[GOAL] Re: libre vs open - general language issues (Stevan Harnad)
MIGUEL ERNESTO NAVAS FERNANDEZ
miguel.navas at ub.edu
Wed Aug 19 08:00:06 BST 2015
Dear all,
I would like to answer to the definitions given by Stevan Harnad:
1. Green OA means OA provided by the author (usually by self-archiving the refereed, revised, accepted final draft in an OA repository)
2. Gold OA means OA provided by the journal (often for a publication fee)
3. Gratis OA means free online access.
4. Libre OA means Gratis OA plus various re-use rights
I agree with the idea that we should use the same official definitions, but when those a) are not clear, b) look contradictious and c) fail to represent reality, then we should clarify them a little.
And I think that they are not clear (what does a color name mean?), look contradictious (OA cannot be only gratis according to BBB definitions) and c) they fail to represent reality if they do not consider OA-ACP (Platinum OA) and OA+APC (Commercial OA) as different things.
I will explain myself.
First, I don't agree with statements 3 and 4. According to the last official OA definition given by at Bethesda (http://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm#definition), "An Open Access Publication[1] is one that meets the following two conditions:
1) The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship[2], as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
2) A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central is such a repository).
Reading only 1), Open Access = free access + re-use rights. Free access only is not OA. Therefore, "gratis OA" would not exist, for it is not OA yet. In other words, "Gratis OA" should be called free or gratis access, and "Libre OA" should be called just OA. The use of "gratis" and "libre" is given by the open software culture, not by OA official definitions.
That said, if a majority of researchers is using "gratis OA" or "libre OA" (as the mentioned Peter Suber does, for instance), I am not going to fight them back. I will accept what is used by the majority. But then I don't understand that belligerence when other terms as Platinum appear.
Second, it is true that Platinum is not "official", but no one can deny that Gold OA journals published by universities and public research bodies at no cost for the author are a different thing from Gold OA journals published by commercial enterprises, including hybrid journals. That doesn't seem logical for me. It would be as calling full, hybrid and embargo journals the same OA with no difference among them (if hybrid and embargo journals are really OA, something that I doubt). You can call it "OA with APC" vs. "subsidized OA" or something like that, but we need a name, and Platinum doesn't seem inappropriate for me. Anyone has a better name?
I don't see a reason for not using a clear name to make them different. For instance, journals published by Scielo and many LAC universities do not charge authors at all, while PLoS charges from $1,350 to $2,900, Taylor and Francis $2,950, Springer €3,000, Elsevier from $500 to $5,000... I don't want to start a political / ethical discussion here, I just want to state that these types of OA are different and need a different name. Call it Platinum OA vs. Commercial OA, call it Author-pays OA v. Subsidized OA, but call it a name.
Platinum OA (or whatever you may call it) may not be important in Western publishing cultures, but if we want OA to be universal, the first thing we need to do is to treat it from a universal point of view.
Thanks a lot.
Best,
Miguel Navas-Fernández
PhD Researcher at Universitat de Barcelona
Member of Acceso Abierto research group
Associate Editor of DOAJ
ORCID Linkedin Twitter
________________________________________
De: goal-bounces at eprints.org [goal-bounces at eprints.org] en nom de goal-request at eprints.org [goal-request at eprints.org]
Enviat el: dilluns, 17 / agost / 2015 19:37
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Tema: GOAL Digest, Vol 45, Issue 21
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Today's Topics:
1. Re: **** SPAM **** Re: libre vs open - general language
issues (Dr. Shu-Kun Lin)
2. Re: libre vs open - general language issues (Nicolas Pettiaux)
3. Re: libre vs open - general language issues (Stevan Harnad)
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2015 13:47:42 +0200
From: "Dr. Shu-Kun Lin" <lin at mdpi.com>
Subject: [GOAL] Re: **** SPAM **** Re: libre vs open - general
language issues
To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" <goal at eprints.org>
Message-ID: <55D1C9DE.7020802 at mdpi.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252; format=flowed
Yes, be patient!!!
Dr. Shu-Kun Lin
Publisher of MDPI journals
President of MDPI
MDPI AG
Postfach, CH-4005 Basel, Switzerland
Office Location: Klybeckstrasse 64, CH-4057 Basel, Switzerland
Tel. +41 61 683 77 34 (office)
Fax +41 61 302 8918
Mobile: +41 79 322 3379; Skype: mdpibasel-lin
E-mail: lin at mdpi.com
Company homepage: http://www.mdpi.com
My homepage: http://www.mdpi.org/lin
On 15.08.2015 00:33, H?l?ne.Bosc wrote:
> Dear Lucie,
>
> How lucky you are to write a fluent and perfect English!
> You are able to defend easily your point of view on the list and I hope that
> after this first message, you will dare to participate to the discussion
> about OA itself.
