Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
~On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Michael Eisen wrote:
>sh> Perhaps all Sally means here is that she thinks it would be more useful
>sh> if open-access ("gold") journals did not use the creative-commons
>sh> license, and instead, apart from providing immediate, permanent,
>sh> toll-free, non-gerrymandered, online access to the full-text, the journal
>sh> required *exclusive* copyright transfer for its sale in derivative works.
> >
>sh> I'd say: No harm in that; go ahead! There was never any need for the
>sh> creative-commons license here anyway! Open-access provision was all that
>was
>sh> needed -- whether via the golden road or the green one.
> >
>sh> (But again, what market is there likely to be for derivative works when the
>sh> full-text is forever freely available online?)
>
> I couldn't disagree more. You are redefining open access to be no more than
> free access. For many of us involved in open access the ability to reuse and
> republish text is a critical part of making optimal use of the scientific
> literature. PLoS chose the creative commons license in order to encourage
> creative reuse of the content we publish.
Mike,
In this discussion thread
"Free Access Vs. Open Access"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2956.html
I have several times laid out in some detail the reasons I believe the
distinction between "free access" and "open access" is not only vacuous,
but is now even becoming an obstacle to the understanding and growth of
free/open access itself.
I will again summarize the points, but please, by way of reply, do not
just reinvoke the distinction, as if it were valid and unchallenged,
but rather defend it against the 6 points I make, if it can be defended.
I hasten to add that it is not a defence to say that the free/open
distinction is enshrined in the wording of the Budapest Open Access
Initiative that we both had a hand in drafting and that we both signed:
I considered the distinction just as empty then as I do now, but then I
thought it was harmless -- like adding "for the candidate of your choice"
to the demand for voting rights. I would never have thought that anyone
would call it not "true" voting rights or less than "full" voting rights
if you *got* to vote, but the candidate of your choice was not on the
ballot (because he wasn't running)!
Here is the BOAI definition:
What does BOAI mean by "open access"?
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#openaccess
"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. The only constraint on reproduction
and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain,
should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work
and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited."
So here is my list, again:
(1) UBIQUITOUS DIRECT ONLINE ACCESS MAKES DERIVATIVE ACCESS SUPERFLUOUS:
Once the full-text is immediately, permanently, and ubiquitously
(i.e., webwide) accessible toll-free, so any user anywhere, any time,
can read the full-text on-screen, download it, store it, print it off,
search/grep it, computationally process it, etc. -- which any user can
do if the author self-archives it -- the further rights and uses that
distinguish "free" from "open" become either moot or supererogatory:
(2) NO EXTRA DOWNLOAD/PRINT RIGHTS NEEDED, OR NEED BE SPECIFIED: Users
don't need a further specified right to download, store, process or
print-off any of the other material that they can download, store and
print-off from the web -- as long as the material is itself not pirated
by another consumer, but provided by its own author, as is the case with
one's own self-archived journal articles.
(3) NO NEED OR RIGHT TO RE-PUBLISH: There is no need or justification
for demanding the further right to re-publish a full-text in further
*print-on-paper* publications ("derivative works") when it is already
ubiquitously accessible toll-free online. That was never part of the
rationale or justification for demanding free/open access in the first
place. What ushered in the open-access era was the newborn possibility
of providing all would-be users with free, ubiquitous *online* access
to texts, thereby maximizing their useability and research impact. This
newfound possibility, created by the Web, had nothing whatsoever to do
with the right to re-publish those texts on paper!
(4) OPEN-ACCESS PROVISION IS NOT IDENTICAL WITH OPEN-ACCESS PUBLISHING:
It may be that (some) open-access journals do not need or want to
have exclusive publication or republication rights. But open-access
journal-publication is not the on
Re: Draft Policy for Self-Archiving University Research Output
On Tue, 30 Dec 2003, [iso-8859-1] Subbiah Arunachalam wrote:
> ...although the Indian Institute
> of Science has set up an institutional archive, hardly
> any faculty or student is keen to submit their papers
> to the archive! Prof. N Balakrishnan, chairman of
> Information Division at IISc and India's leading
> authority on digital libraries, felt that researchers
> do not submit papers to archives because they would
> like to submit them to high-impact journals.
>
> Please write to Prof. Balakrishnan and Prof. M S
> Valiathan, president of INSA, explaining the ROMEO
> project and its findings that most journals do not
> mind accepting papers deposited in institutional
> archives.
Dear Prof. Balakrishnan and Prof. Valiathan,
Here is a list of the 10 most relevant facts as far as I know them:
(1) There are 24,000 peer-reviewed journals, across all disciplines
and languages, publishing 2,500,000 articles per year.
(2) About 85-90% of those 2.5 million articles are not yet openly
accessible (i.e., their full-texts are not accessible toll-free online).
(3) This percentage is not just true in India, but worldwide: Most
researchers are beginning to understand the benefits of open access,
but their understanding of the immediate feasibility of providing open
access still lags far behind their grasp of its potential benefits.
