[GOAL] Re: Re-posting: Meaning of Open Access

[Richard Poynder]

Sorry, my mistake. To help further clarify the situation, below is what I
attached to the bottom of Stevan's message, after he asked:

[SH] What do other GOAL and JISC readers think?

[RP] There are times when the best that can be achieved is that people agree
to disagree. I think this is one of those times.

Richard Poynder


-----Original Message-----
From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf
Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 10 May 2012 12:52
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Re-posting: Meaning of Open Access

The following is a re-posting of a message I had had meant to post to both
GOAL and JISC-Repositories yesterday, but inadvertently posted only to JISC.
(Richard has since quoted from it, but the source will have been confusing
to GOAL readers..)

Stevan Harnad

On 2012-05-10, at 4:43 AM, Jan Velterop wrote:

> I might be convinced by his core argument, and quite possibly other 
> people on this list as well, if Stevan cum suis could come up with 
> credible evidence that in order to get universities and funders to 
> mandate deposit in what they call OA-repositories requires watering 
> down OA and not sticking to what OA was meant to be according to the 
> BOAI.

The evidence is that virtually all the c. 250  Green OA mandates that have
actually succeeded in getting adopted to date (see ROARMAP) are for free
online access (Gratis OA) only, not for Libre (or "BOAI") OA.
http://roarmap.eprints.org

(The mandates are mostly also for the author's final draft, not for the
publisher's PDF.)

The reason is that all authors are for free online access (at least), the
majority of publishers endorse (only) free online access (unembargoed) and
most of the remaining publishers endorse free online access (only) after an
embargo.

As evidence that going against authors' preferences makes it harder to get
mandates adopted, several mandates have been delayed or blocked because
authors wanted the publisher's PDF rather than their own final drafts to be
the drafts that were freely accessible online. 

(The solution was to explain to the authors why "lowering the bar" to the
author's final draft would generate much more free access, and already made
a huge difference for access-denied users, whereas persuading publishers who
had already endorsed immediate-Gratis Green OA to endorse Libre OA would be
a long, and possibly endless slog. A similar rationale is used for "lowering
the bar" to the most successful and effective mandate model, ID/OA
[immediate deposit -- optional access] + "Almost-OA"
via the email-eprint-access Button for Closed Access deposits during the
embargo. There are all examples of "lowering the bar" -- "reaching for the
reachable" -- in order to get much more access for researchers, rather than
to continue to make do with access-denial year in and year out, by holding
out for the unreachable.)

I might add, without evidence, that I am certain that the fastest, surest
(and probably the only) way to reach the currently unreachable (Libre OA,
Gold OA, etc.) too is to grasp for what is already within reach ("lower the
bar"). 
Green Gratis OA itself, once it becomes universal, will be what extends our
reach, irreversibly.

(What follows is a response that I had meant to post to GOAL yesterday, but
inadvertently sent only to JISC-Repositories.)

Re-posted: 

I apologize for dwelling on what to some members of the GOAL forum and the
JISC-Repositories list may seem to be minor or irrelevant points.  I would
like to suggest that they are far from being minor or  irrelevant, but go to
the very heart of what OA is, what it's for,  and how to make it happen:

On 2012-05-09, at 1:19 PM, Jan Velterop wrote:

> Of course the need for access isn't. What I'm saying is that just 
> 'gratis' OA won't feel much like meaningful access to those who have 
> to ingest amounts of papers that are impossible to ingest by unaided 
> (by machine) reading.
> This is an interesting article that illustrates that:
> http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6815
> (not OA, unfortunately)

Jan, I  think your reply does not address the question I asked.. You made
what looks like a spurious dichotomy, between those who can afford
sufficient access and those who can't keep up with the relevant literature.

That does not cover the relevant options.

There are those who can afford sufficient access and those who cannot. And
for those who cannot afford sufficient access, providing Green Gratis OA is
most definitely providing "meaningful" access.

For those whose problem is not access but tools to help them keep up with
the relevant literature
-- note that this is not an access problem but a
filtering/alerting/search/navigation problem -- one can develop solutions
without any reference to OA. In fact, publishers and secondary indexers will
be happy to provide such services on the full non-OA corpus. Publishers
would be delighted to form a consortium to help users navigate paid content
(in fact they are already beginning to do
it) -- especially if we would just stop the clamor for OA (Gratis OA!).

So what is really at issue is whether Green Gratis OA is indeed not
"meaningful" enough to warrant "lowering the  bar" in order to mandate it.

According to Jan, it is not.

According to me, it most definitely is: in fact, it is the first and
foremost reason for providing OA at all.

What do other GOAL and JISC readers think?

(I am also willing to make a bet that once Green Gratis OA mandates from
institutions and funders have generated enough OA content to make it worth
their while, a generation of bright doctoral students in computer science
and scientometrics will be more than happy to provide filtering and
navigation tools beyond Jan's wildest dreams. And so will Google.
All that's missing is that Green Gratis OA content that Jan does not find
meaningful enough... See citebase for the faintest of foretastes (crafted by
a Southampton doctoral student, Tim Brody, also the architect of ROAR, and
limited only by the sparseness of OA content):
http://www.citebase.org/ )

Stevan Harnad

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