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I fully agree with Stevan on the need to define a clear standard
for what we measure and when, by I have a different view of some
details.<br>
<br>
Why not simply talk of "Immediate Open Access" and "Delayed Open
Access", both provide open access. I'm also getting more and more
hesitant about the use of the terms Gold and green since there is
so much confusion in actual usage. The term subsidized open access
is kind of misleading. The only subsidy a lot of OA journals, in
particular in the social science and humanities, and journals
published elsewhere than in the US, UK, are getting is the usage
of a university web site, the marginal cost of which is almost
nil. Or in Latin America etc. the use of Scielo, which is very low
cost per journal and hence only a small part of their resource
use. Other than that its mainly voluntary work by academic
communities. Remember that the universities of editors,
reveiewers, etc already "subsidize" society and commercial
publisher journals. <br>
<br>
The open archives term (for delayed open access)
that Elsevier invented is downright silly. Most people who think
of this as getting e-access to articles published many years and
decades ago.<br>
<br>
I agree with Stevan that perhaps their could be a three month
delay border for the definition of immediate Open Access, to allow
for a slight delay for authors putting up manuscripts of
non-embargoed journal articles. As for delayed OA I would suggest
going for just one minumum period in broad studies and I would put
it at slightly over a year, perhaps 15 months. This has to do with
the increasingly common 12 month embargo periods, and again the
fact that many authors following such embargoes may post a couple
of months later. Also it is very common for academics to post
articles to IRs for their full last year production in January,
February the next year when they have to report meta data to their
universities for book-keeping, which means that for some article
the delay will be slightly over a year. <br>
<br>
If a study in particular wan't to study how green OA increases as
a function of the delay (6, 12, 24 ect) that is naturally fine,
but in most reporting in the popular press (including journal like
Nature) they simplify the message to single figures.<br>
<br>
In practice it is difficult in mass studies based on sampling of
say Scopus meta data to determine the exact delays for each
article (which would also entail also finding out when the copy
was posted). All you can do is run the googling at one point in
time (or a relatively short period). In order to have a big enough
delay it is often convenient to use the scopus or ISI data of
articles published in the year before the last one. <br>
<br>
One last item which somehow would need to be sorted out (and which
was raised in connection with the recent Science-Metrix study) is
that automated searches also catch what I would label "promotional
OA", for instance the practice of many publishers to have the
first issue of the last year open using a rolling scheme (that is
if you google a year later the articles are no longer available).
Dependent on the time lag of the study, but in particular for
delays between a few months and say a year and a half, counting
such articles in could raise the overall OA prevalence with as
much as five percent. Also due to the fact that in such studies
googled hits are sometimes classified as gold OA, based on the
journals in question being in DOAJ, such hits will then
misleadingly be classified as green OA. <br>
<br>
Bo-Christer<br>
<br>
On 12/7/13 2:01 AM, Stevan Harnad wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote
cite="mid:CAE7iXOjOZYEX1eCGsDCPVQP=Kw=KrdJZOCsZtpLtzAun5KyFkQ@mail.gmail.com"
type="cite">
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charset=windows-1252">
<div dir="ltr">On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Bo-Christer Björk <span
dir="ltr"><<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="mailto:bo-christer.bjork@hanken.fi" target="_blank">bo-christer.bjork@hanken.fi</a>></span>
wrote:
<div class="gmail_extra">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<blockquote class="gmail_quote">
<div>
<div> <br>
The Elsevier study on OA prevalence study was part of
broader report. The methods are just shortly mentioned
so its a bit problematic to comment in detail.<br>
The global gold OA share found is 9,7 % of scopus
articles, consisting of 5,5 % APC paid and 4,2 others
(not just 5.5 % as Stevan noted below). The global
hybrid share is 0.5. The green global share could be
assumed to more or less be the sum of preprint
versions of 6.4 % and accepted versions 5.0 %, adding
directly to around 11 %. In particular if their method
only took the first found full text copy and then
classified it<br>
<br>
The big flaw of the study seems to be in the sample
used, since it consisted of equal numbers of Scopus
articles that had been published 2 months, 6 months,
12 months and 24 months before the Googling. If the
hits are simple added up for all the sampled articles
this means that a major share of selfarchivied
manuscripts are ignored, due to embargoes or author
behavior in for instance selfarchiving once a year.
