[GOAL] Re: One way to expand the OA movement: be more inclusive

Mon Jun 1 21:43:43 BST 2015

On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 2:26 PM, Dana Roth <dzrlib at library.caltech.edu>
wrote:

>  Taking Bernard's 'public road' analogy a little further ... one wonders
> his insistence on a 'perfect' solution isn't unfairly denigrating a
> reasonable (at least in the short term) alternative.
>
> The current situation, where the 'public NIH road' is closed temporarily
> (12 months) and one has to use a 'toll road' to access embargoed articles,
> seems much better than the situation before the creation of PubMed Central
> ... which now has 3.5 million freely available full text articles.
>

 The 'public NIH road' is NOT closed temporarily (12 months): NIH authors
are not OBLIGED by NIH to wait for 12 months: they are ALLOWED by NIH to
wait for at most 12 months.

What makes the present situation better than before is mandates, not
embargoes.

Mandates, allowable-embargoes and the Button are a means to an end -- a
series of ends, actually:

First, universally mandated immediate-Green-OA (Gratis) or immediate
deposit plus immediate Button-mediated "Almost-OA" (Gratis)

Second, universal Green OA (Gratis)

Third, subscription cancellation, made possible by universal Green OA
(Gratis)

Fourth, publisher downsizing and conversion to Fair-Gold OA (Libre:
CC-BY-NC-ND or CC-BY, as desired by authors, their institutions and funders)

Stevan Harnad

*From:* goal-bounces at eprints.org [goal-bounces at eprints.org] on behalf of
brentier at ulg.ac.be [brentier at ulg.ac.be]

