[GOAL] Re: [BOAI] Meaning of Open Access

Wed, 9 May 2012 17:01:05 -0700 (PDT) 

Dear All,
 
To me, Open Access implies unqualified free and unlimited access to 
all journal
contents for ALL interested readers/users, regardless of location and
resource-capacity.
Anything short of this no matter how qualified, seems restrictive and
prescriptive.
Dr. Uzodinma Adirieje
Executive Director
Afrihealth Information Projects/Afrihealth Optonet Association
Suite 216, Block G, FHA Cornershop, Lugbe, Airport Road, Abuja
P.O. Box 8880, Wuse Abuja, Nigeria
Ph: +234 802 856 2348; Mob: +234 803 472 5905
Emails: [email protected], [email protected]  
 
From: Stevan Harnad <[email protected]>
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected]
Sent: Wednesday, May 9, 2012 11:37 AM
Subject: [BOAI] Meaning of Open Access

      ** 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
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