> In you message you have decided to break your silence in being the advocate
> of a newcomer. In my bad english on my turn, I will try to be the advocate
> of the ancient members of the list.
> I participate to this list since its creation in 1998 and I can tell you
> that when a subject is discussed in 2015, it has often been discussed more
> than 10 times before.
> And when it is about a "new" terminology, it's really boring because it has
> been discussed more than 100 times and we know that it does not help to the
> OA progress.
> In reading the exchanges that seem like a very old tune, some can have a
> resigned sight, others can put the message in the trash with anger, some can
> say : "This time, it's too much: I leave the list" and others like Stevan
> can burst out!
> We are numerous and we are all different.
> Be patient Lucie, be patient Nicolas!
>
> H?l?ne Bosc
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Lucie Burgess" <lucie.burgess at bodleian.ox.ac.uk>
> To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" <goal at eprints.org>
> Sent: Friday, August 14, 2015 7:33 PM
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: libre vs open - general language issues
>
>
> Dear Stevan and all
>
> I am very engaged by the GOAL open access list and I find reading it
> informing, educating, stimulating, and inspiring by turn. The debate it
> engenders is laudable.
>
> But I have never posted to the list. May I say I thought this comment
> below was a rather inappropriate way to treat someone who is new to the
> list and to the debate and who wishes to engage with it.
>
> Please, can we treat people with respect in responding to the comments
> they make, and avoid making sarcastic comments which I feel are unhelpful.
> The debate will be richer and hopefully better informed by having a
> welcoming and inclusive approach. Not everyone is as knowledgeable about
> the history of open access or the issues as Stevan - surely we would do
> better to change that by fostering a mutually supportive approach?
>
> Response such as this one below, are one of the reasons I read the list
> but am discouraged from posting to it. On this occasion I have been
> tempted out of my shell!
>
> Best wishes,
> Lucie
>
>
> Lucie Burgess
> Associate Director for Digital Libraries
> Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
> Clarendon Building, Broad Street, Oxford
> Senior Research Fellow, Hertford College
> Tel: +44 (0)1865 277104
> +44 (0)7725 842619
> Twitter @LucieCBurgess
> LinkedIn LucieCBurgess
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 14/08/2015 17:28, "Stevan Harnad" <harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk> wrote:
>
>> Perhaps it?s time for our newcomer, Nicolas Pettiaux, to stop posting for
>> a while and do a little reading to inform himself about OA and its (short)
>> history. Otherwise he is just making us recapitulate it for him.
>>
>>> On Aug 14, 2015, at 12:03 PM, Nicolas Pettiaux <nicolas at pettiaux.be>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear
>>>
>>> I appreciate these discussions and clarifications. For me, and for most
>>> people who are nex to the subjects and I meet, "Gold open access" and
>>> "green open access" are confusing terms, even though they have been
>>> used
>>> for a long time in official documents.
>>>
>>> Green refers to nature and gold to expensive. What else for newcomers
>>> (=
>>> most people in fact) ?
>>>
>>> And nature is not necessarily cheap, while gold is most of the time
>>> expensive.
>>>
>>> What is "cheap open access" ? By cheap open access, I mean the full
>>> price of publishing a work (most of the time online only) in such a way
>>> that its overal price be as low as possible and ONLY reflect the actual
>>> costs ?
>>>
>>> The best method I can think of is forget about ANY journals, and
>>> consider as "publication quality paper" a work that is published
>>> anywhere online, be it on an institutional (open) repository or any
>>> website. Stop counting papers but only refer to their quality as
>>> measured for example effective evaluation of a committee made of human
>>> beings and not anymore by any accounting technique. Yes, this would
>>> suppose that on a per document base, or per person base, a committee
>>> would have to do actual work. But this is done already for most grant
>>> attribution or tenure selection processes. Maybe not yet by the actual
>>> reading of the papers and comments about his own papers an authors
>>> would
>>> write.
>>> Comments on a public website where the paper is published could also be
>>> taken into account in the evaluation.
>>>
>>> Many people agree today to consider that the peer review system does
>>> not
>>> work anymore due to a too large number of submitted papers and a too
>>> large number of journals/reviews.
>>>
>>> Is there any other solution than dumping the reviews, the journals, the
>>> papers as they are evaluated and listed today ? I am not the one
>>> proposing this . I have discussed the subject with Pierre-Louis Lions,
>>> a
>>> famous French mathematician, professor at the College de France and
>>> president of the board of the Ecole Normale sup?rieure who mentioned
>>> such a procedure he would appreciate and support.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>>
>>> Nicolas
>>>
>>> --
>>> Nicolas Pettiaux, phd - nicolas at pettiaux.be
>>> Open at work - Une Soci?t? libre utilise des outils libres
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> GOAL mailing list
>>> GOAL at eprints.org
>>> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> GOAL mailing list
>> GOAL at eprints.org
>> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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------------------------------
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2015 18:36:25 +0200
From: Nicolas Pettiaux <nicolas at pettiaux.be>
Subject: [GOAL] Re: libre vs open - general language issues
To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" <goal at eprints.org>
Message-ID: <0dc964714b6dac8a8128979b61ec636a at pettiaux.be>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Dear Mr Harnad,
It has taken me some days, even though I had been gently warned, to
digest your mail and to compose a response.
