Stevan,
*What OA Needs Is More Action, Not More Definition*
No, I don't think 'more action' is the answer. I think we would do better to
reframe the idea of open access *as it should be* in the current environment,
which is a quite different environment to the one in which the idea was created.
That alone will clarify a lot of matters.
Instead of wrestling with abstract notions and the shades and degrees of open
access which have come to be part of the conversation, it might be better to
adopt a Rawlsian normative approach, in which we define what the community wants
and could agree on, and then work out the practicalities of how to get there.
Best regards,
Philip Hunter
<[log in to unmask]>
Quoting Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>:
> *What OA Needs Is More Action, Not More Definition*
>
> For the record: I renounce (and have long renounced) the original 2002 BOAI
> (and BBB) definition of Open Access
> <http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read>(OA) (even though I was
> one of the original co-drafters and co-signers of BOAI) in favour of its
> 2008
> revision *(sic)* as Gratis OA (free online access) and Libre OA
> <http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/442-guid.html> (free
> online access plus certain re-use rights, e.g., CC-BY).
>
> The original BOAI definition was improvised. Over a decade of subsequent
> evidence, experience and reflection have now made it clear that this first
> approximation in 2002 was needlessly over-reaching and (insofar as Green OA
> self-archiving was concerned) incoherent (except if we were prepared to
> declare almost all Green OA — which was and still is by far the largest
> and
> most reachable body of OA — as not being OA!). The original BOAI/BBB
> definition has since also become an obstacle to the growth of (Green,
> Gratis) OA as well as a point of counterproductive schism and formalism in
> the OA movement that have not been to the benefit of OA (but to the benefit
> of the opponents of OA, or to the publishers that want to ensure -- via
> Green OA embargoes -- that the only path to OA should be one that preserves
> their current revenue streams: Fool's Gold OA
> <https://www.google.com/webhp?
tbm=blg&gws_rd=ssl#q=harnad+fool's+gold+&tbm=blg>
> ).
>
> I would like to agree with Richard Poynder that OA needs some sort of
> "authoritative" organization -- but of whom should that authoritative
> organization consist? My inclination is that it should be the providers and
> users of the OA research itself, namely peer-reviewed journal article
> authors, their institutions and their funders. Their “definition” of OA
> would certainly be authoritative.
>
> Let me close by emphasizing that I too see Libre OA as desirable and
> inevitable. But my belief (and it has plenty of supporting evidence) is
> that the only way to get to Libre OA is for all institutions and funders to
> mandate (and provide) Gratis Green OA first — not to quibble or squabble
> about the BOAI/BBB “definition” of OA, or their favorite flavours of
> Libre
> OA licenses.
>
> My only difference with Paul Royster is that the primary target for OA is
> peer-reviewed journal articles, and for that it is not just repositories
> that are needed, but Green OA mandates from authors’ institutions and
> funders.
>
> *P.S. *To forestall yet another round of definitional wrangling: Even an
> effective Gratis Green OA mandate requires some compromises, namely, if
> authors elect to comply with a publisher embargo on Green OA, they need
> merely deposit the final, refereed, revised draft in their institutional
> repository immediately upon acceptance for publication -- and set the
> access as "restricted access" instead of OA during the (allowable) embargo.
> The repository's automated email copy-request Button
> <https://www.google.com/webhp?tbm=blg&gws_rd=ssl#q=harnad+Button&tbm=blg>
> will
> allow any user to request and any author to provide a single copy for
> research purposes during the embargo with one click each. (We call this
> compromise "Almost-OA." It is a workaround for the 40% of journals that
> embargo Gratis Green OA; and this too is a necessary first step on the road
> to 100% immediate Green Gratis OA and onward. I hope no one will now call
> for a formal definition of "Almost-OA" before we can take action on
> mandating OA...)
>
>
> On Mon, Sep 1, 2014 at 12:52 PM, Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
> > On Sep 1, 2014, at 11:19 AM, Stephen Downes <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > Some really important discussion here. In particular, I would argue (with
> > this article) that the insistence on CC-by (which allows commercial
> reuse)
> > comes not from actual proponents of open access, but by commercial
> > publishers promoting their own interests. http://www.downes.ca/post/62708
> >
> >
> > Actually, it’s much more complicated than that. Journal publishers (both
> > commercial and learned-society) have conflicts of interest with Green OA
> --
> > both Gratis (free for all online) and Libre (free for all online *plus*
> > re-use rights, especially commercial re-use rights).
> >
> > And, on top of that, there are impatient researchers militating
> > uncompromisingly for Libre OA in certain fields that would especially
> > benefit from Libre OA re-use rights.
> >
> > And there are the Gold OA publishers that want to promote their product by
> > lionizing the benefits of Libre OA and deprecating Gratis OA, whether from
> > author self-archiving (Gratis Green) or rival Gold OA and hybrid
> > publishers (Gratis Gold).
> >
> > And often, alas, the library community, including SPARC, does not
> > understand either, and needlessly complicates things wtill further.
