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Tomasz is certainly right in his reading of researchers needs and wants: Most researchers neither need nor want more than that their refereed articles should be free for all users online (Gratis OA). The BBB definition of OA has been considerably refined in the 10 years since we first improvised (sic) it in the BOAI. Gratis OA means free online access. Libre OA means free online access plus various re-use rights (on which not everyone is agreed, but could go up to CC-BY). Christoph Bruch wrote: Dear Tomasz, > your understanding of OA is not in line with the Berlin Declaration: > Open access contributions must satisfy two conditions: > > 1. The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to > all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license > to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to > make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any > responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community > standards, will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper > attribution and responsible use of the published work, as they do now), as > well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their > personal use. > > To repeat: The original text is not Holy Writ: It is a provisional, fallible text that a number of us drafted and signed off on in the Budapest Open Access Initiative in 2002. Based on subsequent developments and experience, has since been further refined into two components: Gratis OA and Libre OA (2008). Gratis OA is much easier to reach, and it is a necessary condition for Libre OA. And it can be mandated by institutions and funders. In addition, all researchers need and want Gratis OA (online access, free for all), whereas not all need, want, or even know about Libre OA. Also, this conversation is about the Government / RUCK OA policy in UK, > especially about the payment of OA fees. Indeed it is. And the point is that it is unnecessary and extremely counterproductive for RCUK (1) to dictate UK researchers' journal choice, (2) force UK researchers to pay for Libre (CC-BY) Gold OA when a hybrid Gold publisher offers *both* Gold and Green, (3) forbid UK researchers to publish in a journal that offers *neither* Gold nor Green within the allowable 6-12 month embargo period, and (4) to divert scarce research funds to pay subscription publishers even more for Gold OA instead of just strengthening the compliance mechanisms for a cost-free Gratis Green OA mandate. One may have to accept limited degrees of access when following the green > road. Gratis Green is sufficient for most refereed research and researchers. Libre OA and Gold OA will come after Gratis Green is mandated globally. There are work-arounds even for publisher embargoes on Green OA (ID/OA + "Almost-OA" Button). Paying extra pre-emptively for hybrid Gold (and thereby encouraging publishers to extend Green OA embargoes to make sure the UK author must choose to pay for Gold) is an extremely bad idea, and will be strongly resisted by UK researchers and OA advocates if the RCUK policy is not revised. The UK incentive to publishers to offer hybrid Gold and lengthen Green embargoes is also deleterious to worldwide OA and Green OA mandates (and that -- aside from the prospect of a 6% increase over and above subscription income -- is why publishers are so laudatory about the new RCUK policy: they have been lobbying for just that for years). Funders have to define clearly what they are willing to spend money for > when talking about the golden road. Until further notice, we are not just talking about spending scarce research money, but about *wasting* it, if RCUK authors are forced to pay for hybrid Gold *instead of* providing cost-free Green (irrespective of embargo length). From my perspective the goal is to make OA gold publications freely > available for all legitimate uses with a one-off payment. From the perspective or research and researchers the goal is to make all research accessible online to all users, not just subscribers (Gratis OA); and once at least that necessary and long overdue condition is met, by mandating Green OA universally, the secondary and tertiary goals will follow as a natural matter of course: Libre OA and Gold OA -- and paid for, at as much lower price, out of subscription cancellation savings made possible by universal Green OA, rather than, as now being proposed, out of needlessly diverted research funds. This would certainly include data mining. Plenty of data-mining is possible via cost-free Gratis OA. The rest will come after Green Gratis OA has prevailed globally. *Note:* If a funder or institution has the spare cash, there is nothing wrong with their making it available to researchers to pay for Gold OA now, if they wish to -- *but only after the funder or institution has adopted Green OA mandate*, with an effective mechanism for monitoring and ensuring compliance: All that is needed to make RCUK’s existing cost-free Green Gratis mandate work effectively is (1) to adopt ID/OA (immediate deposit is required, no exceptions: OA can be embargoed, but immediate-deposit itself cannot); (2) mandate institutional deposit, not institution-external deposit, in order to recruit universities to monitor and ensure compliance (3) and to thereby to induce universities to adopt complementary Green OA mandates of their own, for the rest of their research output; (4) stipulate that repository deposit is the sole mechanism for submitting publications for REF, for competitive funding, for grant fulfillment and for institutional performance assessment. By thus merely strengthening mandate compliance mechanisms, the only thing being asked of authors by a Green mandate is a few extra keystrokes: no renunciation of preferred journals, no loss of research funds, no need to worry about finding extra money to pay for publishing if the subsidies run out, and no creation of gratuitous impediments to Green OA mandates for the rest of the world's research (94%). Stevan Harnad *Von:* Tomasz Neugebauer [mailto:[log in to unmask]] *Gesendet:* Freitag, 24. August 2012 23:43 *An:* Stevan Harnad; Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) *Cc:* BOAI Forum; SPARC Open Access Forum *Betreff:* RE: [sparc-oaforum] Re: Clarification of the new OA policy from the RCUK I have always thought that using