Without any doubt, you have been an important and long time actor of and
around open access. I am indeed a newcomer to this list, but not
completely a newcomer to the subject.
I admit that I know much better free software (and have learned and
don't like the very confusing words "open source software" that I never
use ... partly becaue I can always say that in case of doubt, my
language is French that express better my views with "logiciel libre"),
that I have known and worked with for more than 20 years.
I am basically a teacher. I have been for the last 30 years. I have
taught (mainly) physics and computing science to people from 7 till 77
(the ones reading Tintin ;-). For me, the process of learning as much as
the one of teaching, is difficult. It requires a lot of energy, time and
patience, on both sides. And there is no good way, equally good for
everyone. For every teacher and learner. Every situation is new,
different, with its own difficulties.
This GOAL mailing list contains probably a very high concentration of
people who know OA much better than me, and have done so for much longer
than I have. And we can read that even for these people, some important
definitions around OA (eg. green and gold) are NOT the same.
Interestingly.
I also know that the number of people who have never heard of OA, or
have such a bad and weak idea of OA, even in the limited world of
academics, around the Universities and research institutions, is
probably much larger than the number of specialists and informed people.
I therefore would conclude that the efforts of education around OA is
large and important.
One of the way I often comes down to when teaching is using the clear
wording and definitions, the best I can find, using my own and personnal
judgement. As well as explaining with differents words.
Today, I find that the wording "green OA" and "gold OA" are not
self-explanatory. In other word, I consider that the words "green" and
"gold" do not mean anything by themselves and need further explanation.
If they are not confusing !
For me, this situation is not the best to explain the OA case and need
for OA. And it will probably lead to further mails like mine that will
upset you. ... And block the discussion, as expressed by some people on
the list. This is sad in a world where most people still need to be
educated, in general and surely about OA and all its subleties.
I sometimes wonder if I wo not prefer the simple word "free access".
With free meaning both gratis and libre (freedom), this encompasses what
Jean-CLaude Gu?don says OA is "gratis and free access"
With respect to "contibuting to OA instead of discussing about OA", I
personnally like to think about "free knowledge" (not only research),
being both gratis and libre, and I am proud to be the initiator and one
of the actors of the Digith?que Pierre Gilbert, (see
http://digitheque.ulb.ac.be/fr/digitheque-pierre-gilbert/ ) a place
where all works by my grand-father are available online freely. He was a
poet, an historian (aegyptologist and art historian), academician,
curator of the Belgian Museum of Art and History ...
I am the initiator and main actor of 2 digith?ques to be inaugurated on
October 17 and 25 in the presence of leading Belgian people, from the
academic and research world, but NOT ONLY, about
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Roberts-Jones and
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Sterling whose works will be
published online under the CC-BY-SA licence.
There are also other ways I consider I contribute to OA and free
knowledge, or free culture. For example by numerous personnal contacts.
I hope to continue, also on this list, to contribute to a peacefull
world where more knowledge is available freely to anyone, without any
barrier, where people are willing to educate one another.
Best regards,
Nicolas Pettiaux
Le 2015-08-14 18:28, Stevan Harnad a ?crit?:
> Perhaps it?s time for our newcomer, Nicolas Pettiaux, to stop posting
> for
> a while and do a little reading to inform himself about OA and its
> (short)
> history. Otherwise he is just making us recapitulate it for him.
>
--
Nicolas Pettiaux, phd - nicolas at pettiaux.be
Open at work - Une Soci?t? libre utilise des outils libres
------------------------------
Message: 3
Date: Mon, 17 Aug 2015 13:27:17 -0400
From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com>
Subject: [GOAL] Re: libre vs open - general language issues
To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" <goal at eprints.org>
Message-ID:
<CAE7iXOiHpi7MM+wa3ZtqPvoFyq+V2JcvSKgfHDnPvP3pbMrnPg at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Dear Mr Pettiaux,
I seem to have been archivangelizing for almost as long as you have been
teaching.
If there is one thing I can say with near-certainty it is that the slow
progress toward green and (fair) gold OA has not been because of their
names, nor because of their complexity, because it is all exceedingly
simple (but not if it is conflated with other preconceptions):
The analogies with the free/open software movement are outweighed by the
disanalogies:
1. OA is primarily about journal articles.
2. Journal articles do not consist of executable code but of text.
3. Unlike proprietary software, the *content* of journal articles is, and
always was, open.
