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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bo-Christer
On 12/7/13 2:01 AM, Stevan Harnad wrote:
On Fri, Dec 6, 2013 at 2:00 PM, Bo-Christer Björk
<bo-christer.bj...@hanken.fi <mailto:bo-christer.bj...@hanken.fi>> wrote:
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.
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
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 %.
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.
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:
1. Gold Open Access
2. Hybrid
3. Subsidised
4. Open Archives
5. Green Open Access: Pre-print versions
6. Green Open Access: Accepted Author Manuscript versions
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.
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.
What Elsevier called "Open Archives" is also not what it sounds like:
It seems to be /Delayed Access/ 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.
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?)
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).
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:
*Open Access (OA):* 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/within 3
months or less from publication date/. Anything longer begins to
overlap with publisher embargoes (of 6, 12, 24 months or longer).
*Delayed Access (DA): *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.
So there is *Gold OA* (immediate), *Green OA* (immediate), *Gold DA*
and *Green DA* (measured by 6-month intervals as well as continuously
in months.
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.
For Green OA and DA it is also important to compare locus of deposit
(institutional vs. institution-external). See mandates below.
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.
If desired, all the above can be further subdivided in terms of
*Gratis* (free online access) and *Libre* (free online access plus
re-use rights) OA and DA.
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).
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.
And the best way to push for immediate Green OA, is to upgrade all
Green mandates to require /immediate institutional deposit/,
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.
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,
*Stevan Harnad*
On 12/6/13 5:31 PM, Stevan Harnad wrote:
Elsevier has just conducted and published a study commissioned by
UK BIS: "International Comparative Performance of the UK Research
Base -- 2013
<https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/performance-of-the-uk-research-base-international-comparison-2013>"
This study finds twice as much Green OA (11.6%) as Gold OA (5.9%)
in the UK (where bothGreen OA repositories
<http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october00/10inbrief.html#HARNAD> and
Green OA mandates
<http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Temp/UKSTC.htm> began) and
about equal levels of Green (5.0%) and Gold (5.5%) in the rest of
the world.
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.
What does it mean?
It means the effects of Green OA mandates in the UK
<http://roarmap.eprints.org/view/geoname/geoname=5F2=5FGB.html> -- where
there are relatively more of them, and they have been there for a
half decade or more -- are detectable, compared to the rest of
the world <http://roarmap.eprints.org/view/geoname/>, where
mandates are relatively fewer.
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 OA percentages for effectively mandated
institutions <http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/358882/>, 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).
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.
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 ("Fool's Gold
<https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=cr&ei=b-CUUuTZNM-3kQeAj4CACA#q=harnad+%28fools+OR+fool%27s%29+gold>").
But once Green OA prevails worldwide, Fair Gold
<https://www.google.ca/?gws_rd=cr&ei=b-CUUuTZNM-3kQeAj4CACA#q=harnad+%22fair+gold%22>
(and
all the Libre OA re-use rights that users need and authors want
to provide) will not be far behind.
We are currently gathering data to test whether the
immediate-deposit
<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>
(HEFCE
<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>/Liege
<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>)
Green OA mandate model is indeed the most effective mandate
(compared, for example, with the Harvard
<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>
copyright-retention
model with opt-out, or the NIH
<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>
model
with a 12 month embargo).
*Stevan Harnad*
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 /despite/ the new
Finch/FCUK policy
<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/1074-html> which
subsidizes and prefers Gold and tries to downgrade Green --
certainly not because of it!
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