text-minability and thus the potential development of web AI technologies as an argument for the benefits of open access was not appropriate. For many researchers, it is not an effective/convincing argument simply because the assumed benefits of this automation are too speculative. The following exchange demonstrates the confusion w.r.t. the purpose of open access: Mark Thorley argues as follows: "We not only want research papers to be ‘free to read’ but also to be ‘free to exploit’ – not only for text and data mining to advance scholarship… but also to drive innovation in the scholarly communications market itself." Stevan Harnad responds: "All OA advocates are in favour of text-minability, innovation potential, and as much CC-BY as each author needs and wants for their research output, over and above free online access to all research output -- but certainly not just for *some* research output, and certainly not at the expense (in both senses) of free online access to *all* research output " I submit that part of the problem here is that not all researchers are in fact concerned with what is implied in "text-minability, innovation potential", whereas many OA advocates have indeed implied that this is a key purpose of OA. The assumed purpose of a systemic change drives policy. I think that it was always a mistake to confuse the purpose of open access with text-minability and progress in the development of the semantic web. The purpose of the open access movement is to increase the access for *people* to the published results of research. I think that many OA advocates made the mistake to try to "market" OA as a stepping stone towards artificial intelligence on the web, and this was a mistake that has now found its way to RCUK policy. The benefits of text mining are much too speculative compared to the very tangible and fundamenetal benefits of people having free access to the published results of publicly funded research. Tomasz Neugebauer ------------------------------ *From:* Stevan Harnad [[log in to unmask]] *Sent:* Thursday, August 23, 2012 11:24 AM *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) *Cc:* BOAI Forum; SPARC Open Access Forum *Subject:* [sparc-oaforum] Re: Clarification of the new OA policy from the RCUK Mark Thorley's response is very disappointing: -- MT: "the ‘corrections’ [Harnad] proposes would dilute our policy so that it was no longer able to deliver the level of open access which the Research Councils require." http://blogs.rcuk.ac.uk/2012/08/10/the-benefits-of-open-access/#comment-81 The proposed corrections very explicitly *include* a correction to "the level of open access the Research Councils require." To reply that this "level" is incorrigible and nonnegotiable is tantamount to saying our minds are made up, don't trouble us with further information. The points requiring correction are very specifically those concerning the "level of open access" (Gratis or Libre; immediate or embargoed) that is actually needed by UK researchers today, and at what price, both in terms of price paid, out of scarce research funds, and, far more important, in terms of Green OA lost, in the UK as well as in the rest of the world (to whose research, RCUK needs to remind itself, UK researchers require open access too). These matters are not resolved by asserting that Finch/RCUK has already made up its mind a-priori about the level of OA required. -- MT: "We not only want research papers to be ‘free to read’ but also to be ‘free to exploit’ – not only for text and data mining to advance scholarship… but also to drive innovation in the scholarly communications market itself." All OA advocates are in favour of text-minability, innovation potential, and as much CC-BY as each author needs and wants for their research output, over and above free online access to all research output -- but certainly not just for *some* research output, and certainly not at the expense (in both senses) of free online access to *all* research output (of which the UK only produces 6%). Yet it is precisely for the latter that Finch/RCUK are insisting upon restrictions and pre-emptive payment -- for UK research output, both at the local UK tax-payer's expense, and at the expense of global Green OA. The RCUK/Finch policy provides a huge incentive to subscription publishers to offer paid hybrid Gold while at the same time increasing their Green embargoes to make cost-free Green an impermissible option for UK authors. This not only deprives UK authors of the cost-free Green option, but it deprives the rest of the world as well. (I don't doubt that some of the members of the Finch committee may even have thought of this as a good thing: a way to induce the rest of the world to follow the UK model, whether or not they can afford it, or wish to. But is this not something that may require some further thought?) -- MT: "And, we are very clear that those who read research papers come from a much wider base than the research community that Harnad considers will be satisfied through the use of repositories and green OA. Therefore, there are no plans to revise the RCUK policy, just to satisfy the interests of one particular sector of the OA community." It seems to me Mark has it exactly backwards. The "wider base," in all scientific and scholarly research fields, worldwide, wants and needs free online access, now, and urgently, to all research, in all fields (not just UK research output). It is only in a few particular subfields that there is an immediate and urgent need for further re-use rights (and even there, not just for UK's 6%). How urgent is text-mining of the UK's 6% of world research output and CC-BY, compared to free online access to all of the world's research output? And what are these urgent text-mining and other Libre OA functions? All authors need and want their work to be accessible to all its intended users, but how many authors need, want or even know about Libre OA, or CC-BY? And, Mark, can you elaborate rather specifically on the urgent "innovation market potential" that will resonate with all or most researchers as a rationale for constraining their journal choice, diminishing their research funds, and possibly having to find other funds in order to publish at all, today, when they do not even have free online access to the research output of the 94% of the world not bound by the RCUK policy? Stevan Harnad