[BOAI] Against Squandering Scarce Research Funds on Pre-Emptive Gold OA Without First Mandating Green OA

[Stevan Harnad]

**** Apologies for Cross-Posting ***

Pre-Emptive Gold OA.* There is a fundamental strategic point for Open Access
(OA) that cannot be made often enough, because it concerns one of the two
biggestretardants <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#31.Waiting> on
OA progress today -- and the retardant that has, I think, lately become the
bigger of the two.

(The other major retardant is copyright
worries<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#10.Copyright>,
but those have shrunk dramatically, because most journals have now endorsed
immediate Green OA self-archiving, and the ID/OA
mandate<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/494-guid.html>
can
provide immediate "almost-OA" even for articles in the minority of journals
that still do not yet endorse immediate OA.)

The biggest retardant on OA progress today is hence *a distracting focus on
pre-emptive Gold OA* (including the conflation of the journal affordability
problem with the research accessibility
problem<http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html>,
and the conflation of Gold OA with OA itself, wrongly supposing that OA or
"full OA" means Gold OA -- *instead of concentrating all efforts on
universalizing Green OA mandates*.

*Conflating the Journal Affordability Problem with the Research
Accessibility Problem. *Although the journal affordability problem ("serials
crisis") was historically one of the most important factors in drawing
attention to the need for OA, and although there is definitely a causal link
between the journal affordability problem and the research accessibility
problem (namely, that if all journals were affordable to all institutions,
there would be no research access problem!), affordability and accessibility
are nevertheless *not the same problem*, and the conflation of the two, and
especially the tendency to portray affordability as the primary or ultimate
problem, is today causing great confusion and even greater delay in
achieving OA itself, despite the fact the universal OA is already fully
within reach.

The reason is as simple to state as it is (paradoxically) hard to get people
to pay attention to, take into account, and act accordingly:

Just as it is true that there would be no research accessibility problem if
the the journal affordability problem were solved (because all institutions,
and all their researchers, would then have affordable access to all
journals), it is also true that the journal affordability problem would
cease to be a real problem if the research accessibility problem were
solved: If all researchers (indeed everyone) could access all journal
articles for free online, then *it would no longer matter how much journals
cost, and which institutions were willing and able to pay for which
journals. *After universal Green OA, journals may or may not eventually
become more affordable, or convert to Gold OA: It would no longer matter
either way, for we would already have OA -- full OA -- itself. And surely *
access* is what Open *Access* is and always was about.

It is this absolutely fundamental point that is still lost on most OA
advocates today. And it is obvious why most OA advocates don't notice or
take it into account: Because we are still so far away from universal OA of
either hue, Green or Gold.

*Green OA Can Be Mandated, Gold OA Cannot. *But here there is an equally
fundamental difference: Green OA self-archiving can be accelerated and
scaled up to universality (and this can be done at virtually zero cost) *by
the research community alone* -- i.e., research institutions (largely
universities) and research funders -- *by mandating Green OA*.

In contrast, Gold OA depends on publishers, costs money (often substantial
money), and cannot be mandated by institutions and funders: All they can do
is throw money at it -- already-scarce research money, and at an
asking-price that is today vastly inflated compared to what the true cost
would eventually be *if the conversion to Gold OA were driven by journal
cancellations, **following as a result of universal Green
OA*<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15753/>
*. *For if universal Green OA, in completely solving the research access
problem, did eventually make subscriptions no longer sustainable as the
means of recovering publishing costs, then (a small part of) the windfall
institutional savings from the journal cancellations themselves -- rather
than scarce research funds -- could be used to pay for the Gold OA.

So instead of focusing all efforts today on ensuring that all institutions
and funders worldwide mandate Green OA, as soon as possible, many OA
advocates continue to be fixated instead on trying to solve the journal
affordability problem directly, by wasting precious research money on paying
for Gold OA (at a time when publication is still being fully paid for by
subscriptions, whereas research is sadly underfunded) and by encouraging
researchers to publish in Gold OA journals. This is being done at a time
when (1) Gold OA journals are few, especially among the top journals in each
field, (2) the top Gold OA journals themselves are expensive, and, most
important of all, (3) publishing in them is completely unnecessary -- if the
objective is, as it ought to be, *to provide immediate OA*. For OA can be
provided through immediate Green OA self-archiving. Worst of all, even as
they talk of spending what money they have to spare on Gold OA, the
overwhelming majority of institutions and funders (unlike FWF) *still do not
mandate Green OA*! Only 80 out of at least
10,000<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/> do
so as yet.

*"Gold Fever." *That is why I have labelled this widespread (and, in my
view, completely irrational and counterproductive) fixation on Gold OA and
journal affordability "Gold Fever <http://tinyurl.com/p3ybua>": trying to
pre-emptively convert journals to Gold OA -- to buy OA, in effect -- at a
time when all that is needed, and needed urgently, is to mandate Green OA,
and then to let nature take care of the
rest<http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm>
.

