I am no longer replying on GOAL as the discussion is going incircles. This is
also my last reply on J-I now, unless something
startlingly new, important and original is posted:
The simple summary is, yes, when the goal of reaching 100% OA
has not even been 20% reached in 10 years, I am definitely in
favour of lowering the goal-post -- especially when the goal
consists of two independent components, (1) free access andÂ
(2) certain re-use rights, the first (and lower) of which is muchÂ
more urgent, and much more easily reachable.
Stevan Harnad
On 2012-05-10, at 10:06 AM, Jan Velterop wrote:
Steve Hitchcock's remark that "BOAI was more a
strategy than a definition, based on two routes to
OA, green and gold. It looks like we are placing definition above
strategy in order to railroad gold over green"
is baffling.
Hi
If you first state what you want (the definition the goal) and then
formulate how you think you should try to get to what you want (the
strategy), it makes no sense at all to subsequently dismiss what you
want as "a 10-year old definition" and to question
putting definition above strategy (implying that strategy be put
above definition). Strategy to achieve what, exactly? Strategy 'ins
Blaue hinein', since you have dismissed the goal?Â
Further comments interleaved in Stevan's post below.
Jan
On 10 May 2012, at 12:08, Stevan Harnad wrote:
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 Â 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
It's significant that many of these mandates are so-called ID/OA, in which
OA doesn't stand for Open Access, but for Optional Access. So this is what
has become of the sensible ambitions of OA as formulated in the BOAI, is
it? Optional Access.
(The mandates are mostly also for the author's
final draft, not for the publisher's PDF.)
Exactly. At that stage it would be very easy for authors to attach a CC-BY
licence or equivalent to their manuscript. But we don't even seem to ask.
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.
But publishers' endorsement (if that is what it is â I'd call it reluctant
acceptance) is irrelevant when it concerns authors' manuscripts and not
publishers' pdfs, as you've always been arguing, Stevan.
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.
This points to delayed OA as the most achievable short-term solution (most
mandates accept embargoes). Why not declare that an interim goal, a stage
post on the road to real, full OA? You may well get publishers on board,
obviating the need for mandates, which have embargoes anyway. Indeed,
looking at PMC, many publishers already deposit their articles there with
an embargo.
(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.)
No, I'm not at all advocating 'holding out for the unreachable'. Instead,
pocket what you can pocket, but don't make a second best watered-down
version of OA look like the ultimate goal. And certainly don't confuse the
hell out of people with phrases like 'gratis OA', 'libre OA', 'green',
'gold', and 'ID/OA' to boot, where OA doesn't even stand for Open Access
any longer.
It's straightforward enough: keep the ambition of full OA as defined in
the BOAI, put anything that can be achieved towards that goal 'in the bag'
in the meantime, but don't unhook the highwire at the far end or you'll
never be able to cross the chasm to full Open Access.
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. Â 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, Â 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 Â 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
