The UK report, press coverage, and the Green and Gold Roads to Open Access

[Stevan Harnad]

Prior Topic Threads:
"The Green and Gold Roads to Open Access"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3147.html

"The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3378.html

"UK Select Committee Inquiry into Scientific Publication"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3263.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3407.html

On Sat, 24 Jul 2004, [identity deleted] wrote:

> I've just had the [newspaper name deleted] onto me
> to write a piece on the House of Commons report but they wanted it tied,
> because of their readership, to multinational publishers profits on the
> one hand but didn't want to put in the Elsevier self-archiving as this
> was too esoteric.

Thank you for your message. It is extremely important to get both
the press coverage of the UK Committee outcome and the wording of the
self-archiving policy proposal right. Here are some comments:

There is a way to satisfy the press's simplistic and sensationalistic
preferences while still conveying what is true and useful about the UK
report, rather than heading off instead into fantasy -- incoherent fantasy
-- that is not based on the actual concrete outcome of the UK report at
all, and unrelated to what will actually generate OA. The "green/gold"
colour codes I've been promoting are specifically intended to make this
clearer, easier to understand, and easier to remember and explain.

What should be said to the press to explain both UK Committee outcome
and the OA itself is this:

The UK Select Committee report clearly recognises that there are 2 roads
to OA (Open Access), "green" and "gold":

(GOLD) The "golden" road to OA is for authors to publish their
articles in OA journals. OA journals cover their costs from
author-institution publication charges instead of from institutional
subscription tolls, and in exchange these journals make all their
articles OA.

(GREEN) The "green" road to OA is for authors to make their
own articles OA by self-archiving all of them in their own
institutional OA archives, whether they are published in
OA or non-OA journals.

The important thing to understand is that only about 5% of journals are
gold, so the only OA option today for articles in the remaining 95% of
journals is author-institution self-archiving (green).

Moreover, 84% of journals are already officially green, having already
given their official "green light" to author-institution self-archiving
http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
and the number of green journals is rapidly rising to 100% because of
the growing evidence of the dramatic benefits of OA for research and
researchers: Maximizing research access maximizes research impact:

Harnad, S. & Brody, T. (2004) Comparing the Impact of Open Access
(OA) vs. Non-OA Articles in the Same Journals, D-Lib Magazine 10
(6) June
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june04/harnad/06harnad.html

Hence the only thing standing between today's 10-20% OA and 100% OA is
the fact that institutions and research funders have not yet mandated
that all their research articles must be made OA. (*Publishing* them
has long been mandated ["publish or perish"], but self-archiving them
has not yet been.)

The UK Select Committee's most important and concrete recommendation is
accordingly that self-archiving of UK-funded research -- the green road
to OA -- should be mandated:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/39903.htm

There are additional recommendations too -- that the golden road to OA
should be encouraged where possible, and further studied, and that
the costs of publishing in gold OA journal should be funded where
needed -- but the main recommendation is green: Mandate author-institution
self-archiving of all UK-funded research-article output, thereby providing
immediate OA to all of it.

(The US House of Representatives has made a very similar recommendation:
to mandate the self-archiving of all NIH-funded research.)
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3851.html
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3854.html

Now that the recommendation to mandate OA self-archiving has been made,
institutions need to commit themselves to implementing the mandate:

http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
http://software.eprints.org/handbook/departments.php

Once they have done that, a JISC survey (Swan & Brown 2004):
has already reported that when authors were asked:

"...how they would feel if their employer or funding body required
them to deposit copies of their published articles in... [OA
archives]. The vast majority... said they would do so willingly..."

So 100% OA simply awaits the implementation of the UK Select Committee's
recommendation to mandate taking the green road to OA.

Swan, A. & Brown, S.N. (2004) JISC/OSI Journal Authors Survey
Report.  http://www.jisc.ac.uk

Re: Elsevier Gives Authors Green Light for Open Access Self-Archiving

[Stevan Harnad]

Prior Topic Thread:
"Elsevier Gives Authors Green Light for Open Access Self-Archiving"
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3770.html

On Sat, 24 Jul 2004 [identity deleted] wrote:

> I'm reading about your green light model of self-archiving.
> If you have a moment, where is a review of why some publishers
> are not averse to self-archiving of *post-print* items?
> Seems counterintuitive that any of them would allow this.

Asking for a review of why publishers are "not averse" to the
self-archiving of the refereed postprint rather gets the wrong end of the
stick:

It is spectators and speculators who have simply *assumed* that publishers
would be opposed. Publishers, more sensibly and practically, saw that
there was no point or possibility in opposing OA itself: that would create
far too great and obvious a conflict of interest between themselves and
their authors, given the growing empirical evidence for the dramatic
benefits of OA for research and researchers.
http://www.dlib.org/dlib/june04/harnad/06harnad.html

So publishers sensibly and benignly gave OA self-archiving the green
light, partly to demonstrate that they are not trying to oppose the
benefits of OA for research and researchers -- and partly also because
enhanced article impact also means enhanced journal impact, which sells
more journals and attracts more authors.
http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php

Most publishers have, however, understandably been "averse" to converting
to gold (OA journal) publishing, because of the risks and uncertainties
of this still untested cost-recovery model. They prefer to wait and see;
and supporting green is a sensible and natural way to resist pressure
to convert to gold:

"See, I support OA: If authors want it, they can go ahead self-archive
their own individual articles. But please don't ask me to make all
the sacrifices and assume all the risks: if you want OA so much,
you have the green light: Your move!"

http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/greenroad.html

One can speculate about what will happen *after* there is 100% OA
(and I too have speculated about the possibilities in the past
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we152.htm
 )
but it is now clear that far too much precious time (and access, and
impact) has already been lost speculating and counter-speculating, while
doing nothing: What is needed now is self-archiving, not speculation.

Your own question is merely inviting me to do some more speculation: 84%
of journals are green. Don't look a gift-horse in the mouth and worry
about whether it might not be Trojan: You have the green light. Cross
the street!

Stevan Harnad

P.S. The difference between pale-green (preprints) and full-green
(postprints) is trivial, as the authors can always post the corrections
after the preprints. Moreover, no green light is needed to post preprints,
so even the green/gray distinction is merely a psychological matter:
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#copyright1