Definition of Open Access

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SUMMARY: "Permission-Barrier-Free OA," because it is on a continuum, needs at least a minimal lower bound to be specified.
    "Price-Barrier-Free OA" is not on a continuum. It just means free access online. However, it too needs to make a few obvious details explicit:
        (1) The free access is to the full digital document (not just to parts or metadata).
        (2) There is no "degree of free" access: Lower-priced access is not "almost free" access.
        (3) The free access is immediate, not delayed or embargoed.
        (4) The free access is permanent and continuous.
        (5) The access is free for any user webwide, not just certain sites, domains or regions.
        (6) The free access is one-click and not gerrymandered(as Google Books or copy-blocked PDF are).
    Hence "Almost-OA" [via Closed Access plus the "Email Eprint Request" Button] is definitely not OA -- though it will help hasten OA's growth.
    Nor does Price-Barrier-Free OA alone count as Permission-Barrier-Free OA. The only way to give that distinction substance, however, is to specify a minimal lower bound for Permission-Barrier-Free OA.

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"Permission-Barrier-Free OA" (regardless of what name we ultimately agree to assign it), because it is on a continuum, needs at least a minimal lower bound to be specified, otherwise it is too vague.

"Price-Barrier-Free OA" (regardless of what name we agree on) does not need an upper or lower bound, because it is not on a continuum. It just means free access online. However, as I have suggested before, it does need to be shored up a bit by stating the obvious:

(1) The free access is to the full digital document (not just to parts of it, or just to its metadata).

(2) There is no "degree of free" access: Lower-priced access is not "almost free" access, hence it is no kind of OA.

(3) The free access is immediate, not delayed or embargoed: A document is not OA if it will be accessible free in a year, or in 10 or 10,000.

(4) The free access is permanent and continuous: A document is not OA if it is available free for a limited time, say, for an hour, or on even-numbered calendar days.

(5) The access is free for any user webwide, not just those at certain sites or in certain domains or regions.

(6) The free access is one-click and non-gerrymandered: That means instant download without having to do a song and dance for every page (as in Google Books, or copy-blocked PDF). (Hence "Almost-OA" [via Closed Access plus the "Email Eprint Request" Button] is definitely not OA -- though it will help hasten OA's growth by (i) making it easier to adopt self-archiving mandates, by (ii) providing for many urgent research usage needs in the meanwhile, and by (iii) increasing the pressure and demand for OA.)

For Green Price-Barrier-Free OA self-archiving and Green Price-Barrier-Free OA self-archiving mandates, all of these specifications are dead-obvious, irrespective of what proper name we choose to designate it. They are spelled out only for the pedantic, the obtuse, and those who might otherwise be tempted to exploit the word "OA" for other agendas, contrary to the rationale for OA, which is to maximize research access, uptake, usage and impact in the online age.

But in the case of Permission-Barrier-Free OA, regardless of the name (and even in the case of the BBB definition), a minimal lower bound has to be specified, otherwise the condition is so vague as to make no sense. The BBB definition gives examples, but it does not commit to a lower bound.

That is like saying "hot" means temperatures like 30 degrees, 300 degrees or 3000 degrees. That still leaves one in perplexity about what, between 0 degrees and 30 degrees, counts as not hot: In particular, does Price-Barrier-Free OA alone count as Permission-Barrier-Free OA? The answer is No, but the only way to give this condition substance is to specify a minimal lower bound for Permission-Barrier-Free OA.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

        See update 8/2/08/ Open Access: "Gratis" and "Libre"

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SUMMARY: Our joint statement with Peter Suber noted that both price-barrier-free access and permission-barrier-free access are indeed forms of Open Access (OA) and that virtually all Green OA and much of Gold OA today is just price-barrier-free OA, although we both agree that permission-barrier-free OA is the ultimate desideratum.
   What we had not anticipated was that if price-barrier-free OA were actually named by its logical condition as "Weak OA" (i.e., the necessary condition for permission-barrier-free OA) then that would create difficulties for those who are working hard toward the universal adoption of the mandates to provide price-barrier-free OA (Green OA self-archiving mandates) that are only now beginning to grow and flourish.
  So we are looking for a shorthand or stand-in for "price-barrier-free OA" and "permission-barrier-free OA" that will convey the distinction without any pejorative connotations for either form of OA. The two forms of OA stand defined, explicitly and logically. They are now in need of value-neutral names (e.g., BASIC vs. FULL OA).

