On Sun, 21 Mar 2004, David Goodman wrote: > In our discussions of OA, I feel there is a need for better terminology > to distinguish between the arXiv-like database or repository model, > in any of its modifications, and the two types of journals those paid > at the reader end, and those paid for at the journal-production end.
Open Access (OA) can and should be defined at the article level, not at the journal level. An article is OA if its online full-text can be immediately and permanently accessed (downloaded, stored, printed, processed) toll-free by anyone webwide. That is the BOAI definition of OA: "The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment. Primarily, this category encompasses their peer-reviewed journal articles, but it also includes any unreviewed preprints that they might wish to put online for comment or to alert colleagues to important research findings. There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature. By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself." http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml The BOAI also lists the two ways of providing OA for articles: BOAI-1 is the self-archiving of articles published in Toll Access (TA) journals in OA Eprint Archives (whether central discipline-based Eprint Archives or distributed institutional Eprint Archives, but preferably OAI-compliant ones, so that they are interoperable and harvestable by OAI services such as OAIster: http://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/ BOAI-2 is the publishing of articles in OA Journals that do not cover their costs by charging users access-tolls (for the online version). Implicit in all this is the distinction between an OA and TA article, and between an OA and TA journal. (The distinction between an OAI-compliant and a non-OAI-compliant archive is functionally important, but not essential to the definition of OA; the distinction between central and institutional archives is also not essential, though there are reasons why institutional archiving is a more promising way to scale OA up to 100%) > For journal-production-end journals, I particularly dislike author-paid, > as it is not the intention of any of the proponents that the author > personally will pay for the publication of the article. I think > sponsor-paid also bad, as the research sponsor pays through indirect > costs a good deal of the convention system's costs. (And of course > the same goes for university-paid, researcher-paid, and so forth). Journal cost-recovery models are not relevant to the definition of OA. OA is a property of articles -- in particular, whether or not they are accessible toll-free. If they are accessible toll-free, they are OA. This may be because they have been published in and OA journal, or because they have been published in a TA journal and also self-archived. David may have his preferences about journal cost-recovery models, but not only do these have nothing to do with articles that are OA because they have been published in TA journals and made OA by self-archiving, but they have something to do with articles that are OA because they have been published in OA journals only inasmuch as the OA journal must make them accessible toll-free (to be an OA Journal). Apart from that, how the journal chooses to recover its costs is not essential to the definition of OA. And it cannot be repeated often enough: The Open-Access Problem and the Library Serials Crisis are *not the same problem* (although there are some connections). They should not be conflated. > For the current type of journal, library-paid is not really correct, > as the library pays from money it receives from elsewhere, (and as it > has been proposed earlier that the library might pay the costs of the > new system). Reader paid or user-paid is also not right, as the reader > or user almost never directly pays. Again, David may have his preferences about journal cost-recovery models, but none of this has anything to do with the meaning of OA. It is true, though, that TA refers mainly to institutional library tolls, not individual user tolls. By the same token, publication charges are more likely to be institutional than individual ones. > For the various database or repository models, I particularly dislike the > term "archive", because this is widely used in another meaning, though > a closely related one: an ultimate reference copy--which would be only a > part of such a system. Database is a very general term, and has been used > by the aggregators like Ebsco to mean their databases of journal articles > republished from the original journals, which is certainly not the intent. Too late. The OAI -- Open Archives Initiative (OAI) http://www.openarchives.org/ -- has adopted the word "archive" and it accords reasonably well with what people mean by the term. Moreover, "self-archiving" is now also in wide use, and self-explanatory to researchers. "Self-depositing" might have worked, but it is less transparent than self-archiving, and too late in any case. It would be nicer if we were not also proliferating needless synonyms (like "database" and "repository"), but none of these represent "models" insofar as OA is concerned. An OA Eprint Archive is simply a (preferably OAI-compliant) website in which articles can be deposited and stored online so as to make them accessible toll-free. > I am not making suggestions, just hoping for them. > Arbitrary numerical, color, or place-name designations are out of > bounds--we need meaningful names, not code. We have meaningful names: Open Access (articles and journals), Eprint Archives (institutional and central), and self-archiving. No new names, colors or codes are needed. (What is needed is more OA!) > To distinguish the pseudo-open access as used to mean open access to > part of the journal: I think full open access and partial open access > are sufficient, and non-pejorative. Full vs. Partial OA is a contradiction in terms. An article is (fully) OA if it is OA, otherwise it is *not* OA. A Journal is (fully) OA if all of its articles are OA. Otherwise it is not an OA Journal (though some of its articles may be OA). The relevant journal distinction does have both a name and a color code: A journal may be TA and/or OA. (These are not mutually exclusive! Many of the OA Journals listed in the Directory of Open Access Journals [DOAJ] http://www.doaj.org/ still charge subscription tolls for their paper editions; only their online edition is accessible toll-free.) A TA journal may be "green" (already officially endorsing author self-archiving) or "white" (not yet officially endorsing author self-archiving). An OA journal (whose full contents are accessible online toll-free to all users) is "gold." http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo%20Publisher%20Policies.htm Stevan Harnad NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2004) is available at the American Scientist Open Access Forum: To join the Forum: http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org Hypermail Archive: http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy: BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access journal whenever one exists. http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal and also self-archive it. http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/ http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php