Sorry, my mistake. To help further clarify the situation, below is what I attached to the bottom of Stevan's message, after he asked:
[SH] What do other GOAL and JISC readers think? [RP] 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 -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: 10 May 2012 12:52 To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re-posting: Meaning of Open Access The following is a re-posting of a message I had had meant to post to both GOAL and JISC-Repositories yesterday, but inadvertently posted only to JISC. (Richard has since quoted from it, but the source will have been confusing to GOAL readers..) Stevan Harnad On 2012-05-10, at 4:43 AM, 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. The evidence is that virtually all the c. 250 Green OA mandates that have actually succeeded in getting adopted to date (see ROARMAP) are for free online access (Gratis OA) only, not for Libre (or "BOAI") OA. http://roarmap.eprints.org (The mandates are mostly also for the author's final draft, not for the publisher's PDF.) The reason is that all authors are for free online access (at least), the majority of publishers endorse (only) free online access (unembargoed) and most of the remaining publishers endorse free online access (only) after an embargo. As evidence that going against authors' preferences makes it harder to get mandates adopted, several mandates have been delayed or blocked because authors wanted the publisher's PDF rather than their own final drafts to be the drafts that were freely accessible online. (The solution was to explain to the authors why "lowering the bar" to the author's final draft would generate much more free access, and already made a huge difference for access-denied users, whereas persuading publishers who had already endorsed immediate-Gratis Green OA to endorse Libre OA would be a long, and possibly endless slog. A similar rationale is used for "lowering the bar" to the most successful and effective mandate model, ID/OA [immediate deposit -- optional access] + "Almost-OA" via the email-eprint-access Button for Closed Access deposits during the embargo. There are all examples of "lowering the bar" -- "reaching for the reachable" -- in order to get much more access for researchers, rather than to continue to make do with access-denial year in and year out, by holding out for the unreachable.) I might add, without evidence, that I am certain that the fastest, surest (and probably the only) way to reach the currently unreachable (Libre OA, Gold OA, etc.) too is to grasp for what is already within reach ("lower the bar"). Green Gratis OA itself, once it becomes universal, will be what extends our reach, irreversibly. (What follows is a response that I had meant to post to GOAL yesterday, but inadvertently sent only to JISC-Repositories.) Re-posted: I apologize for dwelling on what to some members of the GOAL forum and the JISC-Repositories list may seem to be minor or irrelevant points. I would like to suggest that they are far from being minor or irrelevant, but go to the very heart of what OA is, what it's for, and how to make it happen: On 2012-05-09, at 1:19 PM, Jan Velterop wrote: > Of course the need for access isn't. What I'm saying is that just > 'gratis' OA won't feel much like meaningful access to those who have > to ingest amounts of papers that are impossible to ingest by unaided > (by machine) reading. > This is an interesting article that illustrates that: > http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c6815 > (not OA, unfortunately) Jan, I think your reply does not address the question I asked.. You made what looks like a spurious dichotomy, between those who can afford sufficient access and those who can't keep up with the relevant literature. That does not cover the relevant options. There are those who can afford sufficient access and those who cannot. And for those who cannot afford sufficient access, providing Green Gratis OA is most definitely providing "meaningful" access. For those whose problem is not access but tools to help them keep up with the relevant literature -- note that this is not an access problem but a filtering/alerting/search/navigation problem -- one can develop solutions without any reference to OA. In fact, publishers and secondary indexers will be happy to provide such services on the full non-OA corpus. Publishers would be delighted to form a consortium to help users navigate paid content (in fact they are already beginning to do it) -- especially if we would just stop the clamor for OA (Gratis OA!). 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? (I am also willing to make a bet that once Green Gratis OA mandates from institutions and funders have generated enough OA content to make it worth their while, a generation of bright doctoral students in computer science and scientometrics will be more than happy to provide filtering and navigation tools beyond Jan's wildest dreams. And so will Google. All that's missing is that Green Gratis OA content that Jan does not find meaningful enough... See citebase for the faintest of foretastes (crafted by a Southampton doctoral student, Tim Brody, also the architect of ROAR, and limited only by the sparseness of OA content): http://www.citebase.org/ ) Stevan Harnad _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
