Thank you to Stevan for outlining his views as clearly as he does. I also acknowledge his desire to frame a message in terms as clear and simple as possible in order to seek optimal effectiveness in penetrating people's minds. However, this quest for conceptual simplicity through linguistic and analytical rigour must also remain close to reality. To this end, allow me to make the following points:
1. The proposed distinction between green and gold ignores the fact that the Green Road needs a publisher's agreement to work. The button for access to dark archives is a work around,. It is important and useful, but it complicates the OA landscape. 2. Conflating green and gold makes little sense; however, envisioning reasons why they should ultimately converge is useful to map out strategies that are not simply static (mandate, mandate, mandate...), but, on the contrary, can innovate in useful ways. 3. OK 4. The reference to free Gold journals covered by subscriptions is not clear to me. Is this a reference to SCOAP3? 5-11 OK 12. Free Gold will be financially viable - I do not like the commercial connotation of "sustainable" - when the public funders who subsidize scientific research integrate the cost of scientific communications fully into their financing scheme. Already, many examples exist of partial or total acceptance of this principle. 13. While fully accepting the needs for strong pragmatic approaches to OA, I should underscore that, right now, and after years of campaigning, repositories still do not cut it as obvious research tools for researchers. Mandates begin to answer this, but, as the wonderful case of Liège shows, it takes more than a strong mandate to make Green successful; it also takes strong implementation. The politics of these goals must also enter into the equation of the pragmatics of OA. 14 OK 15. See 13 above. 16. Not really, as implementation requires administrators that get it (e.g. Bernard Rentier at Liège) and who are willing to make rules that will lead researchers to comply. To this extent, the Green Road also needs more than researchers, for example a realistic implementation of the mandate. Jean-Claude Guédon Le jeudi 18 avril 2013 à 07:45 +0100, Stevan Harnad a écrit : > 1. The Green/Gold Open Access (OA) distinction concerns whether it is > the author or the publisher that provides the OA. > > > 2. This distinction was important to mark with clear terms because the > conflation of the two roads to OA has practical implications and has > been holding up OA progress for a decade and a half. > > > 3. The distinction between paid Gold and free Gold is very far from > being a straightforward one. > > > 4. Free Gold can be free (to the author) because the expenses of the > Gold journal are covered by subscriptions, subsidies or volunteerism. > > > 5. The funds for Paid Gold can come from the author's pocket, the > author's research grant, the author's institution or the author's > funder. > > > 6. It would be both absurd and gratuitously confusing to mark each of > these economic-model differences with a color-code. > > > 7. Superfluous extra colors would also obscure the role that the > colour-code was invented to perform: distinguishing author-side OA > provision from publisher-side OA provision. > > > 8. So, please, let's not have "diamond," "platinum" and "titanium" OA, > despite the metallurgical temptations. > > > 9. They amplify noise instead of pinpointing the signal, just as > SHERPA/Romeo's parti-colored Blue/Yellow/Green spectrum (mercifully > ignored by almost everyone) does. > > > 10. OA is about providing Open Access to peer-reviewed journal > articles, not about cost-recovery models for OA publishing (Gold OA). > > > 11. The Gold that publishers are fighting for and that researcher > funders are subsidizing (whether "pure" or "hybrid") is paid Gold, not > free Gold. > > > 12. No one knows whether or how free Gold will be sustainable, any > more than they know whether or how long subscription publishing can > co-exist viably with mandatory Green OA. > > > 13. So please leave the economic ideology and speculation out of the > pragmatics of OA policy making by the research community (institutions > and funders). > > > 14. Cost-recovery models are the province of publishers (Gold OA). > > > 15. What the research community needs to do is mandate OA provision. > > > 16. The only OA provision that is entirely in the research community's > hands is Green OA. > > > And, before you ask, please let's not play into the publishers' hands > by colour-coding OA also in terms of the length of the publisher > embargo: 3-month OA, 6-month OA, 12-month-OA, 24-month-OA, millennial > OA: OA means immediate online access. Anything else is delayed access. > (The only quasi-exception is the "Almost-OA" provided by the author > via the institutional repository's email-eprint-request Button when > complying with publisher embargoes -- but that too is clearly not > OA, which is immediate, free online access.) > > > And on no account should the genuine, substantive distinction between > Gratis OA (free online access) and Libre OA (free online access plus > various re-use rights) be color-coded (with a different shade for > every variety of CC license)! > > > Harnad, S., Brody, T., Vallieres, F., Carr, L., Hitchcock, S., > Gingras, Y, Oppenheim, C., Stamerjohanns, H., & Hilf, E. (2004) The > Access/Impact Problem and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access. > Serials Review 30. Shorter version: The green and the gold roads to > Open Access. Nature Web Focus. > > > On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 9:13 PM, LIBLICENSE <liblice...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > From: "Beall, Jeffrey" <jeffrey.be...@ucdenver.edu> > Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:45:20 -0600 > > Dear Jean-Claude Guédon: > > There are some, including me, who make the distinction between > gold > open-access and platinum open-access. > > Gold = free to reader, author pays article processing charge > > Platinum = free to reader, free to author > > This distinction is important and has value, I think, because > it shows > two different funding models for open-access publishing. So I > do > believe, as you say, that gold really means author-pay > journals. > Conflating the two models under a single appellation initiates > confusion and ambiguity. > > Using the more precise terminology enables clearer > communication and > does not semantically lump together two things that are > inherently > different. > > Jeffrey Beall, MA, MSLS, Associate Professor > > Scholarly Initiatives Librarian > Auraria Library > University of Colorado Denver > Denver, Colo. 80204 USA > jeffrey.be...@ucdenver.edu > > > > From: Jean-Claude Guédon <jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca> > Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 21:29:19 -0400 > Thank you for this URL. I listened to it and said to myself: > only the > French (I was born there) can defend open access with lopsided > arguments... > > Two noted mistakes: > > * PLoS does not practice peer review and relies on comments > after > publication !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! > > * Gold, i.e. OA journals, really means author-pay OA journals > !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! > > Of course, in the latter case, many publishers are intent on > propagating this false conflation of Gold and author-pay as it > is the > business model they use to preserve their revenue stream in > the OA > context. > > The battle for vocabulary and words is also part of the > battle for OA. > > Jean-Claude Guédon > > > Le lundi 15 avril 2013 à 16:50 -0400, LIBLICENSE a écrit : > > to the interests of this list. -- > > > > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal -- Jean-Claude Guédon Professeur titulaire Littérature comparée Université de Montréal
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