(4) Nevertheless, 10-15% of those articles *are* openly accessible, and it has
been shown that the research impact of those open-access articles is
dramatically higher than those that are not open-access. (Lawrence's estimate
in computer science is 336% higher; Kurtz reports similar findings in
astrophysics; further studies are on the way.)
http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/Articles/lawrence.html
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/~kurtz/jasis-abstract.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2858.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/openaccess.ppt
(5) Three factors are holding back open access. In order of importance they are:
(5a) Groundless and easily answered worries about the
author/institution self-archiving of articles published in toll-access
journals
(5b) Insufficient awareness of the benefits and feasibility of
providing immediate open access, today
(5c) The still-small number of open-access journals (<1000/24,000)
and a tendency to wait and hope for their number to grow, instead
of immediately self-archiving in the meanwhile.
(6) That it is simply an error not to provide immediate open access through
self-archiving because of copyright worries is already demonstrated
for at least 55% of articles by the UK survey of the top 7000 journals'
copyright policies on self-archiving: 55% of journals already formally
support author/institution self-archiving (and many of the remaining 45%
will agree if asked).
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo%20Publisher%20Policies.htm
(7) There is also a legal solution for the minority of journals that
do not agree to author/institution self-archiving (self-archiving the
pre-refereeing preprint and linking it to a later corrigenda file)
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#self-archiving-legal
(8) Many of the highest-impact journals are among the 55% that already
support self-archiving (e.g., Nature) -- so the failure to self-archive
for impact reasons, too, is merely a consequence of being uninformed.
http://npg.nature.com/pdf/05_news.pdf
(9) There are at least 30 other groundless worries about which the
research community is still uninformed or underinformed, each of them
slowing down the progress of self-archiving and open access:
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#31-worries
(10) A successful institutional or national open-access provision policy
requires systematically informing the research community about (i) the
benefits of open access (impact-maximisation), the (ii) invalidity
of the 31 prima-facie worries, and (iii) the tested and
demonstrated means of providing immediate open access:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3304.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/archpolnew.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/UKSTC.htm
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/
Stevan Harnad
NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org
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 a
Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
Stevan-
I couldn't disagree more. You are redefining open access to be no more than
free access. For many of us involved in open access the ability to reuse and
republish text is a critical part of making optimal use of the scientific
literature. PLoS chose the creative commons license in order to encourage
creative reuse of the content we publish.
You may not see the value in allowing redistribution, derivative works and
other forms of reuse, but you have to recognize that others do and that this
is an central part of the definition of open access. And you shouldn't be
encouraging this kind of confusion of open access and free access. If all
you care about is free access, then lobby for that, but don't dilute the
meaning of open access.
-Mike
- Original Message -
From: "Stevan Harnad"
To:
Sent: Monday, December 29, 2003 5:23 PM
Subject: Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
> Perhaps all Sally means here is that she thinks it would be more useful
> if open-access ("gold") journals did not use the creative-commons
> license, and instead, apart from providing immediate, permanent,
> toll-free, non-gerrymandered, online access to the full-text, the journal
> required *exclusive* copyright transfer for its sale in derivative works.
>
> I'd say: No harm in that; go ahead! There was never any need for the
> creative-commons license here anyway! Open-access provision was all that
was
> needed -- whether via the golden road or the green one.
>
> (But again, what market is there likely to be for derivative works when
the
> full-text is forever freely available online?)
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
> > On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Sally Morris wrote:
> >
> >sm> I think it is perfectly reasonable (and in no way a denial of Open
Access)
> >sm> for a publisher to wish to retain the right to sell derivative copies
of a
> >sm> work, even if in its original form it is made freely available.
> >
> > This is indeed perfectly reasonable and correct, and in no way a denial
> > of Open Access.
> >
> > (But if the original form of a work is freely available online, it is
> > not clear what market there would be for derivative copies...)
> >
> >sm> After all, they've got to recover their costs somehow - and if they
> >sm> recover more from other sources, they will not need to ask authors to
> >sm> pay so much.
> >
> > This sentence is far less clear than the prior one, and appears to be
conflating
> > the case where open-access to the work is being provided by
self-archiving
> > an article that has been published in a toll-access ("green") journal
with
> > the case where open-access to the woork is being provided by publishing
> > it in an open-access ("gold") journal.
> >
> > If the sentence referred to self-archiving green journal articles,
> > then the authors are not paying anything (the green journals are still
> > charging access tolls).
> >
> > If the sentence was referring to publishing articles in gold
(open-access)
> > journals, then author/institution publication fees are paying the costs.
> >
> > There might conceivably be additional revenue to be made from
> > selling derivative works, which could then lower the gold journal's
> > author/institution fees, but (as noted) who would want to pay for
> > derivative works if the full-text was already available free for all
> > online?