(Universal Green OA will eventually make subscriptions unsustainable and
induce publishers to cut costs, jettison the print edition, jettison the
online PDF edition, offload all archiving and access-provision onto the
distributed network of Institutional and Central Repositories, downsize to
just providing the service of peer-review alone, and convert to the Gold OA
model for cost recovery -- but at the far lower price of peer review alone,
rather than at the inflated pre-emptive asking prices that are being
needlessly paid today, without the prerequisite downsizing to peer review
alone).

In other words, to see or describe Green OA as only a partial or short-term
solution for OA is not only (in my view) inaccurate, but it is also
counterproductive for OA -- retarding instead of facilitating the requisite
universal adoption of Green OA self-archiving mandates:

If universal Green OA were just a partial or short-term solution, for
*precisely
what problem* would it be just a partial or short-term solution? For
universal Green OA is a full, permanent solution for the research
accessibility problem; that in turn removes all of the urgency and
importance of the journal affordability problem -- which can then
eventually, at its own natural pace, be solved by institutions cancelling
subscriptions once universal Green OA has been reached (since all research
is thereafter freely accessible to all users universally), thereby inducing
journals to downsize and convert to Gold.

Instead trying to promote the Gold OA publication-charge model now,
pre-emptively, is not only unnecessary and wasteful (spending *more *money,
at an arbitrarily high asking price, instead of saving it), but it distracts
from and blurs what is the real, urgent need, and the real solution, which
is to mandate Green OA, now, universally. That -- and not pre-emptively
paying Gold OA's arbitrary current asking price -- is what needs to be done
today!

See:  *"Gold Fever" and "Trojan Folly."* <http://tinyurl.com/p5jbpr>

*OA Books?* The third most important distraction and deterrent to universal
Green OA is to conflate OA's primary target -- journal articles, which are
all, without exception, in all disciplines, author
give-aways<http://cogprints.org/1639/1/resolution.htm#1.1>,
written solely for the sake of research uptake and
impact<http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html>,
not for royalty income -- with books <http://tinyurl.com/p8s9se>, which are
not OA's primary target, are not written solely for research uptake and
impact, have immediate cost-recovery implications for the publisher, book by
book, are not nearly as urgent a matter as journal-article access for
research, and will, like Gold OA, evolve naturally of their own accord once
universal Green OA has prevailed.

But for now, conflating OA with book access is simply another retardant on
the urgent immediate priority, which is Green OA mandates (of which -- as we
should keep reminding ourselves -- we still have only 80 out of 10,000,
while we keep fussing instead, needlessly, about Gold OA, journal
affordability, and book OA).

(Having said that, however, it must be added that *of course* the funder has
a say in attaching conditions to the publication of a book whose publication
costs the funder subsidizes! But then the greatest care should be taken to
separate those special cases completely from OA -- whose primary target is
journal articles -- and Green OA mandates, whose *sole* target is journal
articles.)

*Data-Archiving. *Like book OA -- and in contrast to OA's urgent, primary
target: refereed-journal-article OA -- data OA is not yet a clearcut and
exception-free domain. Please see these postings on
data-archiving<http://tinyurl.com/create.php>
.

Unlike articles and books, data self-archiving is not restricted by
copyright transfer from the researcher to the publisher. In itself, this
would seem to be a good thing: Authors can already archive their data if
they wish to; they need not worry that it might violate their publisher's
policy or rights.

So -- we should ask ourselves -- why don't most authors do it yet?

The answer is two-fold: If the author does not first provide OA to the
journal article that describes and analyzes the research, the author's data
are far less useful. So Green OA itself will facilitate and incentivize
data-OA.

But, even more important, not all (perhaps not even most) researchers *want* to
make their data OA, at least not until they have had all the time they need
and want to data-mine it themselves (and sometimes that can require years).
The incentive to gather data would plunge considerably if researchers were
forced to declare it open season for all researchers to analyze their
hard-won data as soon as it was gathered!

Hence institutions and funders should definitely *encourage* their
researchers to deposit their data in their Institutional Repositories (IRs)
as soon as they can, but to leave that up to them. In clear contrast,
institutions and funders should *mandate* that the final, refereed, accepted
drafts of all journal articles should be deposited in their IRs immediately
upon acceptance for publication.

*Earlier Drafts.*The story is approximately the same for unrefereed
preprints as it is for data and for books: Researchers can be *encouraged* to
deposit their earlier drafts (and in some fields authors have been doing so
for years), but on no account should it be *required*. The only thing that
needs to be required is the deposit of the refereed, accepted final draft of
all journal articles. Publishing in a Gold OA journal can also be
encouraged, but again, on no account mandated; and money need not and should
not be thrown at it either (by any funder that has not already mandated
Green OA), not only because the expense is not necessary in order to provide
OA itself, but because the pre-emptive asking price today is arbitrarily
high, subscriptions are still paying for most journals, and the majority of
existing Gold OA journals do not even charge for publication, but continue
to sustain themselves on subscriptions and subsidy!)

*Stevan Harnad <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/>*
American Scientist Open Access
Forum<http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html>
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