[Moderator's note: Below are three postings, by: (1) S. Hitchcock, (2) D. Goodman, (3) B. Quint]
(1) Steve Hitchcock: I endorse the need to remove delays and for papers to be made open access upon publication, or even earlier, either by self-archiving or by publishing in gold journals. But since open access is a property of the article rather than the publication, there is a practical issue here: is a paper open access if it is openly accessible now and will be openly accessible in perpetuity, regardless of its prior history and whether it was open access at publication? Or should it continue to be labelled "Delayed Access" or "Embargoed Access" once the delay period has expired? That seems to be one interpretation of the discussion below. The obvious example here is PubMed Central, an archive of openly accessible papers based on non-open access journals because open access to these archived articles is delayed after publication. So what is the practical import of labelling an article open access or not in this case, and in the cases discussed? What has to be emphasised is that authors have the opportunity in every case to provide open access before or at publication to maximise potential impact, and what has to be avoided is the misuse and obfuscation of the term 'open access' by publishers, particularly wrt authors. But from a user's point of view, and from that of OA service providers, what matters is whether is an article is openly accessible now and for all future use. Steve Hitchcock [Moderator's Note: Steve Hitchcock's posting correctly points out that OA is a property of an *article,* where the only thing that matters is whether or not the article is (and remains) OA *now*. The terminological issue hence only comes up when we are trying to define OA *journals*, because immediacy or delay is a property of journal policy across time. The original BOAI definition seems to be perfectly adequate there: A journal is *not* an OA journal if it does not make all of its articles OA immediately (and permanently) upon publication. Whatever *article* is OA now is indeed OA now. And it remains OA if it remains OA. This also confirms that this terminological issue is exclusively about the golden road to OA (what counts as gold? are there degrees of gold?), which is to provide OA for an article by publishing it in an OA journal (BOAI-2). The terminological issue is *not* about the green road to OA, which is to provide OA for an article by self-archiving it (BOAI-1). Hence it is also not about whether or not green (BOAI-1) and gold (BOAI-2) describe, accurately and exhaustively, the roads to OA. They do, until someone describes yet another road to providing (immediate, permanent) OA. The posting below by David Goodman, with its call for including more alternatives, does not actually provide any, and seems to be straying from the topic of OA altogether.] ---------- (3) David Goodman There are three topics here: First, are there many roads to open access? Second, what shall we call them? Third, is embargoed access one of them, or is it illegitimate altogether as OA? 1. I think everyone agrees, or at least says they agree, with Stevan Harnad that
There are many approaches to "opening" access to the research literature.
and most would say, with George Porter, that
I, for one, am a mite frustrated by the strait jacketed insistence that there are only two approaches to opening access to the research literature
Stevan proceeds to list only five. He also refers repeatedly to
both roads to OA
which is perhaps a little over-simplified. I suggest we have mostly been talking primarily about specific schemes, or alternatively in broad generalities. Neither gives an understanding of the range of possibilties open to us, and that it is this that gives the impression that only a limited number need be cosidered. It is difficult to describe structures that have not yet been conceived, much less designed in detail or built. It might be possible to be more systematic about the potential field; I am not ready to make a real proposal, but I for the moment see it with multiple axes, including Composition and editing, Quality control, Format, Payment, and Mode of dissemination. In that 5-dimensional space, not all regions may be accessible in practice, and there may be a severely limited number of stable positions. Obviously it is necessary to proceed to implement some models, without a full analysis of everything possible. This is of course a familiar problem to anyone dealing with information and particularly to librarians. One can not wait for a perfect classification before arranging the books. 2. I agree with George when he asks
does the Open Access movement need to development new terminology/coloration to acknowledge and embrace this concept and the hundreds of journals, hundreds of books, and thousands (perhaps millions) of articles and chapters which are already openly available?
and disagree when Stevan says that there is
No need to develop new terminology or color codes
More precisely--we do need to develop new terminology that has some relation to the proposals, and no need to develop color codes at all. It is however hard to develop a nomenclature for a rapidly changing field, and perhaps international conventions for the purpose should follow, not preceed, the establishment of some consensus. Linneaus would not have succeeded had he used numerical codes, or color, or arbitrary signs, instead of words bearing some relationship to the organism. 3. I think access limited by time delays (as with many of the PubMed/Highwire titles), regardless of what definition one uses, cannot possibly be considered open access journals (note the lower case--it is not open to all the users who want to access it during the time period of greatest interest.) Yes, it is slightly better than nothing, and it was useful as a way of getting started, but we are past that point. To me it indicates a retention of outworn limitations rather than a look to further progress. In this case, Stevan's terms of
"Delayed Access" (DA) (or "Embargoed Access") (EA)
do reflect how this type of access has been generally known for some time in related connections, as with provision of material by aggregators, or by archives. Dr. David Goodman Associate Professor Palmer School of Library and Information Science Long Island University dgood...@liu.edu (and, formerly: Princeton University Library) ---------- (3) Barbara Quint: On the DC principles, this newsbreak might offer some clarification: http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb040322-2.shtml [Moderator's Note: This article -- like so many these days -- is solely about the golden road, making no mention of the green road.]