4. It's just that you have to pay to *access* the content, because access
to the proprietary *text* is not free.
5. Nor is the text "open" in the sense of re-publication, re-use, mash-up
rights.
6. Gratis OA seeks to make the text free.
7. Libre OA seeks to make the text open.
Best regards,
Stevan Harnad
1. Green OA means *OA provided by the author* (usually by self-archiving
> the refereed, revised, accepted final draft in an OA repository)
2. Gold OA means OA *provided by the journal* (often for a publication fee)
3. Gratis OA means free online access.
4. Libre OA means Gratis OA plus various re-use rights
... OA is about access, not about funding mechanisms (of which there are
> three: subscription fee, publication fee, or subsidy [the latter not to be
> confused with "gratis"])
After at least a decade and a half I think it would be a good idea to stop
> fussing about what to call it, and focus instead on providing it...
Stevan Harnad,
Erstwhile Archivangelist
On Aug 17, 2015, at 12:36 PM, Nicolas Pettiaux <nicolas at pettiaux.be> wrote:
Dear Mr Harnad,
> It has taken me some days, even though I had been gently warned, to digest
> your mail and to compose a response.
> Without any doubt, you have been an important and long time actor of and
> around open access. I am indeed a newcomer to this list, but not completely
> a newcomer to the subject.
> I admit that I know much better free software (and have learned and don't
> like the very confusing words "open source software" that I never use ...
> partly becaue I can always say that in case of doubt, my language is French
> that express better my views with "logiciel libre"), that I have known and
> worked with for more than 20 years.
> I am basically a teacher. I have been for the last 30 years. I have taught
> (mainly) physics and computing science to people from 7 till 77 (the ones
> reading Tintin ;-). For me, the process of learning as much as the one of
> teaching, is difficult. It requires a lot of energy, time and patience, on
> both sides. And there is no good way, equally good for everyone. For every
> teacher and learner. Every situation is new, different, with its own
> difficulties.
> This GOAL mailing list contains probably a very high concentration of
> people who know OA much better than me, and have done so for much longer
> than I have. And we can read that even for these people, some important
> definitions around OA (eg. green and gold) are NOT the same. Interestingly.
> I also know that the number of people who have never heard of OA, or have
> such a bad and weak idea of OA, even in the limited world of academics,
> around the Universities and research institutions, is probably much larger
> than the number of specialists and informed people.
> I therefore would conclude that the efforts of education around OA is
> large and important.
> One of the way I often comes down to when teaching is using the clear
> wording and definitions, the best I can find, using my own and personnal
> judgement. As well as explaining with differents words.
> Today, I find that the wording "green OA" and "gold OA" are not
> self-explanatory. In other word, I consider that the words "green" and
> "gold" do not mean anything by themselves and need further explanation. If
> they are not confusing !
> For me, this situation is not the best to explain the OA case and need for
> OA. And it will probably lead to further mails like mine that will upset
> you. ... And block the discussion, as expressed by some people on the list.
> This is sad in a world where most people still need to be educated, in
> general and surely about OA and all its subleties.
> I sometimes wonder if I wo not prefer the simple word "free access". With
> free meaning both gratis and libre (freedom), this encompasses what
> Jean-CLaude Gu?don says OA is "gratis and free access"
> With respect to "contibuting to OA instead of discussing about OA", I
> personnally like to think about "free knowledge" (not only research), being
> both gratis and libre, and I am proud to be the initiator and one of the
> actors of the Digith?que Pierre Gilbert, (see
> http://digitheque.ulb.ac.be/fr/digitheque-pierre-gilbert/ ) a place where
> all works by my grand-father are available online freely. He was a poet, an
> historian (aegyptologist and art historian), academician, curator of the
> Belgian Museum of Art and History ...
> I am the initiator and main actor of 2 digith?ques to be inaugurated on
> October 17 and 25 in the presence of leading Belgian people, from the
> academic and research world, but NOT ONLY, about
> https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Roberts-Jones and
> https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Sterling whose works will be
> published online under the CC-BY-SA licence.
> There are also other ways I consider I contribute to OA and free
> knowledge, or free culture. For example by numerous personnal contacts.
> I hope to continue, also on this list, to contribute to a peacefull world
> where more knowledge is available freely to anyone, without any barrier,
> where people are willing to educate one another.
> Best regards,
> Nicolas Pettiaux
> Nicolas Pettiaux, phd - nicolas at pettiaux.be
> Open at work - Une Soci?t? libre utilise des outils libres
Le 2015-08-14 18:28, Stevan Harnad a ?crit :
Perhaps it?s time for our newcomer, Nicolas Pettiaux, to stop posting for a
> while and do a little reading to inform himself about OA and its
> (short) history. Otherwise he is just making us recapitulate it for him.
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