[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

Tue May 8 11:50:48 BST 2012

For the perplexed reader:

1. Peter Murray-Rust is a dedicated advocate for certain text-mining and
re-use rights that are very important and very fruitful in certain fields
of research (but not all, and probably not many).

2. One of the necessary conditions for the kind of text-mining and
re-use rights PM-R seeks is free online access to the articles
(Gratis OA).

3. We do not yet have Gratis OA, because authors are not providing
it, partly out of sluggishness and partly out of fear (see Keith
Jeffery's posting on publisher FUD), even though virtually all authors 
want Gratis OA and even though the majority of journals (including 
almost all the top journals in almost all fields) already endorse their 
authors providing immediate Gratis OA by self-archiving their refereed
final drafts in their institutional repository (Green Gratis OA).

4. Only about 20% of articles are being made Gratis OA (because
of author sluggishness and fear of FUD) even though over 60% 
of journals endorse immediate Green Gratis OA, 90% endorse it 
after an embargo, and user needs during the embargo can be fulfilled 
via "Almost-OA" using the institutional repositories' semi-automatic 
email-eprint-request Button.

5. Research institutions and funders are in a position to
mandate (require) Green Gratis OA, as the remedy for author
sluggishness and fear of FUD, which would immediately
generate at least 60% immediate Green Gratis OA, plus 40%
embargoed OA and Almost-OA.

PM-R keeps reiterating that Gratis OA is not enough, 
but he takes no practical account of the fact that we don't 
even have Gratis OA, that Gratis OA is within reach, via 
mandates, and that more than Gratis OAis not within reach.

We would be at an OA impasse if grasping the Green
Gratis OA that is already within immediate reach of
Green Gratis OA mandates is discouraged as not being
enough, because it does not meet all the potential needs
of some fields.

Whatever you call it, "Libre OA" or Gratis OA plus certain
further re-use rights is not within reach today. Publishers oppose
it and it is not at all clear whether all, many, or most authors
want it -- but it is clear that only 20% of authors are providing
even just Gratis OA.

Hence immediate burden of the OA movement is not, as PM-R 
suggests, to gather evidence as to how many authors need and 
want the further re-use rights PM-R seeks. Nor is there any practical 
strategy for mandating the further re-use rights PM-R seeks.

The immediate priority is to mandate the Green Gratis
OA that is already within reach -- and that also happens
to be a necessary condition for the further re-use rights PM-R 
seeks.

I urge PM-R to stop arguing that Gratis OA is not enough,
and that what is needed instead is Gratis OA plus certain 
further re-use rights.

Stop letting the out-of-reach best get in the way of 
grasping the within reach better.

We'll all end up a lot better off that way.

Stevan Harnad

On 2012-05-08, at 3:59 AM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:

> 
> 
> On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 11:11 PM, Stevan Harnad <harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
> Richard, you are quite right that making research data open for all
> to mine is not the same thing as making the texts of research articles
> (Libre) OA for text-mining, and you are also right that there are
> different problems associated with each.
> 
> I should point out that Libre OA as defined by Suber-Harnad does not automatically give rights for textmining. Libre OA indicates that "some permission barriers are removed" - it does not indicate what those barriers are. For example by default an toll-access article may not be posted in an Institutional repository. The permission to post it is the removal of a barrier. However that permission does not allow text-mining as the copyirgh and re-use rights remain with other parties (publisher or repository or both). For this reason the phrase "LibreOA" is operationally meaningless - it may have political value. Wiley claims "fully open access" for its Gold hybrid and no doubt would label it as LibreOA but I can see no difference between it and publisher-supported Green OA other than that Wiley is 3000 USD better off and the research community is worse and that the authors can claim they have "Gold OA".
> 
> I urge people to realise that textmining requires an explicit statement of rights of re-use. 
>  
> Making article texts open for text-mining calls for Libre OA.
> 
> Specifically it calls for BOAI-compliant LibreOA, not just "LibreOA". It also calls for clear licensing with something equivalent to CC-BY or CC0.
>  
> 
> But few publishers endorse Libre OA, for fear of 3rd-party free-riders.
> 
> BMC and PLoS do this enthusastically. I have seen no serious evidence of free-riders.
>  
> (Moreover, some flavors of Libre OA call for further re-use rights
> that even some authors would not wish to grant.)
> 
> This statement is made without evidence and is typical of some of the casual and damaging inaccuracies made in this debate. I have no evidence that people fail to publish in PLoS and BMC because of their worry about re-use. 
>  
> 
> So all in all, both data OA and Libre OA face problems that Green
> Gratis OA does not face.
> 
> And they deserve careful, accurate discussion.
> 
> P.
> 
> -- 
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
> _______________________________________________
> GOAL mailing list
> GOAL at eprints.org
> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal

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