006, within two years of having adopted their mandates (Figure 2, below).

Figure 2. Percent green OA self-archiving averaged for the four institutions with the oldest self-archiving mandates, compared to the percentage for control articles from other institutions published in the same journals (for years 2002-2009, measured in 2011). Respective totals are derived from Thompson-Reuters-ISI index. Mandates triple the percent Green OA (Figure 3, below).

Figure 3. Yearly increase in the number of Green OA self-archiving mandates adopted by institutions and funders (data from ROARMAP).

Stevan Harnad
EnablingOpenScholarship

Jan Szczepanski [JSZCZ] wrote in the American Scientist Open Access Forum:

JSZCZ: After collecting free e-journals for more than ten years I'm amazed to read a phrase like this one produced by Steven Harnad.

SH: "But gold OA is still premature (whether for journals or books)."

I have concentraded on journals in humanities and social sciences and have more than 12.000 for the moment.

In DOAJ, the directory of open access journals, there are 6.590 titles.

In EZB, Elektronische Zeitschriftenbibliothek, there are more than 32.000 titles.

An astonishing development during these years made by scientists and scholars for scientists for scholars.

The reality is that Steven Harnads opinion is all wrong about journals and also about free e-books. Millions of books are free for all.

This is what I would describe as real open access. Real articles and books.

All OA content -- whether green or gold -- is welcome, valuable and important. That is not the issue. The issue is how to increase OA content.

To get a realistic idea of how much OA content there is, how fast it is growing, and what scope there is for accelerating its growth, it is not enough simply to count Gold OA items. You have to calculate the annual proportion of Gold OA items, as well as their growth rate, and you have to compare them with the annual proportion and growth rate of Green OA items.

The underlying question is: Which is the surest and fastest way to reach 100% OA, now? And the answer is: by mandating Green OA, not by waiting for Gold OA:

(a) The total annual percentage of journal articles that are OA today averages somewhere between 20% and 30%, and it varies by field.

(b) Out of the overall annual 20-30% OA, according to the 2010 estimates of Bo-Christer Björk for 2009, in the Thompson-Reuters-ISI-indexed journals the proportion of Green OA was 2/3 and the proportion of Gold OA was 1/3. In non-ISI-indexed journals the relative proportions of the OA subset were reversed (2/3 Gold, 1/3 Green).

(According to Ulrich's there are about 25,000 peer-reviewed journals across all disciplines today. ISI indexes about the top 20% of them, and about 7% of those 10,000 ISI-indexed journals [but mostly not the top ISI journals] are Gold OA: one wonders what proportion of the 32,000 EZB Gold OA journals -- or of Jan Szczepanski's 12,000 Gold OA humanities and social science journals -- are peer-reviewed journals.)

(c) Out of the overall annual 20-30% OA, according to the 2010 estimates of Bo-Christer Bjork for 2009, in all disciplines except the biomedical ones, the proportion of Green OA was much higher than the proportion of Gold OA. In the biomedical disciplines the relative proportions were reversed. The overall percentage of OA was lowest in the biomedical disciplines.

Björk B-C, Welling P, Laakso M, Majlender P, Hedlund T, et al. (2010) Open Access to the Scientific Journal Literature: Situation 2009. PLOS ONE 5(6): e11273.

(d) In 2010 Springer publishers estimated that for ISI-indexed journals, growth is 3.5% annually and gold OA growth is 20% (of current Gold OA) annually, so in 10 years the overall percentage of Gold OA will have increased from 8% Gold OA out of all (ISI) articles published in 2010 to 27% Gold OA out of all (ISI) articles published in 2020:

Figure 1. Projections of Gold OA Growth for ISI-indexed journal articles (data from Springer publishers). Growth will reach 27% of all journal articles by 2020.

(e) In contrast to the overall annual percentage of OA (20-30%) and Gold OA's growth rate that will take us from its current 8% to 27& in 2020, institutions that mandate Green OA provide over 60% OA, and and keep climbing toward 100% within a few years.

