** Cross-Posted **
On 2012-05-09, at 4:12 AM, Jan Velterop wrote:
I would favour doing away with both the terms 'libre OA' and 'gratis
OA'.
Open Access suffices. It's the 'open' that says it all. Especially
if it is made
clear that OA means BOAI-compliant OA in the context of scholarly
research literature.
I don't doubt that Jan would like to do away with the terms libre and gratis
OA.Â
He has been arguing all along that free online access is not open access,
ever since 2003 on the American Scientist Open Access Forum:
http://users.ecs.soton.ac.uk/harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#msg6478
This would mean that my "subversive proposal" of 1994 was not really aÂ
proposal for open access  and that the existing open access mandatesÂ
and policies of funders and institutions worldwide are not really open accessÂ
mandates or policies.
http://roarmap.eprints.org/
It is in large part for this reason that in 2008 Peter Suber and I proposedÂ
the terms "gratis" and "libre" open access to ensure that the term
"open access" retained its meaning, and to make explicit the twoÂ
distinct conditions involved: free online access (gratis OA) and
certain re-use rights (libre OA):
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/strong-and-weak-oa.html
For Peter Murray-Rust's crusade for journal article text-mining rights,
apart from reiterating my full agreement that these are highly important
and highly desirable and even urgent in certain fields, I would like
to note that -- as PM-R has stated -- neither gratis OA nor libre OA
is necessary for the kinds of text-mining rights he is seeking. They
can be had via a special licensing agreement from the publisher.
There is no ambiguity there: The text-mining rights can be granted
even if the articles themselves are not made openly accessible,
free for all.Â
And, as Richard Poynder has just pointed out, publishers are
quite aware of (perhaps even relieved with) this option, withÂ
Elsevier lately launching an experiment in it:
http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/goal/2012-May/000433.html
This makes it clear that the text-mining rights PM-R seeks can be
had without either sort of OA, gratis or libre...
Let us hope the quest for Open Access itself is not derailed in this
direction.
Stevan Harnad
On 9 May 2012, at 08:30, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 10:25 PM, Stevan Harnad
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 3:23 PM, Jan Velterop
<[email protected]> wrote:
JV> So by all means, let legal measures play a
role, but not at the expense of lowering the bar
to 'gratis' OA. If one believes in mandates, then
there is no reason why BOAI-compliant OA ('libre'
in your [SH] lingo) should not be mandated.
I'd like to suggest that the term "libre OA" be dropped. "Gratis OA"
implies freedom for anyone to read the manuscript somewhere. "Libre
OA" imlies the "removal of some permission barriers" but neither
says which or how many. Since Gratis OA has already required the
removal of one permission barrier (the permission being granted to
post on the web, permanently) it can be argued that all Gratis OA is
ipso facto Libre OA.
This renders the term Unnecessary and confusiing, and allows many
people and organizations to imply they are granting rights and
permissions beyond GratisOA when they are not. If there are current
examples where the use of "libreOA" plays a useful role it would be
useful to see them.
The only terms that make operational sense and are clear are Gratis
OA and BOAI-compliant OA . It is a pity that the latter is a long
phrase and maybe its usage will contract the phrase.
I would be grateful for clear discourse on these definitions and the
suggestion of retiring "libreOA".
P.
--
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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[ Part 2: "Attached Text" ]
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