A look at ROARMAP would show that, for institutional OA policies, the problem is not an unfulfilled wish for stronger policies. Stevan has worked tirelessly to promote and compile these polices, constantly appealing for policies to require not just encourage open access, and showcasing those that do.
The question at heart here can be summed up with CC-BY, and this imposes cost. Apart from some small OA journal funds, institutions are not going to be able to cover the additional costs of CC-BY. It may be different for funders. We have the proposed RCUK OA policy that will require CC-BY, and in making that decision they will be considering the cost implications. Now see the deliberations of the Finch committee, which is considering the same question but in the knowledge there will be no additional money to fund such a switch. There you will see clearly the difficulties of the position. I think we can agree that CC-BY should be required for gold OA journals. The problems, however, are: 1 Hybrid journals - think the cost of that through; it looks like a deal breaker 2 Losing some green open access - and no, that is not 'useless' OA, it is precious OA, we don't have enough of it and we should not be throwing it away in pursuit of 'better' OA now. There are not many justifiable reasons for publishers to retreat from current green OA positions, but enforcing CC-BY on them may be one. Those arguing for the ability to text mine papers do not have an exclusive wish, we all want to get there. But invoking a 10 year old definition as the case for the prosecution in the absence of practical OA development and gains since does not help. BOAI was more a strategy than a definition, based on two routes to OA, green and gold. It looks like we are placing definition above strategy in order to railroad gold over green. Any new case has to be based on strategy, and show clearly what we can expect as a result - more or less open access (of the sort people can read for themselves)? Steve Hitchcock WAIS Group, Building 32 School of Electronics and Computer Science University of Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK Email: sh...@ecs.soton.ac.uk Twitter: http://twitter.com/stevehit Connotea: http://www.connotea.org/user/stevehit Tel: +44 (0)23 8059 9379 Fax: +44 (0)23 8059 9379 On 10 May 2012, at 09:43, Jan Velterop wrote: > I might be convinced by his core argument, and quite possibly other people on > this list as well, if Stevan cum suis could come up with credible evidence > that in order to get universities and funders to mandate deposit in what they > call OA-repositories requires watering down OA and not sticking to what OA > was meant to be according to the BOAI. > > Why would potentially mandating organisations be more likely to mandate OA if > it were watered-down to 'gratis' OA instead of BOAI-compliant OA? What are > the dangers averted or the gains won by watering down OA from how it was > defined in the BOAI? If institutions and funders go through the trouble of > mandating, would they really knowingly settle for second best? > > Of course, any access is better than no access, but by that reckoning > striving for what has been called 'delayed OA', opening up the literature > after a few years or so, is quite likely the strategy with the best chance of > quick success. I haven't seen the notion of immediacy feature in this > discussion, so Stevan c.s. may not find it important, and because it isn't > mentioned in the BOAI either (it became prominent in the later Bethesda > Statement on OA â http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm), that > may be a route to go with more chance of speedy success than the current > mandate strategy. > > And if delayed OA is then full OA, including the re-use rights mentioned in > the BOAI, then that might even be the better solution. (Those re-use right > were formulated as follows: "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.") > > Having a watered-down form of 'open' with regard to access (relative to the > BOAI, for most of us the real starting point of serious OA), gives us a > scientific information landscape where everybody can start digging for > knowledge, anywhere, but that remains closed for any larger-scale analyses > (if we're taking the landscape metaphor, aerial surveys and the like) unless > permission has been obtained, which is perhaps on offer, but likely to be > obtainable only by negotiation, publisher by publisher, and therefore > unworkable. > > Jan > > > On 10 May 2012, at 07:59, Richard Poynder wrote: > >> So what is really at issue is whether Green Gratis OA is indeed not >> "meaningful" enough to warrant "lowering the bar" in order to mandate it. >> >> According to Jan, it is not. >> >> According to me, it most definitely is: in fact, it is the first and >> foremost reason for providing OA at all. >> >> What do other GOAL and JISC readers think? >> >>>> >> >> There are times when the best that can be achieved is that people agree to >> disagree. I think this is one of those times. >> >> Richard Poynder >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> GOAL mailing list >> GOAL@eprints.org >> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
