On 2012-05-09, at 8:02 AM, David Prosser wrote:
Over-reaching, and carping about definitions and ideals,
and
especially preaching that continuing no-OA is preferable
to low-bar-OA
is just what is keeping us treading water year upon
year, instead of
flooding the planet (irreversibly) with the Green Gratis
OA that we
could already have.
I don't think that there is a shred of evidence to support the
thesis
that we would have 100% green gratis OA today if only nobody
had mentioned full OA. Â
No one has said that. Just that we should reach for what it within
our grasp rather than over-reaching and getting next to nothing.
And suggesting that anybody is preaching 'continued no-OA is
preferable to low-bar-OA' is a rather disingenuous misrepresentation
of the position of those of us who support full OA take.
I quote from Jan Velterop:
> 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 lingo) should not be
> mandated.
Stevan Harnad
David
On 9 May 2012, at 12:53, Stevan Harnad wrote:
No, mandated Green Gratis OA cannot be prevented or
"rescinded" by publishers
(and publishers are well aware of that -- it is
researchers who are
naive about it).
On the contrary, the more OA we have, the harder it is
to retard or resist it:
the change is optimal, self-reinforcing, and
irreversible:
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned
Please, please let's stop being so short-sighted. The
reason it is so
important to lower barriers and grasp what is within
reach
(universally mandated Green, Gratis OA) is that that is
what will
bring us all the other good things we also seek (Libre
OA, Gold OA,
copyright reform).
Over-reaching, and carping about definitions and ideals,
and
especially preaching that continuing no-OA is preferable
to low-bar-OA
is just what is keeping us treading water year upon
year, instead of
flooding the planet (irreversibly) with the Green Gratis
OA that we
could already have.
Stevan Harnad
On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 6:37 AM, Stevan Harnad
<[email protected]> wrote:
** 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.
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 a
proposal for open access  and that the
existing open access mandates
and policies of funders and institutions
worldwide are not really open
access
mandates or policies.
http://roarmap.eprints.org/
It is in large part for this reason that in
2008 Peter Suber and I proposed
the terms "gratis" and "libre" open access
to ensure that the term
"open access" retained its meaning, and to
make explicit the two
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.
And, as Richard Poynder has just pointed
out, publishers are
quite aware of (perhaps even relieved with)
this option, with
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
_______________________________________________
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
[ Part 2: "Attached Text" ]
_______________________________________________
GOAL mailing list
[email protected]
http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