> *Sent:* Monday, June 01, 2015 11:02 AM
> *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> *Subject:* [GOAL] Re: One way to expand the OA movement: be more inclusive
>
>   When I want to drive on a public road, whether it is closed or
> temporarily closed makes no difference to me. It is not open. I can't use
> it.
> Embargo is antinomic to open.
>
>  Bernard Rentier
>
> Le 1 juin 2015 à 18:26, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com> a écrit :
>
>   On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 10:16 AM, Michael Eisen <mbeisen at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> There's a difference between trying to be inclusive, and redefining goals
>> and definitions to the point of being meaningless. I can not tell you how
>> many times I hear that the NIH provides open access because they make
>> articles freely available after a year. This is not just semantics. The
>> belief that the NIH provides open access with its public access policy
>> provides real drag on the quest to provide actual open access. You can
>> argue about whether or not the policy is a good thing because it's a step
>> in the right direction, or a bad thing because it reifies delayed access.
>> But calling what the provide "open access" serves only to confuse people,
>> to weaken our objectives and give the still far more powerful forces who do
>> not want open access a way to resist pressure for it.
>>
>
>  It's nice to be able to agree with Mike Eisen.
>
>  Open Access (OA) comes in two degrees
> <http://www.sparc.arl.org/resource/gratis-and-libre-open-access>: *Gratis
> OA* is immediate, permanent free online access and *Libre OA* is Gratis
> OA plus various re-use rights (up to CC-BY or even public domain).
>
>  What both degrees of OA share is that they are both immediate (and
> permanent) <http://www.dlib.org/dlib/march05/harnad/03harnad.html>.
>
>  Otherwise, there's just Delayed (Embargoed) Access, which is no more
> "Open Access" than Toll Access is.
>
>  To treat Delayed Access as if it were a form of Open Access would be to
> reduce OA to meaninglessness (and would play into the hands of publishers
> who would like to see precisely that happen).
>
>  Stevan Harnad
>
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 5:00 AM, Heather Morrison <
>> Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca> wrote:
>>
>>> hi David,
>>>
>>> Redefining open access and understanding that a great many people are
>>> moving towards open access in slightly different ways are two different
>>> things. My post will focus on the benefits of a more inclusive and
>>> welcoming approach to open access.
>>>
>>> For example, I have been conducting interviews and focus groups with
>>> editors of small journals that either are, or would like to be, open
>>> access. Behind the more than 10 thousand journals listed in DOAJ are
>>> probably much more than 10 thousand such editors, working hard to convince
>>> colleagues to move to open access, struggling to figure out how to do this
>>> in order to make ends meet. While some of us have been active and vocal in
>>> OA discussions and policy formulation, others have been quietly doing this
>>> work, often contributing a great deal of volunteer effort, over the years.
>>> We rarely hear from these people, but actively listening and figuring out
>>> how to provide the support needed for the journals to thrive in an OA
>>> environment is in the best interests of continuing towards a fully open
>>> access and sustainable system. These people are OA heroes from my
>>> perspective, whether their journal is currently OA or not. In my
>>> experience, when someone says their journal is free online after a year and
>>> they would like to move to OA, asking about the barriers and what is needed
>>> to move to OA results in productive discussions.
>>>
>>> OpenDOAR maintains a list of over 2,600 vetted open access archives:
>>> http://opendoar.org/
>>>
>>> OA archives have made a very great deal of work open access - so much so
>>> that counting it all is very hard! The thesis, for example, was until
>>> recently available in perhaps 1 or 2 print copies (that libraries were
>>> reluctant to lend as they were not replaceable) and microfilm. Today we are
>>> well on our way to open and online by default for the thesis. arXiv in
>>> effect flipped high energy physics to full preprint OA close to two decades
>>> ago. PubMed was an early OA success story making the Medline index
>>> available for free. In the 1990's I remember how big a deal it was for a
>>> small Canadian university college to buy access to Medline, and even then
>>> having access restricted to senior students in biology. Today it's free for
>>> everyone with internet access. So is Medline Plus, which provides high
>>> quality free consumer health information. PubMedCentral both makes the
>>> medical literature available and ensures that it is preserved, working with
>>> both authors and journals to make this happen. By my calculations, 30% of
>>> the literature indexed in PubMed is freely available through PubMed 2 years
>>> after publication (all literature, no restrictions based on funder policy);
>>> 32% after 3 years. For the data, see the Dramatic Growth of Open Dataverse
>>> http://dataverse.scholarsportal.info/dvn/dv/dgoa download the latest
>>> spreadsheet and go to the PMC Free tab.
>>>
>>> These archives have happened because librarians and others have fought
>>> for the resources to develop the archives, often the policies (there are a
>>> great many more thesis deposit policies than are listed in ROARMAP), and
>>> educating anyone who would listen about OA. Many smart people worked on the
>>> concept and technology, and many if by no means all authors have taken the
>>> time to deposit their works.
>>>
>>> In the early years, the OA movement really was small, and it is a good
>>> thing that some of us stepped up to defend OA against attacks. Today I
>>> think we should ask ourselves whether this defensiveness has become a
>>> habit. Are we starting to snap at OA friends as much as OA detractors? Are
>>> we over-reacting? The Elsevier archiving policy change is unfortunate, a