For instance half of the copies in PMC would not be
found in this way. Equally the very low figure for
"Open Archives", 1.0 %, could be a result of this
method. Our own results for delayed OA are around 5 %.<br>
<br>
So all in all the figures are much lower than if one
includes articles made OA with at least a one year
delay, which we find is the method we would recommend
for studies claiming to give overall OA uptake
figures. Whether this methodological choice was a
conscious one from the study team or just an oversight
is difficult to know. But if they would have adhered
to a strict interpretation that only immediate OA is
OA, the sampling should have been different. Now it's
somewhere in between.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Bo-Christer is quite right. Elsevier's arbitrary (and
somewhat self-serving) 6-category classification system
(each of whose categories is curiously labelled a
"publishing system") leaves much to be desired:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<div>1. Gold Open Access </div>
<div>2. Hybrid</div>
<div>3. Subsidised</div>
<div>4. Open Archives</div>
<div>5. Green Open Access: Pre-print versions</div>
<div>6. Green Open Access: Accepted Author Manuscript
versions</div>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>It is not just what Elsevier called "Gold Open Access"
that was Gold Open Access, but also what they called
"Subsidised." The difference is merely that what they
called Gold was publishing-fee-based Gold and what they
called subsidized was subsidy-based Gold. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Elsevier also neglected to mention that "Subsidised"
did not necessarily mean subsidized either: There are also
subscription-based journals that make their online
versions free immediately upon publication; hence they are
likewise Gold OA journals.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>What Elsevier called "Open Archives" is also not what
it sounds like: It seems to be <i>Delayed Access</i>
articles, accessible only after a publisher embargo,
either on the publisher's website or in another central
website, such as PubMed Central, where publishers also
deposit, sometimes immediately, sometimes after an
embargo.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The two Green Open Access categories are also
ambiguous.The pre-print versions are (correctly) described
as pre-refereeing drafts (but it would take a lot closer
analysis to determine whether the pre-prints differ from
the refereed version. It is easy to determine whether they
were posted before the official publication date but far
from easy to determine whether they were posted before
refereeing. (The date of the letter of acceptance of the
refereed draft is often one that only the author and the
editor know -- though it is in some cases printed in the
journal: did Elsevier look at that too?)</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The post-refereeing author's drafts are presumably what
they are described as being, but it is not clear by what
criteria Elsevier distinguished them from pre-refeeeing
drafts (except when they were in an institutional
repository and specifically tagged as unrefereed).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>So, as Bo-Christer points out, there are many
methodological questions about the data without whose
answers their meaningfulness and interpretability is
limited. I would say that the timing issue is perhaps the
most important one. And to sort things out I would like to
propose a different system of classification:</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><b>Open Access (OA):</b> The term OA should be reserved
for immediate OA, regardless whether it is provided by the
publisher (Gold) or the author (Green). A reasonable
error-margin for OA should be<i> within 3 months or less
from publication date</i>. Anything longer begins to
overlap with publisher embargoes (of 6, 12, 24 months or
longer).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><b>Delayed Access (DA): </b>The term DA should be used
for delays of more than 6 months. And besides the
usefulness of separately counting 6, 12, and 24 month DA,
DA should also be analyzed as a continuous variable,
reckoned in months starting from the date of publication
(including negative delays, when authors post the refereed
draft during the interval from acceptance date to
publication date. The unrefereed preprint, however, should
not be mixed into this; it should be treated as a separate
point of comparison.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>So there is <b>Gold OA</b> (immediate), <b>Green OA</b>
(immediate), <b>Gold DA</b> and <b>Green DA</b>
(measured by 6-month intervals as well as continuously in
months. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>If a separate distinction is sought within Gold, then
fee-based Gold, subsidy-based Gold and subscription-based
Gold can be compared, for both OA and DA. The locus of
deposit of the Gold is not relevant, but the fact that it
was done by the publisher rather than the author (or the
author's assigns) is extremely relevant.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>For Green OA and DA it is also important to compare
locus of deposit (institutional vs. institution-external).
See mandates below.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>In all cases independence and redundancy should
uniformly be controlled: Whenever a positive "hit" is made
in any category, it has to be checked whether there are
any instances of the same paper in other categories.
