From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 08:39:47 +0200

Fred,

Indeed, we signed up to the BOAI, as did Stevan Harnad, and the
Initiative talked about two routes to OA, which have become known as
'gold' and 'green'. The BOAI doesn't talk about keeping a 'balance'
between the two, if memory serves. (I tried to look it up to make
sure, but the BOAI page at soros.org is not available anymore –
perhaps temporarily, in any case this morning).

If one thinks that the verb "rubbish" is appropriate to describe
Finch's treatment of 'green', then one must surely conclude that
"rubbish" is the term to be used – a forteriori – for Harnad's
treatment of 'gold', constantly calling people who even contemplate
'gold' alongside of 'green'  foolish or worse. The point of my
previous post was that there are many roads leading to Rome. To insist
on waiting until the OA world is 'green' before doing anything with
'gold' is putting dogma before pragma; waiting to open the parachute
until a split second before hitting the ground and calling that a
'good thing'. Or even believing that.

Since the BOAI, 'green' has evolved somewhat. And so has the need for
full access and re-use (delivered by what is now sometimes called
'libre OA', though the definition of OA in the BOAI already included
the properties of 'libre'). Originally, 'green' was the deposit (by
authors) of their final, accepted manuscript in an open repository,
before or at the time of publication of its formal version in a
journal. That has been watered down, not in terms of deposit, but in
terms of openness and 'libre-ness', by the idea of ID/OA (in which OA
means 'optional access', to make any confusion about OA worse).
Delayed OA (which 'green' with embargoes is) and not being able to
re-use the literature would have been anathema at the original BOAI.

The way I read it, the Finch Report expresses a preference for
immediate, 'libre', open access, and sees 'gold' as more likely to be
able to deliver that than 'green'. Meanwhile, 'green' is a way to
deliver OA (albeit delayed and not libre) where 'gold' is not feasible
yet. That is an entirely sensible viewpoint, completely compatible
with the letter – and I think also the spirit – of the BOAI.

Jan Velterop


On 2 Aug 2012, at 00:07, LIBLICENSE wrote:

> From: Frederick Friend <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2012 10:55:18 +0100
>
> Jan,
>
> I cannot speak for Stevan Harnad, but the problem many of us have with
> the Finch Report is not that "they see the gold route as worthy of
> support as well" but that it unfairly rubbishes the green route and -
> in giving priority to gold - does not maintain the balance between
> green and gold to which you and I signed up in BOAI.
>
> Fred Friend
> http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jan Velterop <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tue, 31 Jul 2012 10:08:26 +0200
>
> It should be abundantly clear that Open Access policies by Finch,
> RCUK, Wellcome Trust and many others are very important for the
> development of universal OA, in that they not only indicate practical
> ways of achieving it, but also signal to the scholarly community and
> the wider society interested in scientific knowledge and its advance
> that OA should be the norm.
>
> The 'sin' that RCUK, Finch and the Wellcome Trust committed is that
> they didn't formulate their policies according to strict Harnadian
> orthodoxy. It's not that they forbid Harnadian OA (a.k.a. 'green'). It
> is that they see the 'gold' route to OA as worthy of support as well.
> Harnad, as arbiter of Harnadian OA (he has acolytes), would like to
> see funder and institutional OA policies focus entirely and only on
> Harnadian OA, and would want them, to all intents and purposed, forbid
> the 'gold' route. In this view, the 'gold' route comes into play (as
> 'downsized gold', whatever that means) only once all scholarly journal
> literature is OA according to Harnadian rules. These rules are quite
> specific: a) articles must be published in peer-reviewed subscription
> journals; b) institutions must mandate their subsequent deposit in an
> institutional repository (not, for instance in a global subject
> repository); c) there must be no insistence on OA immediately upon
> publication (his big idea is ID/OA — Institutional Deposit / Optional
> [sic] Access); d) there must be no insistence on CC-BY or equivalent
> (which would make re-use and text-mining possible — OA in this view
> should just be ocular access, not machine-access).
>
> It must be difficult to comply with these rules, and seeing his recent
> applause, subsequently followed by withdrawal of support, for the RCUK
> policy, even Harnad himself finds it difficult to assess whether the
> rules are 'properly' adhered to. It also seems as if his main focus is
> not OA but mandated deposit in institutional repositories. Probably
> hoping that that will eventually lead to OA. He would like to see
> 'gold' OA — OA at source — considered only if and when it is
> "downsized Gold OA, once Green OA has prevailed globally, making
> subscriptions unsustainable and forcing journals to downsize." It is
> the equivalent of opening the parachute only a split second before
> hitting the ground. It would be the triumph of a dogmatically serial
> process over a pragmatically parallel one. The triumph of cloud cuckoo
> land over reality.
>
> Open Access is more than worth having. Different, complementary, ways
> help achieve it. There are many roads leading to Rome.
>
> Jan Velterop
> OA advocate