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"Weak/Strong" marks the logical distinction between two forms of OA: price-barrier-free access is a necessary condition for permission-barrier-free access, and permission-barrier-free access is a sufficient condition for price-barrier-free access. That is the logic of weak vs. strong conditions.

But since Peter Suber and I posted the distinction, noting that both price-barrier-free access and permission-barrier-free access are indeed Open Access (OA), many of our colleagues have been contacting us to express serious concern about the unintended pejorative connotations of "weak."

As a consequence, to avoid this unanticipated and inadvertent bias, the two types of OA cannot be named by the logical conditions (weak and strong) that define them. We soon hope to announce a more transparent, unbiased pair of names. Current candidates include:

Transparent, self-explanatory descriptors:

USE OA vs. RE-USE OA
READ OA vs. READ-WRITE OA
PRICE OA vs. PERMISSION OA

Generic descriptors:

BASIC or GENERIC or CORE OA vs. EXTENDED or EXTENSIBLE or FULL OA
SOFT OA vs. HARD OA
EASY OA vs. HARD OA

(My own sense it that the consensus is tending toward BASIC vs. FULL OA.)

The ultimate choice of names matters far less than ensuring that the unintended connotations of "weak" cannot be exploited by the opponents of OA, or by the partisans of one of the forms of OA to the detriment of the other. Nor should mandating "weak OA" be discouraged by the misapprehension that it is some sort of sign of weakness, or of a deficient desideratum

The purpose of our joint statement with Peter Suber had been to make explicit what is already true de facto, which is that both price-barrier-free access and permission-barrier-free access are indeed forms of Open Access (OA), and referred to as such, and that virtually all Green OA today, and much of Gold OA today, is just price-barrier-free OA, not permission-barrier-free OA, although we both agree that permission-barrier-free OA is the ultimate desideratum.

But what Peter Suber and I had not anticipated was that if price-barrier-free OA were actually named by its logical condition as "Weak OA" (i.e., the necessary condition for permission-barrier-free OA) then that would create difficulties for those who are working hard toward the universal adoption of the mandates to provide price-barrier-free OA (Green OA self-archiving mandates) that are only now beginning to grow and flourish.

In particular, Professor Bernard Rentier, the Rector of the University of Liege (which has adopted a Green OA self-archiving mandate to provide price-barrier-free OA) is also the founder of EurOpenScholar, which is dedicated to promoting the adoption of Green OA mandates in the universities of Europe and worldwide. Professor Rentier advised us quite explicitly that if price-boundary-free OA were called "Weak OA," it would make it much harder to persuade other rectors to adopt Green OA mandates -- purely because of the negative connotations of "weak."

Nor is the solution to try instead to promote permission-barrier-free ("Strong OA") mandates, for the obstacles and resistance to that are far, far greater. We are all agreed that it is not realistic to expect consensus from either authors, university administrators or funders on the adoption of, or compliance with, mandates to provide permission-barrier-free OA at this time, and that the growth of price-barrier-free OA should on no account be slowed by or subordinated to efforts to promote permission-barrier-free OA (though all of us are in favour of permission-barrier-free OA too).

So, as the label "weak" would be a handicap, we need another label. The solution is not to spell it out longhand every time either, as "price-barrier-free OA," etc. That would be as awkward as it would be absurd.

So we are looking for a shorthand or stand-in for "price-barrier-free OA" and "permission-barrier-free OA" that will convey the distinction without any pejorative connotations for either form of OA. The two forms of OA stand defined, explicitly and logically. They are now in need of value-neutral names.

Suggested names are welcome -- but not if they have negative connotations for either form of OA. Nor is it an option to re-appropriate the label "OA" for only one of the two forms of OA.

Stevan Harnad

        See update 8/2/08/ Open Access: "Gratis" and "Libre"

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Re-posted from Peter Suber's Open Access News. (This is to register 100% agreement on this definition of "Strong" and "Weak" OA):

Strong and Weak OA

The term "open access" is now widely used in at least two senses. For some, "OA" literature is digital, online, and free of charge. It removes price barriers but not permission barriers. For others, "OA" literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of unnecessary copyright and licensing restrictions. It removes both price barriers and permission barriers. It allows reuse rights which exceed fair use.