> >
> > Many gold journals are using or planning to use the "creative commons"
> > license, which (as I understand it) allows anyone to publish derivative
> > works from the open-access work. That would of course include its gold
publisher
> > too. So no further right needs to be retained by the gold publisher in
that
> > case.
> >
> > Stevan Harnad
> >
> > NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
> > access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
> > the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
> >
> > http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
> > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
> > Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org
> >
> > 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
> >
>
Re: Draft Policy for Self-Archiving University Research Output
Dear Stevan: I spoke about open access at the Annual Meeting of INSA [Indian national Science Academy] and the Centenary Celebration of the National Library of India held at the Asiatic Society, Bombay. The talks were well received. We raised the point that although the Indian Institute of Science has set up an institutional archive, hardly any faculty or student is keen to submit their papers to the archive! Prof. N Balakrishnan, chairman of Information Division at IISc and India's leading authority on digital libraries, felt that researchers do not submit papers to archives because they would like to submit them to high-impact journals. Please write to Prof. Balakrishnan and Prof. M S Valiathan, president of INSA, explaining the ROMEO project and its findings that most journals do not mind accepting papers deposited in institutional archives. Here are their email addresses: ba...@serc.iisc.ernet.in msvaliat...@yahoo.com Thanks and regards. Arun Yahoo! Messenger - Communicate instantly..."Ping" your friends today! Download Messenger Now http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/download/index.html
Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
Perhaps all Sally means here is that she thinks it would be more useful
if open-access ("gold") journals did not use the creative-commons
license, and instead, apart from providing immediate, permanent,
toll-free, non-gerrymandered, online access to the full-text, the journal
required *exclusive* copyright transfer for its sale in derivative works.
I'd say: No harm in that; go ahead! There was never any need for the
creative-commons license here anyway! Open-access provision was all that was
needed -- whether via the golden road or the green one.
(But again, what market is there likely to be for derivative works when the
full-text is forever freely available online?)
Stevan Harnad
> On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Sally Morris wrote:
>
>sm> I think it is perfectly reasonable (and in no way a denial of Open Access)
>sm> for a publisher to wish to retain the right to sell derivative copies of a
>sm> work, even if in its original form it is made freely available.
>
> This is indeed perfectly reasonable and correct, and in no way a denial
> of Open Access.
>
> (But if the original form of a work is freely available online, it is
> not clear what market there would be for derivative copies...)
>
>sm> After all, they've got to recover their costs somehow - and if they
>sm> recover more from other sources, they will not need to ask authors to
>sm> pay so much.
>
> This sentence is far less clear than the prior one, and appears to be
> conflating
> the case where open-access to the work is being provided by self-archiving
> an article that has been published in a toll-access ("green") journal with
> the case where open-access to the woork is being provided by publishing
> it in an open-access ("gold") journal.
>
> If the sentence referred to self-archiving green journal articles,
> then the authors are not paying anything (the green journals are still
> charging access tolls).
>
> If the sentence was referring to publishing articles in gold (open-access)
> journals, then author/institution publication fees are paying the costs.
>
> There might conceivably be additional revenue to be made from
> selling derivative works, which could then lower the gold journal's
> author/institution fees, but (as noted) who would want to pay for
> derivative works if the full-text was already available free for all
> online?
>
> Many gold journals are using or planning to use the "creative commons"
> license, which (as I understand it) allows anyone to publish derivative
> works from the open-access work. That would of course include its gold
> publisher
> too. So no further right needs to be retained by the gold publisher in that
> case.
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
> NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
> access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
> the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
>
> http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
> Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org
>
> 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
>
Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Sally Morris wrote:
> I think it is perfectly reasonable (and in no way a denial of Open Access)
> for a publisher to wish to retain the right to sell derivative copies of a
> work, even if in its original form it is made freely available.
This is indeed perfectly reasonable and correct, and in no way a denial
of Open Access.
(But if the original form of a work is freely available online, it is
not clear what market there would be for derivative copies...)
> After all, they've got to recover their costs somehow - and if they
> recover more from other sources, they will not need to ask authors to
> pay so much.
This sentence is far less clear than the prior one, and appears to be conflating
the case where open-access to the work is being provided by self-archiving
an article that has been published in a toll-access ("green") journal with
the case where open-access to the woork is being provided by publishing
it in an open-access ("gold") journal.
If the sentence referred to self-archiving green journal articles,
then the authors are not paying anything (the green journals are still
charging access tolls).
If the sentence was referring to publishing articles in gold (open-access)
journals, then author/institution publication fees are paying the costs.
There might conceivably be additional revenue to be made from
selling derivative works, which could then lower the gold journal's
author/institution fees, but (as noted) who would want to pay for
derivative works if the full-text was already available free for all
online?
Many gold journals are using or planning to use the "creative commons"
license, which (as I understand it) allows anyone to publish derivative
works from the open-access work. That would of course include its gold publisher
too. So no further right needs to be retained by the gold publisher in that
case.
Stevan Harnad
NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@amsci.org
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