Otherwise the data are not mutually exclusive.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>If desired, all the above can be further subdivided in
terms of <b>Gratis</b> (free online access) and <b>Libre</b>
(free online access plus re-use rights) OA and DA.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Tracking Gold has the advantage of having clear
unambiguous timing (except if the publication date differs
from the date the journal actually appears) and of being
exhaustively searchable without having to sample or check
(if one has an index of the Gold OA and DA journals).</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Tracking Green is much harder, but it must be done,
because the fight for OA is rapidly becoming the fight
against embargoes. That's why Green OA should be reserved
for immediate access. It is almost certain that within the
next few years most journals will become Gold DA (with an
embargo of 12 months). Hence 12 months is the figure to
beat, and Green DA after 18 months will not be of much use
at all.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>And the best way to push for immediate Green OA, is to
upgrade all Green mandates to require <i>immediate
institutional deposit</i>, irrespective of how long an
embargo the mandate allows on DA. Requiring immediate
deposit does not guarantee immediate OA, but it guarantees
immediate Almost-OA, mediated by the repository's
automated copy-request Button, requiring only one click
from the requestor and one click from the author. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The immediate-deposit requirement plus the Button not
only fits all OA mandates (no matter how they handle
embargoes of copyright), making it possible for all
institutions and funders to adopt it universally, but it
also delivers the greatest amount of immediate access for
100% of deposits: immediate Green OA for X% plus (100-X)%
Button-mediated Almost OA. And this, in turn will increase
the universal demand for immediacy to the point where
publisher embargoes will no longer be able to plug the
flood-gates and the research community will have the 100%
immediate Green OA it should have had ever since the
creation of the web made it possible by making it possible
to free the genie from the bottle,</div>
<div> </div>
<div><b>Stevan Harnad</b></div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote">
<div>
<div> <br>
On 12/6/13 5:31 PM, Stevan Harnad wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite">
<div dir="ltr"><span>Elsevier has just conducted and
published a study commissioned by UK BIS: "</span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/performance-of-the-uk-research-base-international-comparison-2013"
target="_blank">International Comparative
Performance of the UK Research Base – 2013</a><span>"</span><br>
<br>
<span>This study finds twice as much Green OA
(11.6%) as Gold OA (5.9%) in the UK (where both</span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/10inbrief.html#HARNAD"
target="_blank">Green OA repositories</a><span> and </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/UKSTC.htm"
target="_blank">Green OA mandates</a><span> began)
and about equal levels of Green (5.0%) and Gold
(5.5%) in the rest of the world.</span><br>
<br>
<span>There are methodological weaknesses in the
Elsevier study, which was based on SCOPUS data
(Gold data are direct and based on the whole data
set, Green data are partial and based on
hand-sampling; timing is not taken into account;
categories of OA are often arbitrary and not
mutually exclusive, etc). But the overall pattern
may have some validity.</span><br>
<br>
<span>What does it mean?</span><br>
<br>
<span>It means the effects of </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://roarmap.eprints.org/view/geoname/geoname=5F2=5FGB.html"
target="_blank">Green OA mandates in the UK</a><span> --
where there are relatively more of them, and they
have been there for a half decade or more -- are
detectable, compared to the </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://roarmap.eprints.org/view/geoname/"
target="_blank">rest of the world</a><span>, where
mandates are relatively fewer.</span><br>
<br>
<span>But 11.6% Green is just a pale, partial
indicator of how much OA Green OA mandates
generate: If instead of looking at the world
(where about 1% of institutions and funders have
OA mandates) or the UK (where the percentage is
somewhat higher, but many of the mandates are
still weak and ineffective ones), one looks
specifically at the </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/358882/"
target="_blank">OA percentages for effectively
mandated institutions</a><span>, the Green figure
jumps to over 80% (about half of it immediate-OA
and half embargoed OA: deposited, and accessible
during the embargo via the repository's automated
copy-request Button, with a click from the
requestor and a click from the author).</span><br>
<br>
<span>So if the planet's current level of Green OA
is 11.6%, its level will jump to at least 80% as
effective Green OA mandates are adopted.</span><br>
<br>
<span>Meanwhile, Gold OA will continue to be
unnecessary, over-priced, double-paid (which
journal subscriptions still need to be paid) and
potentially even double-dipped (if paid to the
same hybrid subscription/Gold publisher) out of
scarce research funds contributed by UK tax-payers
("</span><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=cr&ei=b-CUUuTZNM-3kQeAj4CACA#q=harnad+%28fools+OR+fool%27s%29+gold"
target="_blank">Fool's Gold</a><span>").</span><br>
<br>
<span>But once Green OA prevails worldwide, </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=cr&ei=b-CUUuTZNM-3kQeAj4CACA#q=harnad+%22fair+gold%22"
target="_blank">Fair Gold</a><span> (and all the
Libre OA re-use rights that users need and authors
want to provide) will not be far behind.</span><br>
<br>
<span>We are currently gathering data to test
whether the </span><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=%22immediate+deposit%22+blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbm=blg"
target="_blank">immediate-deposit</a><span> (</span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=hefce+immediate+blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbm=blg"
target="_blank">HEFCE</a><span>/</span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=liege+model++blogurl:http%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbm=blg"
target="_blank">Liege</a><span>) Green OA mandate
model is indeed the most effective mandate
(compared, for example, with the </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=Harvard+blogurl%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbas=0&tbm=blg"
target="_blank">Harvard</a><span> copyright-retention
model with opt-out, or the </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#c2coff=1&hl=en&lr=&q=NIH+blogurl%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&safe=active&tbm=blg"
target="_blank">NIH</a><span> model with a 12
month embargo).</span><br>
<br>
<strong>Stevan Harnad</strong><br>
<br>
<span>P.S. Needless to say, the fact that the UK's
Green OA rate is twice as high as its Gold OA rate
is true </span><em>despite</em><span> the new </span><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1074-html"
target="_blank">Finch/FCUK policy</a><span> which
subsidizes and prefers Gold and tries to downgrade
Green -- certainly not because of it!</span><br>
</div>
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