[GOAL] Re: OA Provision vs. OA Semiology

Wed Aug 19 14:21:24 BST 2015

Looking at the graphs that are in  Paid Gold OA Versus Free Gold OA: Against Color Cacophony I see that I was really  under the truth when I said in my previous message of the 15th  August that OA free, colored and hightly precious terminology has been discussed more than 100 times .
I should have said : " 1000 times"!
Hélène Bosc
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Stevan Harnad 
  To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) 
  Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2015 1:42 PM
  Subject: [GOAL] OA Provision vs. OA Semiology

  The purpose of terminology and definitions is to clarify and simplify their referents.

  The BBB description of OA, based on the first B in 2002, was updated in 2008 to distinguish Green from Gold OA and Gratis from Libre OA, exactly along the lines described:

  See also:

    On "Diamond OA," "Platinum OA," "Titanium OA," and "Overlay-Journal OA," Again
    and
    Paid Gold OA Versus Free Gold OA: Against Color Cacophony (2013)

  And, to repeat: 

      There is no "Platinum" OA. 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

    On Aug 19, 2015, at 3:00 AM, MIGUEL ERNESTO NAVAS FERNANDEZ <miguel.navas at ub.edu> wrote:
    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
    ------------------------------

      Date: Mon,14 Aug 2015 13:27:17 -0400
      From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com>
      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
      There is no "Platinum" OA. 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...

        Date: Mon,17 Aug 2015 13:27:17 -0400
        From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com>
        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.

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