Figure 2. Percent green OA self-archiving averaged for the four institutions with the oldest self-archiving mandates, compared to the percentage for control articles from other institutions published in the same journals (for years 2002-2009, measured in 2011). Mandates triple the percent Green OA. Respective totals are derived from Thompson-Reuters-ISI index.

Gargouri, Y., Hajjem, C., Lariviere, V., Gingras, Y., Brody, T., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2010) Self-Selected or Mandated, Open Access Increases Citation Impact for Higher Quality Research PLOS ONE 5 (10)

Hence there are three reasons Gold OA is premature, and (e), above, immediately reveals the first and most important of them:

1. Green OA Can Be Accelerated By Mandating It: Green OA depends only on the research providers -- institutions and funders -- and can hence be accelerated to 100% by mandating it. Gold OA depends upon publishers; institutions and funders cannot mandate it, hence cannot accelerate its growth. (However, mandating Green OA is also likely to accelerate the eventual transition to Gold OA; but first it will provide OA -- 100% OA -- and OA is the primary target and hence the priority of the OA movement.)

2. The Economic Benefits of Green OA Are Greater And More Immediate Than Those of Gold OA: Houghton et al have shown that there are considerable economic benefits to be expected from both Green and Gold OA, but the benefit/cost ratio of Green OA is much higher.

Harnad, S. (2010a) The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now. Prometheus 28 (1). pp. 55-59.

Houghton, J.W., Rasmussen, B., Sheehan, P.J., Oppenheim, C., Morris, A., Creaser, C., Greenwood, H., Summers, M. and Gourlay, A. (2009). Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the Costs and Benefits, London and Bristol: The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)

3. The Money to Pay for Gold OA Is Still Tied Up In Institutional Journal Subscriptions and the Asking Price For Gold OA Is Still High: The vast majority of journals (and almost all the top journals) are still subscription-based. That means that the potential institutional funds to pay for Gold OA are still tied up in institutional subscriptions, which institutions cannot cancel unless the contents of the journals are accessible to their users by another means. That other means is Green OA -- once it is universally mandated. This is also how Green OA mandates can accelerate the transition to Gold OA. And it is the third reason Gold OA is premature. When distributed Green OA institutional repositories take over the entire function of text-generation, access-provision, and archiving, journals will be able to cut costs by terminating their paper and online editions and providing only the service of peer review, certifying the outcome with the journal name. That means the post-Green-OA cost of Gold OA will then be much lower.

Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition. In: Anna Gacs. The Culture of Periodicals from the Perspective of the Electronic Age. L'Harmattan. 99-106.

Harnad, S. (2009) The PostGutenberg Open Access Journal. In: Cope, B. & Phillips, A (Eds.) The Future of the Academic Journal. Chandos.

About Gold OA books I have little to say, except that their proportion (out of all book, or even out of all scholarly/scientific books) is minuscule, cannot be accelerated by mandates, and involves a conflict of interest for royalty-seeking authors -- whereas for journal article authors it does not. Rather the opposite: journal article authors are losing potential usage and impact if only users at subscribing institutions can access their articles.

That -- not absolute Gold OA item counts -- is the reality today.

Stevan Harnad
Enabling Open Scholarship
http://www.openscholarship.org

There is a blatant contradiction between two statements of Institute of Physics (IOP) Publishers policy on Green OA self-archiving of the author's refereed final draft. It is not clear whether IOP is on the side of the angels or...:

A. There is this one, according to which IOP is and remains on the side of the angels:

...Exercise of the rights in 3.3 additionally must not use the final published IOP format but the Named Author’s own format (which may include amendments made following peer review).

