[BOAI] Re: Meaning of Open Access

[Stevan Harnad]

On 2012-05-09, at 7:34 AM, Andras Holl wrote:

> The thing whether Open Access relates to an individual article 
> or a whole journal is not clear.

Individual article (and author)

> Does libre OA mean that anyone 
> is free to redistribute the whole journal, or only one, a few article? 

There can be libre OA by the article (green libre OA or
hybrid Gold OA) or by the journal (Gold OA).

> Text mining rights are meaningful only for the whole journal. 

Perhaps.

> My opinion that they should be granted

By whom: The publisher or the author? And how is
the author to grant them if the publisher does not?

> - the problem I have 
> is not with the rights. It is with the practice. The OA journal 
> I manage has every article available in several formats - LaTeX, PS. PDF, HTML - 
> some of these are generated on-the-fly, some static. Indiscriminate 
> harvesting is a prolem for me. What I would like to have is 
> some method, which is a mix of robots.txt and htaccess, 
> maybe with a touch of legal content about the scope of 
> possible use of harvested content. 

Yes, all in good time.

But what we need now is the Green Gratis OA that
is within reach of institutional and funder mandates,
for *all* articles, in *all* journals.

> So, in my opinion, the real worls situation is even more complex 
> than either gratis or libre. There are many flavors of OA, and 
> I do not think that sticking to the bOAI definition would do much good. 

Perhaps a better way of putting it is that there are several
degrees of OA, and first things first: We should reach for
the "low bar" Gratis Green OA that is already within our grasp,
by mandating it, rather than insisting on more and getting
next to nothing,

That will prepare the way for the further degrees,

Stevan Harnad
> 
> Andras Holl 
> 
> On Wed, 9 May 2012 06:37:55 -0400, Stevan Harnad wrote 
> > ** Cross-Posted ** 
> > 
> > On 2012-05-09, at 4:12 AM, Jan Velterop wrote: 
>> 
>> > I would favour doing away with both the terms 'libre OA' and 'gratis OA'.
>> 
>> > Open Access suffices. It's the 'open' that says it all. Especially if it is made
>> 
>> > clear that OA means BOAI-compliant OA in the context of scholarly
>> 
>> > research literature.
> 
> > 
> > I don't doubt that Jan would like to do away with the terms libre and gratis OA.  
> > He has been arguing all along that free online access is not open access, 
> > ever since 2003 on the American Scientist Open Access Forum: 
> > 
> > http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#msg6478 
> > 
> > This would mean that my "subversive proposal" of 1994 was not really a  
> > proposal for open access  and that the existing open access mandates  
> > and policies of funders and institutions worldwide are not really open access  
> > mandates or policies. 
> > http://roarmap.eprints.org/ 
> > 
> > It is in large part for this reason that in 2008 Peter Suber and I proposed  
> > the terms "gratis" and "libre" open access to ensure that the term 
> > "open access" retained its meaning, and to make explicit the two  
> > distinct conditions involved: free online access (gratis OA) and 
> > certain re-use rights (libre OA): 
> > 
> > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/strong-and-weak-oa.html 
> > 
> > For Peter Murray-Rust's crusade for journal article text-mining rights, 
> > apart from reiterating my full agreement that these are highly important 
> > and highly desirable and even urgent in certain fields, I would like 
> > to note that -- as PM-R has stated -- neither gratis OA nor libre OA 
> > is necessary for the kinds of text-mining rights he is seeking. They 
> > can be had via a special licensing agreement from the publisher. 
> > 
> > There is no ambiguity there: The text-mining rights can be granted 
> > even if the articles themselves are not made openly accessible, 
> > free for all.  
> > 
> > And, as Richard Poynder has just pointed out, publishers are 
> > quite aware of (perhaps even relieved with) this option, with  
> > Elsevier lately launching an experiment in it: 
> > 
> > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/2012-May/000433.html 
> > 
> > This makes it clear that the text-mining rights PM-R seeks can be 
> > had without either sort of OA, gratis or libre... 
> > 
> > Let us hope the quest for Open Access itself is not derailed in this 
> > direction. 
> > 
> > Stevan Harnad 
> 
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> Andras Holl / Holl Andras                 e-mail: holl at konkoly.hu 
> Konkoly Observatory / MTA CsFK CsI       Tel.: +36 1 3919368 Fax: +36 1 2754668 
> IT manager / Szamitastechn. rendszervez. Mail: H1525 POBox 67, Budapest, Hungary 
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 
> 
> 
> --      
> To unsubscribe from the BOAI Forum, use the form on this page:
> http://www.soros.org/openaccess/forum.shtml?f

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/boai-forum/attachments/20120509/3da260af/attachment.html