From: David Prosser <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2012 12:19:16 +0000

'Free access' and 'open access' are not synonymous terms.  If they
were then the framers of the definitions of open access from Budapest
onwards could have saved their time crafting definitions.  Open access
is free access plus.  Open access is always free access, but free
access is not always open access.

What Sandy describes, free reading on screen but nothing else, may be
valuable, but it is not open access.  It is free access.  For some
published outputs, such as some books, that may be as far as we can
sensibly go down the road to open.  And that's fine.  (Although I note
that many of the books listed in the OAPEN project go further.)  But
let's not pretend that it is open access.  Sometimes we can stretch
definitions so far that they snap and become unhelpful.  Stretching
'open access' to describe scholarly outputs that you can't print out
locally without a fee takes us beyond snapping point.

David Prosser