….3.3.2  Include the Article (all or part) on a Named Author’s own personal web site;


3.3.3  Include the Article (all or part) on web sites of the Institution (including its repository) where a Named Author worked when research for the Article was carried out; and


3.3.4  Include the Article (all or part) on third party web sites including e-print servers, but not on other publisher’s web sites.

G. Then there is this one (amidst a lot of puffery about Gold OA publication), according to which "IOPScience" is on the other side:

What is IOP's policy on self-archiving?

IOP also supports authors who are required by their funding agencies to make their research papers freely available via an institutional or subject repository. Authors may post their accepted manuscript in an institutional or subject repository after an embargo period of 12-24 months following publication, depending on the journal.

Question for the Managing Director of IOP Publishing (Steven Hall): Which is it? Angels or...? And if this is a difference between IOP policy and "IOPScience" policy, it would be very helpful to have a clear explanation of which is which, and which journals are involved in each.

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Addendum

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I may be mistaken, but I think IOP may be conflating IOP journal embargo policies and IOP repository embargo policies. 

According to IOP's current online documentation (not only the current IOP general copyright form, but also the current IOP copyright FAQs - see below), IOP authors may immediately deposit the author's final draft in their institutional repository (or a central repository, like Arxiv). No embargo. No fee:

IOP | For Authors Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

e-print servers

12. I have submitted my article to an IOP journal. Can I also submit it to
arXiv.org or any other repository as well?

Yes, articles may be posted on non-commercial third party websites, including arXiv and other repositories. The author’s own original format should be used (which may include amendments made by the author following peer review). This is the version commonly known as the accepted manuscript. If possible, citation information should be included with IOP’s copyright notice. Once the final version has been published, best efforts must also be made to include a link to the online abstract of the paper in the journal. Authors MUST NOT deposit the published IOP formatted version. IOP also requests that you include the following statement of provenance: 'This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in [insert name of journal]. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The definitive publisher authenticated version is available online at [insert DOI].'

When submitting an article to arXiv you have to select a licence or declaration which gives the arXiv the rights necessary to distribute your article. IOP is happy for you to select the first option offered, namely 'arXiv.org perpetual, non-exclusive licence to distribute your article'. Please do not accept any of the other options without consulting with IOP in advance at permissions@iop.org.
See also Question 17 below.

Author’s rights after publication by IOP

17. May I post my paper on my personal website or my institutional website?
Yes, IOP authors can place their papers (all or part) on their own personal website, but they must not use the IOP formatted version of record (PDF or HTML). Instead they can make use of the article in their own format, which can include amendments made following peer review. This is the version commonly known as the accepted manuscript. The purpose of the posting must be non-commercial, if possible should display citation information and IOP’s copyright notice. Once the final version has been published, best efforts must be made to include a link back to the online abstract in the journal. Authors MUST NOT post the published IOP formatted version. IOP also requests that you include the following statement of provenance: 'This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in [insert name of journal]. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The definitive publisher authenticated version is available online at [insert DOI].'

IOP authors may also place their papers on the website of the institution (including its repository) where a named author worked when research for the article was carried out, however there is an embargo period that can vary between journals so please refer to the individual journal copyright forms. Typical embargo periods range from 12-24 months.

For posting on e-print servers see Question 12 above.

There is no mention at all made of exceptions -- by journal. However, there is a mention of an exception by repository: For some (unspecified) reason, IOP authors may not deposit their final drafts in NIH's PubMed Central:

 13. What is IOP’s policy with regard to UK PubMed Central and NIH?
On or after acceptance for publication IOP authors may deposit their articles in PubMed/NIH provided the articles are embargoed for public release for 12 months from the official date of publication and further provided the deposited version is in the author’s own original format (which may include amendments made by the author following peer review). This is the version commonly known as the accepted manuscript. Authors MUST NOT deposit the published IOP formatted version. IOP also requests that you include the following statement of provenance: 'This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article accepted for publication in [insert name of journal]. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The definitive publisher authenticated version is available online at [insert DOI].'

