That's right. The difference between the actual 7.5%% and the bottom-line 55% (i.e., those who could self-archive today already having the journal's official blessing) is the minimum. In reality, though, much closer to 100% could be self-archiving, leaving the gap between what is immediately possible and what is actual even bigger. (And even for those publishers who officially state that if their author self-archives, they refuse to publish the paper, there is still a legal way for the author to self-archive: http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#copyright1 ).
It is for this reason that I have become convinced that the only thing that will ensure that the research community takes advantage of the open access that is within its reach is via a natural extension of the very same policy that ensures that research is published at all, rather than simply put in a desk drawer: Both research institutions and research funders need to extend their existing "publish or perish" policies to "publish with maximized impact" -- by making all research publications open-access, via either the golden or green road, i.e., by publishing it in a suitable open-access journal, if one exists, or otherwise by publishing it in a suitable toll-access journal AND self-archiving it in the author's own institutional open-access eprint archives. http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue35/harnad/ In other words, by implementing the Berlin Declaration: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/berlin.htm Stevan Harnad On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, Alastair Dryburgh wrote: > Thanks. > > If I understand correctly, the difference between the potential 55-95% of > articles which could be available via self-archiving per the slide and the > 7.5% you give below must be due to authors not self-archiving when they > could ? > > Cheers > > Alastair > > -----Original Message----- > From: Stevan Harnad [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 06:29 > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: The Green and Gold Roads to Open Access > > > > > From: Alastair Dryburgh > > Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2003 04:00 > > To: Sally Morris > > Subject: Protocols for Metadata Harvesting > > > > I continue to think about things like ParaCite being a catalyst in the > move > > towards open access. Are you aware of any estimates of how much of the > > recent literature is available in published or almost-as-published form > > outside the subscription wall ? > > Dear Alastair, > > The percentage of the annual literatire that is openly accessible varies > from field to field. In High Energy Physics it is 100% and in chemistry > it is near 0%. There are about 2,500,000 articles published in 24,000 > refereed journals acrosss all fields and languages each year. > Of this total, about 10% is available as full-text for free online. > Of that 10% about 2.5% gets there via open-access journals and the > remaining 7.5% via author open-access self-archiving. > > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/self-archiving_files/Slide0024.gif > > Cheers, Stevan > > On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, Alastair Dryburgh wrote: > > > Stevan > > > > Sally Morris suggested you would be the best person to answer the question > I > > had below. > > > > Your best estimate ? > > > > Best wishes > > > > Alastair Dryburgh > > www.alastairdryburgh.co.uk >