>>> step in the wrong direction, and fully merits critique. But this is not the
>>> same level of wrongfulness as Elsevier's lobbying for the Research Works
>>> Act a few years ago, which would have prevented the US from enacting public
>>> access legislation.
>>>
>>> respectfully,
>>>
>>> Heather
>>>
>>> On 2015-06-01, at 5:09 AM, David Prosser wrote:
>>>
>>> >
>>> > Ever since ‘Open Access’ was first defined there have been people who
>>> have wanted to redefine it.  Heather is the latest of these.  The trouble
>>> is, by broadening the definition of ‘Open Access’ it is in danger of
>>> becoming meaningless.
>>> >
>>> > So, Heather wants to include journals who make their content freely
>>> available after one or two years.  I certainly agree that free access after
>>> two years is better than no free access after two years, but where do we
>>> draw the line - is a five year embargo ‘Open Access'? Ten? Fifty?  And
>>> Heather has warned us of the hypothetical dangers of CC-BY papers being
>>> re-enclosed, but wants us to consider entire archives where free access can
>>> be turned off at the flick of a switch at the whim of the publisher as
>>> being open access!
>>> >
>>> > I’m all for celebrating free archives, and if somebody wants to
>>> compile a list then that would be great - but let’s not call it ‘Open
>>> Access’.  The trouble with all the attempts to redefine ‘Open Access’ is
>>> that nobody has come up with a definition that improves on that of the
>>> Budapest Open Access Initiative of 2002.
>>> >
>>> > Heather’s final paragraph is frankly baffling.  I know of nobody who
>>> feels that 'the OA movement consists of the small group of people who have
>>> been to meetings in Budapest’.  What I do know is that many of those who
>>> attended the first meeting in 2002 where the definition of Open Access was
>>> thrashed out have spend a huge amount of their time over the past 13 years
>>> travelling the world promoting open access.  Often, especially in the early
>>> years, to audiences that were in single-figures and/or overtly hostile.
>>> The fact that there is an OA movement today is, in great part, thanks to
>>> the inspiring efforts of those early pioneers (together with others).  They
>>> have advocated for repositories, for mandates, for open source software to
>>> allow cheaper journal publishing, for more liberal licensing, etc., etc.
>>>  Denigrating them by implication is quite ridiculous revisionism.  (And for
>>> full disclosure, I attended the 10th anniversary meeting in Budapest, where
>>> we were able to celebrate a vibrant, international OA movement.)
>>> >
>>> > David
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On 30 May 2015, at 20:03, Heather Morrison <
>>> Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> What if, instead of condemning the many people who are doing their
>>> best to provide the most open access they feel they can, the OA movement
>>> were to be more inclusive? For example, DOAJ excludes journals that make
>>> their work freely available after one or two years' embargo. I realize and
>>> agree that we want immediate OA, but the vast majority of such journals are
>>> published by people who are completely in favour of open access but just
>>> haven't figured out how to make the economics work for them.
>>> >>
>>> >> The opposite of open access is closed access. The Big Chill report on
>>> the silencing of federal scientists in Canada is a good illustration.
>>> Excerpt: "the survey [of Canadian federal scientists] ...found that nearly
>>> one-quarter (24%) of respondents had been directly asked to exclude or
>>> alter information for non-scientific reasons and that over one-third (37%)
>>> had been prevented in the past five years from responding to questions from
>>> the public and media" from:
>>> http://www.pipsc.ca/portal/page/portal/website/issues/science/bigchill
>>> >>
>>> >> I understand that the U.S. has had similar problems with political
>>> interference with science, e.g. states such as Florida having legislature
>>> forbidding reference to climate change (example here:
>>> http://fcir.org/2015/03/08/in-florida-officials-ban-term-climate-change/
>>> )
>>> >>
>>> >> Even without any political interference, works under toll access can
>>> be locked down for the full term of copyright. In the U.S. that's life of
>>> the author plus 70 years. If a work is written 30 years before an author
>>> dies, that's a century. The great many works freely available within a year
>>> or a few of publication should be understood as a huge success, not a
>>> failure.
>>> >>
>>> >> If the OA movement consists of the small group of people who have
>>> been to meetings in Budapest [sometimes people on this list talk as if this
>>> were the case],  that's a small movement indeed and not likely to grow very
>>> much. On the other hand, if the OA movement is seen as the millions of
>>> authors who have provided free access to their own work (however they did
>>> this), the thousands of journals providing free access (whether we think
>>> they are perfect in this or not), the thousands of repositories - that's a
>>> huge global movement, one that we can build upon to continue and grow the
>>> momentum to date.
>>> >>
>>> >> best,
>>> >>
>>> >> --
>>> >> Dr. Heather Morrison
>>> >> Assistant Professor
>>> >> École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies
>>> >> University of Ottawa
>>> >> http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
>>> >> Sustaining the Knowledge Commons
>>> http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/
>>> >> Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> _______________________________________________
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>>> >
>>> >
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>>
>>
>>
>>  --
>>  Michael Eisen, Ph.D.
>> Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
>> Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development
>> Department of Molecular and Cell Biology
>> University of California, Berkeley
>>
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