IOP is currently considering introducing a service to deposit articles at UK PubMed Central and NIH for authors in the future.

Now this exception (though a rather arbitrary one) would still leave IOP on the side of the angels. Could someone from IOP please confirm whether this continues to be the only exception (apart from rival publishers' 3rd-party repositories, of course)? That would serve to correct the apparent contradiction with the following June 2011 update:

IOP Publishing open access policy

What is IOP's policy on self-archiving?
IOP also supports authors who are required by their funding agencies to make their research papers freely available via an institutional or subject repository. Authors may post their accepted manuscript in an institutional or subject repository after an embargo period of 12-24 months following publication, depending on the journal.

Publishing a gold OA journal (New Journal of Physics, NJP), as IOP does, is admirable, but if I am not mistaken, IOP publishes 29 journals -- plus 38 more in partnership with other learned societies. I will assume (conservatively) that the IOP FAQ speaks only for the 29 journals published by IOP (although IOP's one pure open access journal, NJP, is one of the partnered journals). Open access means open access to all the articles in all the 29 IOP journal, not just the articles in NJP. 

Not that being "on the side of the angels" means that all 29 IOP journals need to be gold OA journals: it just means that all 29 IOP journals endorse author self-archiving of the final draft, immediately upon acceptance for publication (green OA). That is what the current IOP copyright agreement states clearly in clause 3.3.2 and 3.3.3 and the current IOP copyright FAQ states clearly in clause 12 and 17.

Being "on the side of the angels" has become a metaphor in the OA world for endorsing immediate green OA self-archiving of the author's final draft, as IOP had done since at least 2006. 

Regarding the sustainability of the subscription model, Alma Swan reported in 2005 that IOP and APS, the publishers with the longest experience with green OA self archiving, dating all the way back to 1991, and having long ago reached 100% in several fields, responded as follows:

"In a separate exercise we asked the American Physical Society (APS) and the Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd (IOPP) what their experiences have been over the 14 years that arXiv has been in existence. How many subscriptions have been lost as a result of arXiv? Both societies said they could not identify any losses of subscriptions for this reason and that they do not view arXiv as a threat to their business (rather the opposite --in fact the APS helped establish an arXiv mirror site at the Brookhaven National Laboratory)."

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CODA

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Now it would look unprepossessing in the extreme, would it not, if a publisher were to air the following policy today:

"We are progressive publishers, not trying to oppose OA: You may make your final draft green OA by depositing it in your institutional repository -- except if you are mandated to do so (by your funder or institution), and especially if your funder or institution is foolish enough to offer to pay for gold OA. In that case, you may only deposit it if you pay; or must wait 12 or 24 months if you don't -- even if you've already been providing immediate green OA for free for 'lo these 20 past years already..."

The primary target of the worldwide Open Access (OA) initiative is the 2.5 million articles published every year in the planet's 25,000 peer-reviewed research journals across all scholarly and scientific fields. Without exception, every one of those yearly articles is an author give-away that is written, not for royalty income, but solely to be used, applied and built upon by other researchers.

The optimal and inevitable solution for this give-away research is that it should be made freely accessible to all its would-be users online and not only to those whose institutions can afford subscription access to the journal in which it happens to be published.

Yet this optimal and inevitable solution, already fully within the reach of the global research community for at least two decades now, has been taking a remarkably long time to be grasped because of a number of widespread and tenacious misconceptions.

The solution is for the world's universities and research funders to (1) extend their existing "publish or perish" mandates so as to (2) require their employees and fundees to maximize the usage and impact of the research that they are employed and funded to conduct and publish by (3) self-archiving their final drafts in their OA Institutional Repositories immediately upon acceptance for publication in order to (4) make their findings freely accessible to all their potential users webwide. Universities need to make deposit in their institutional repository the official mechanism for submitting research for performance review and research assessment; universities can also monitor and ensure compliance with funder mandates through deposit in their institutional repository. OA metrics can then be used to measure and reward research progress and impact; and multiple layers of links, tags, commentary and discussion can be built upon and integrated with the primary research.

