Re: The Green and Gold Roads to Open Access

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

     Prior Amsci Subject Thread:
     The Green and Gold Roads to Open Access (began Nov 2003)
     http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3148.html

On Mon, 12 Dec 2005, Ann Okerson wrote that Charles Schwartz wrote:

> November/December issue of College & Research Libraries: Prospects for 
> open access

http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crljournal/backissues2005a/crlnov05/crlnov05.htm

> The goal of open access is to make academic research available free 
> through online journals, an approach that would overturn the traditional 
> subscriber-based business model of printed journals.

This is simply incorrect, no matter how often Charles Schwartz or anyone 
else somnambulistically repeats it. The goal of open access is open access 
(OA). OA is not OA publishing (gold). OA publishing is merely one of the 
two ways to reach 100% OA. There is also OA self-archiving (green) of 
articles published in non-OA journals.

> Supporters of open access say the research, often financed with taxpayer 
> dollars, should be made freely available instead of helping pad the 
> bottom line of the publishing companies and scholarly societies that 
> produce the journals.

Supporters of OA say the research should be made OA, period. Those who 
demand more are demanding more than just OA.

> Critics say open access is based on an economically unfeasible business 
> model that will damage the societies, hurt peer review, and undermine 
> the research enterprise.

Critics are talking about the OA publishing model, not OA.

> Mr. Schwartz says that open access will restructure academe...

Mr. Schwartz is speculating about OA publishing, not OA.

> There will not be one, climactic tipping point. Rather, he says, 
> cost-effective open-access business models will develop, discipline by 
> discipline. ... disciplines... have their own logics...

100% OA can and will be reached before any major shift to OA publishing, 
and no one (no one) knows whether (and if so when) 100% OA will be 
followed by a transition to OA publishing. One can speculate with Mr. 
Schwartz that *if* there were ever a transition after 100% OA to OA 
publishing, that transition would be gradual, and preceded by journal 
cost-cutting. (No reason to expect journals to convert cost-recovery on 
the basis of "discipline logic.")

     http://cogprints.org/1639/01/resolution.htm#4.2

> ...."The open-access movement will progress the way other innovations do 
> in a loosely coupled system, on the strength of weak ties: the diffusion 
> and eventual aggregation of professional communities' best practices."

The OA movement is not just, or primarily, the OA publishing movement 
(gold); it is also the OA self-archiving movement (green) which, having 
demonstrated OA self-archiving's benefits to research access and impact, 
and having already been given the green light by 93% of journals, is now 
in the process of making self-archiving a requirement, alongside "publish 
or perish." The policy of requiring immediate OA self-archiving has 
already been adopted by four universities plus CERN 
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/ It is on the verge of 
being adopted by the UK research funding councils, and has been 
half-adopted by the Wellcome Trust (6-month delay) and CURES (4-month 
delay); NIH (12-month delay) is moving from a request to a requirement 
(and, one hopes, no delay).

> The article, "Reassessing Prospects for the Open Access Movement," is 
> available to subscribers at 
> http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crljournal/backissues2005a/crlnov05/crlnov05.htm

Nonsubscribers will have to wait to see whether Mr. Schwartz elects to 
self-archive it.

It would be a good idea if, in addition to reading Mr. Schwartz's article, 
those with a serious interest in what is going on and why, look at what is 
actually going on, and particularly along the green road...

     http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html

PS: For another thoroughly out-of-date, off-the-mark article (but one that 
is at least openly accessible), see:

      The Shift Away From Print
      Eileen Gifford Fenton and Roger C. Schonfeld
      Inside Higher Ed
      http://insidehighered.com/views/2005/12/08/schonfeld

This article is so out of date that I wouldn't know where to begin to 
comment on it. Online is already here, for virtually all journals. How 
long we will want to keep paying for the print run is anyone's guess, but 
who cares. What matters is OA (i.e., free online access), but the authors 
are positively paleolithic: It would be a chore to get them to even twig 
on the 17th century, let alone the 21st...  (The intrepid Chris Green, 
however, has had a go: See his comment.)

Stevan Harnad