There are two good reasons why our central term became ambiguous. Most of our success stories deliver OA in the first sense, while the major public statements from Budapest, Bethesda, and Berlin (together, the BBB definition of OA) describe OA in the second sense.

As you know, Stevan Harnad and I have differed about which sense of the term to prefer --he favoring the first and I the second. What you may not know is that he and I agree on nearly all questions of substance and strategy, and that these differences were mostly about the label. While it may seem that we were at an impasse about the label, we have in fact agreed on a solution which may please everyone. At least it pleases us.

We have agreed to use the term "weak OA" for the removal of price barriers alone and "strong OA" for the removal of both price and permission barriers. To me, the new terms are a distinct improvement upon the previous state of ambiguity because they label one of those species weak and the other strong. To Stevan, the new terms are an improvement because they make clear that weak OA is still a kind of OA.

On this new terminology, the BBB definition describes one kind of strong OA. A typical funder or university mandate provides weak OA. Many OA journals provide strong OA, but many others provide weak OA.

Stevan and I agree that weak OA is a necessary but not sufficient condition of strong OA. We agree that weak OA is often attainable in circumstances when strong OA is not attainable. We agree that weak OA should not be delayed until we can achieve strong OA. We agree that strong OA is a desirable goal above and beyond weak OA. We agree that the desirability of strong OA is a reason to keep working after attaining weak OA, but not a reason to disparage the difficulties or the significance of weak OA. We agree that the BBB definition of OA does not need to be revised.

We agree that there is more than one kind of permission barrier to remove, and therefore that there is more than one kind or degree of strong OA.

We agree that the green/gold distinction refers to venues (repositories and journals), not rights. Green OA can be strong or weak, but is usually weak. Gold OA can be strong or weak, but is also usually weak.

I've often wanted short, clear terms for what I'm now going to call weak and strong OA. But I also wanted a third term. In my blog and newsletter I often need a term which means "weak or strong OA, we don't know which yet". For example, a press release may announce a new journal, digital library, or database, without making clear what kind of reuse rights it allows. Or a new journal will launch which makes its articles are freely available but says nothing at all about its access policy. I will simply call them "OA". I'll specify that they are strong or weak OA only after I learn enough to do so.

Stevan and I agree in regretting the current, confusing ambiguity of the term, and we agree that the weak/strong terminology turns this ambiguity to advantage by attaching labels to the two most common uses in circulation. I find the new terms an especially promising solution because they dispel confusion without requiring us to buck the tide of usage, which would be futile, or revise the BBB definition, which would be undesirable.

Postscript. Stevan and I were going to write up separate accounts of this agreement and blog them simultaneously. But when he saw my draft, he decided to blog it without writing his own. That's agreement!

Posted in Open Access News by Peter Suber at 4/29/2008 03:01:00 PM.

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

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

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Klaus Graf wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum

Sandy Thatcher (President, American Association of University Presses) wrote in liblicense:

"If peer-reviewed papers are allowed to be posted on IRs and personal web sites, how is this not open access? My understanding is that this is what Stevan Harnad calls Green OA."

Yes indeed, peer-reviewed papers, being deposited and made freely accessible in an IR, is indeed Open Access (OA) -- 100% full-blooded OA (and there's only one OA: Green OA self-archiving and Gold OA publishing are just two different ways to provide OA).

I think I can sort out the confusion (and disagreement):

The original BOAI definition went a little overboard in "defining" OA.

(I am co-culpable, since I was one of the co-drafters and co-signers, but I confess I was inattentive to these details at the time. If I had been thinking more carefully, I could have anticipated the consequences and dissented from the definition before it was co-signed. As it happened, I dissented later.)

The original definition of OA did not just require that the full-text be accessible free for all on the web; it also required author-licensed user re-use and re-publication rights (presumably both online and on-paper).

If I had not been too addle-brained to realize it at the time, it would have been obvious that this could not possibly be the definition of OA, if we were not going to price ourselves right off the market: We had (rightly) claimed that what had made OA possible was the new medium (the Net and the Web), which had for the first time made it possible for the authors of peer-reviewed journal articles (all of them, always, author give-aways, written only for usage and impact, not access-toll income) to give away their give-away work big-time, at last, as they had always wanted to do (and had already been doing for decades, in a much more limited way, in mailing reprints to requesters).