Plans by universities and research funders to pay the costs of publishing in OA journals ("Gold OA") are premature. Funds are short; about 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 first is for all 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. Thereafter, if and when universal Green OA should go on to make subscriptions unsustainable (because users are satisfied with just the Green OA versions, and so their institutions cancel their journal subscriptions) that will in turn induce journals to cut costs (by dropping the print edition, online edition, access-provision, and 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 institutional funds to pay these much lower 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.

Among the many important implications of Houghton et al’s (2009) timely and illuminating JISC analysis of the costs and benefits of providing OA to peer-reviewed scholarly and scientific journal articles one stands out as particularly compelling: It would yield an 8/1 benefit/cost ratio if the world’s peer-reviewed research were all self-archived by its authors so as to make it OA. This 8-fold benefit/cost ratio for providing Green OA is substantially higher than all the other potential combinations of alternatives to the status quo analyzed and compared by Houghton et al, including gold OA. This outcome is all the more significant in light of the fact that a transition to green OA self-archiving already rests entirely in the hands of the research community (researchers, their institutions and their funders), whereas a transition to gold OA publishing depends on the publishing community. 

Harnad, S. (2011) Gold Open Access Publishing Must Not Be Allowed to Retard the Progress of Green. Open Access Self-Archiving. Logos 21 (3-4): 86-93.

Harnad, S. (2010) The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now. Prometheus 28 (1): 55-59. 

Harnad, S. (2010) Open Access to Research: Changing Researcher Behavior Through University and Funder Mandates. In Parycek, P. & Prosser, A. (Eds.): EDEM2010: Proceedings of the 4th Inernational Conference on E-Democracy. Austrian Computer Society: 13-22 

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). 

Harnad, S. (2009) The PostGutenberg Open Access Journal. In: Cope, B. & Phillips, A (Eds.) The Future of the Academic Journal. Chandos. 

Harnad, S. (2008) How To Integrate University and Funder Open Access Mandates. Open Access Archivangelism 369

Houghton, J.W., Rasmussen, B., Sheehan, P.J., Oppenheim, C., Morris, A., Creaser, C., Greenwood, H., Summers, M. and Gourlay, A. (2009). Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the Costs and Benefits, London and Bristol: The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)

Sale, A., Couture, M., Rodrigues, E., Carr, L. and Harnad, S. (2011, in press) Open Access Mandates and the "Fair Dealing" Button. In: Dynamic Fair Dealing: Creating Canadian Culture Online (Rosemary J. Coombe & Darren Wershler, Eds.) 

The Research Information Network (RIN) report (Cook et al 2011) basically confirms the immediate practical implication of the Houghton report (Houghton et al 2009): Provide green open access (OA) now (through researchers self-archiving the final refereed drafts of their journal articles in their institutional repositories). That is the solution that is entirely within the hands of the research community, and also the one that confers by far the greatest cost/benefit ratio.

Having reaffirmed this immediate practical course of action, that should have been the end of it. But the RIN report goes on to dip into three secondary issues that are, respectively, short-sighted, premature, and mistaken -- with respect to OA itself, as opposed to whether and when publishing converts from subscription-based to Gold OA:

1. Short-Sighted: It is short-sighted to estimate OA benefits from a national point of view, particularly for the Green OA option, which is already fully within the research community's reach, and is also the option that the RIN report, like the Houghton report, is recommending.

Green OA self-archiving is not a subscription-cost-saving matter. It is a research-access matter. Journal contents have no national boundaries. The immediate benefit to the UK from providing Green OA to UK research output will be the enhanced uptake and impact of UK research globally. This will no doubt encourage the rest of the world to provide Green OA to their research output too. (It is not just the UK that is reading the Houghton and RIN reports.)

As the rest of the world reciprocates with Green OA, the UK also gains in access to research from the rest of the world. Journal subscription cancelations -- if and when they are eventually induced by Green OA -- will not begin happening while only the UK contents of journals have been made Green OA. You can't cancel a journal because its UK-authored contents happen to be available free. Cancelations can only happen once the practice of Green OA self-archiving has become universal.

In fact, the countries that are early adopters of Green OA self-archiving will derive an extra competitive advantage in the uptake and impact of their research output, until the playing field is levelled as other countries catch up by making their own research output Green too.

2. Premature: The RIN report dwells needlessly on how high article processing charges (APCs) for Gold OA could and should be.

Not only are neither conversion to Gold OA publishing nor the APC asking price for Gold OA in the research community's hands, but it is particularly premature to focus on APC asking prices at a time when it is the Green OA option that is the optimal one, and entirely within the research community's reach, whereas only a minority of journals are as yet Gold OA.

The market will take care of APCs if and when their time comes. Right now, OA itself is the priority, and the way to provide immediate OA is for universities and funders to provide Green OA, today, rather than to keep focusing instead on what the APCs for Gold might turn out to be if and when Green OA ever induces a transition to Gold OA.

What is certain is that the money currently being paid out by institutions for publication -- in the form of institutional subscription fees -- is enough to cover the current costs of refereed research publication. That same money could pay for publication via Gold APCs, but if Gold OA comes into its own after universal Green OA has prevailed, Green OA itself, with its distributed network of institutional repositories, will have taken over the full burden of text-generation, archiving and access-provision that is currently being borne by publishers: The print and online edition of the journal will no longer need to be produced, the author's refereed final draft will become the version-of-record, and hence the APCs will shrink to just the cost of peer review.

Today's Gold APC costs and estimates are certainly not based on such a post-Green scenario; hence calculations based on scaling those costs up to all journal articles are premature and irrelevant.

3. Mistaken: Coupled with the needless preoccupation with current and future Gold APCs -- at a time when what is really needed is full speed ahead with Green OA -- the RIN report curiously characterizes Green OA as "unsustainable."

But what is it that's unsustainable? Certainly not OA self-archiving by authors: That can be done for every refereed paper published on the planet for as long as research continues to be conducted. Obviously what RIN means here is that Green OA might eventually make subscription publishing unsustainable. But if and when universal Green OA ever makes subscription publishing unsustainable that means subscriptions will be cancelled by institutions, journals will cut costs, downsize to providing peer review alone and convert to Gold OA APCs; and institutions will pay those much-reduced APCs out of a fraction of their annual windfall subscription cancelation savings.

The RIN report's recommendations on the length of the delay (embargo) before publishers make their own versions-of-record OA -- like its premature preoccupation with the price of Gold APCs and its needless preoccupation with sustaining publishers' current revenue streams -- are irrelevant to Green OA.

Green OA is based on the author's refereed final draft, not the publisher's version of record. Publisher embargoes on OA to the version of record are more a matter of the sustainability of subscription publishing, hence whether it continues to co-exist in parallel with Green OA or converts to Gold OA.

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Cook J, Hulls D, Jones D & Ware M (2011) Heading for the Open Road: costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly communications. Research Information Network (RIN)

Harnad, S. (2010a) The Immediate Practical Implication of the Houghton Report: Provide Green Open Access Now. Prometheus 28 (1). pp. 55-59.

Harnad, S. (2010b) No-Fault Peer Review Charges: The Price of Selectivity Need Not Be Access Denied or Delayed. D-Lib Magazine 16 (7/8).

Houghton, J.W., Rasmussen, B., Sheehan, P.J., Oppenheim, C., Morris, A., Creaser, C., Greenwood, H., Summers, M. and Gourlay, A. (2009). Economic Implications of Alternative Scholarly Publishing Models: Exploring the Costs and Benefits, London and Bristol: The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)