> >
> > Let me simplify: Libre OA (free for all online *plus* re-use rights) is
> > Gratis OA (free for all online) PLUS re-use rights. Libre OA asks for MORE
> > than Gratis OA. Hence Libre OA faces far more obstacles than Gratis OA.
> >
> > *Yet we are nowhere near having even Gratis OA yet:* Around 30% in most
> > fields, especially during the first 12 months of publication (mainly
> > because of publisher embargoes — on Gratis OA — but also because of
> > (groundless) author fears).
> >
> > *That’s why Gratis Green OA mandates are urgently needed from
> institutions
> > and funders, worldwide.*
> >
> > Once we have 100% Gratis Green OA globally, all the rest will come:
> > Fair-Gold OA and all the re-use rights researchers want and need.
> >
> > But as long as we keep fussing and focussing pre-emptively and
> > compulsively on Libre OA re-use rights (and Fool’s Gold OA) instead of
> > mandating Gratis Green, we will keep getting next to no OA at all, of
> > either kind, as now.
> >
> > And all it requires is a tiny bit of thought to see why this is so. (But
> > for some reason, many people prefer to fulminate instead, about the
> > relative virtues of Gratis vs Libre, Green vs Gold, and CC-BY vs
> > non-commercial CC-BY.)
> >
> > Let’s hope that the institutions and funding agencies will get their
> acts
> > together soon. At least 20 years of OA have already been needlessly
> lost…
> >
> > Dixit,
> >
> > Stevan Harnad
> > Exceedingly Weary Archivangelist
> >
> >
> > *From:* Repositories discussion list [
> > mailto:[log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> > ] *On Behalf Of *Richard Poynder
> > *Sent:* September-01-14 8:20 AM
> > *To:* [log in to unmask]
> > *Subject:* The Open Access Interviews: Paul Royster, Coordinator of
> > Scholarly Communications, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
> >
> > Paul Royster is proud of what he has achieved with his institutional
> > repository. Currently, it contains 73,000 full-text items, of which more
> > than 60,000 are freely accessible to the world. This, says Royster, makes
> > it the second largest institutional repository in the US, and it receives
> > around
> > 500,000 downloads per month, with around 30% of those going to
> > international users.
> >
> > Unsurprisingly, Royster always assumed that he was in the vanguard of the
> > OA movement, and that fellow OA advocates attached considerable value to
> > the work he was doing.
> >
> > All this changed in 2012, when he attended an open access meeting
> > organised by SPARC in Kansas City. At that meeting, he says, he was
> > startled to hear SPARC announce to delegates that henceforth the sine qua
> > non of open access is that a work has to be made available with a CC BY
> > licence or equivalent attached.
> >
> > After the meeting Royster sought to clarify the situation with SPARC,
> > explaining the problems that its insistence on CC BY presented for
> > repository managers like him, since it is generally not possible to make
> > self-archived works available on a CC BY basis (not least because the
> > copyright will invariably have been assigned to a publisher).
> > Unfortunately, he says, his concerns fell on deaf ears.
> >
> > The only conclusion Royster could reach is that the OA movement no longer
> > views what he is doing as open access. As he puts it, “[O]ur work in
> > promulgating Green OA (which normally does not convey re-use rights) and
> > our free-access publishing under non-exclusive permission-to-publish
> (i.e.,
> > non-CC) agreements was henceforth disqualified.”
> >
> > If correct, what is striking here is the implication that institutional
> > repositories can no longer claim to be providing open access.
> >
> > In fact, if one refers to the most frequently cited definitions of open
> > access one discovers that what SPARC told Royster would seem to be in
> > order. Although it was written before the Creative Commons licences were
> > released, for instance, the definition of open access authored by those
> who
> > launched the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) in 2001 clearly seems
> > to describe the same terms as those expressed in the CC BY licence.
> >
> > What this means, of course, is that green OA does not meet the
> > requirements of the BOAI — even though BOAI cited green OA as one of its
> > “complementary strategies” for achieving open access.
> >
> > Since most of the OA movement’s claimed successes are green successes
> this
> > is particularly ironic. But given this, is it not pure pedantry to worry
> > about what appears to be a logical inconsistency at the heart of the OA
> > movement? No, not in light of the growing insistence that only CC BY will
> > do. If nothing else, it is alienating some of the movement’s best allies
> —
> > people like Paul Royster for instance.
> >
> > “I no longer call or think of myself as an advocate for ‘open
> access,’
> > since the specific definition of that term excludes most of what we do in
> > our repository,” says Royster. “I used to think the term meant ‘free
> to
> > access, download, and store without charge, registration, log-in, etc.,’
> > but I have been disabused of that notion.”
> >
> > For that reason, he says, “My current attitude regarding OA is to step
> > away and leave it alone; it does some good, despite what I see as its feet
> > of clay. I am not ‘against’ it, but I don't feel inspired to promote a
> > cause that makes the repositories second-class members.”
> >
> > How could this strange state of affairs have arisen? And why has it only
> > really become an issue now, over a decade after the BOAI definition was
> > penned?
> >
> > More here:
> >
> >
> http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/the-open-access-interviews-paul-
royster.html
> >
> >
> >
>
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