That fundamental new fact would have been turned into just an empty epiphenomenal totem if our punch-line had been that on-paper [i.e., print] re-publication rights are part of OA! For one could just as well have claimed that in the paper era (and no one would have listened, rightly).

Third-party paper re-publication rights have absolutely nothing to do with OA -- directly. OA is an online matter.

Of course, once Green OA prevails, and all peer-reviewed papers are accessible for free, worldwide, 24/7, online, then on-paper re-publication rights will simply become moot, because there will be no use for them!

And that's why I was so obtuse about the original BOAI definition of OA: Because although it was premature to talk about paper re-publication rights, those would obviously come with the OA territory, eventually; so (I must have mused, foolishly) we might as well make them part of our definition of OA from the outset.

Well, no, that was a mistake, and is now one of the (many) reasons the onset of the "outset" is taking so long to set in! Because here we are, over-reaching, needlessly, for rights we don't need (and that will in any case eventually come with the OA territory of their own accord) at the cost of continuing to delay OA by demanding more than we need.

The same is true about the other aspects of this unnecessary and counterproductive over-reaching: Just about all of what some of us are insisting on demanding formally and legalistically already comes with the free online (i.e., OA) territory (and immediately, today, not later, as re-publishing rights will, after OA prevails):

We don't need to license the right to download, store, print-off and (locally) data-mine OA content. That's already part of what it means for a text to be freely accessible online.

Nor do we need to insist on the right to re-publish the text in course-packs for teaching purposes: Distributing just the URL has exactly the same effect!

Re-publishing by a third party (neither the publisher, nor the author, nor the author's employer) is another matter, however, whether online or on paper.

Simple online re-publishing is vacuous, because, again, harvesting the URLs and linking to the OA version in the IR is virtually the same thing (and will hence dissolve this barrier completely soon enough, with no need of advance formalities or legalities).

Third-party re-publishing on-paper (print) will have to wait its turn; it is definitely not part of OA itself -- but, as noted, to the extent that there is any use left for it at all, it will eventually follow too, once all peer-reviewed research is OA, for purely functional reasons.

Finally, Google can and will immediately machine-harvest and data-mine OA content, just as it harvests all other freely accessible online content. It will also reverse-index it and "re-publish" it in bits, online. Other data-mined database providers may not get away with that initially -- but again, once we reach 100% OA this barrier too will dissolve soon thereafter, for purely functional reasons. It is not, however, part of OA itself; and insisting on it now, pre-emptively (and unnecessarily) will simply delay OA, by demanding more than we need -- because more is always harder to get than less.

And (to finish this rant) this is why I have urgently urged a small but critical change in the Harvard-style copyright-retention mandates (which, because they ask for more than necessary, need to add an opt-out clause, which means they end up getting less than necessary): We don't need to mandate copyright retention at this time. It's wonderful and highly desirable to have it if/when you can have it, but it is not necessary for OA. And OA itself will soon bring on all the rest.

All that's necessary for OA is free online access. Indeed -- and I'm afraid I risk getting Sandy's hackles up with this one again, so I will avoid using the controversial phrase "Fair Use" -- mandating immediate full-text deposit, without opt-out, with the option of making access to the full text OA wherever already endorsed by the journal (62%) and "almost OA" (i.e., Closed Access plus the semi-automatic "email eprint request") for the rest will be sufficient to get us to 100% OA not too long thereafter.

Holding out instead for copyright-retention, with an author opt-out option, in order to try to ensure getting 100% OA from the outset, is simply a way to ensure getting nowhere near 100% OA-plus-almost-OA from the outset, because of author opt-outs.

Summary: OA is free online access, and the necessary and sufficient condition for reliably reaching 100% OA soon after the mandate is implemented is to mandate immediate deposit with no opt-out. There is no need for licensed re-use and re-publication rights; copyright retention should just be described as a highly recommended option (which is what a "mandate with an opt-out" amounts to anyway). All the rest will happen of its own accord after 100% immediate-deposit is achieved. (The only obstacle to 100% OA all along has been keystrokes, nothing but keystrokes, for which all that is needed is a keystroke mandate.)

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum