From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2014 12:19:41 -0400

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(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 (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).

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 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