I think we are now getting into an off-target area: not open access but archiving. It is really unfortunate that open access repositories were ever called archives.
Heather is right. In the past print publishers of books and journals just had to print them onto papyrus, vellum, or paper, using a non-ephemeral ink, and rely on dissemination (and libraries) to do the preservation. Preservation in the digital era is a different matter, having to cope with ephemeral media and error-resistant information (the opposite of the Gutenberg era). But this is not central open access stuff, important though it is. Of course, to forestall comment by someone who wants to carp, the lifetime of research outputs does vary. In some disciplines it is of the order of a year or two on average, in others perhaps of centuries, to use the extremes. Arthur Sale Tasmania, Australia -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Heather Morrison Sent: Monday, 21 January 2013 10:11 AM To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: Please distinguish what is and is not relevant to mandating Green OA self-archiving On 20-Jan-13, at 2:25 PM, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote: (excerpt) Some forms of Gold do not require any more payment than what is needed to maintain a repository. In fact, an OA Gold journal is a repository of its own articles. Comment: a gold OA journal serves as a repository, however it is important to understand that any journal, or the open access status of a journal, may be ephemeral in nature. Journals are archived and preserved by libraries, not by journals and publishers. This is important to understand because gold open access without open access archives is highly vulnerable. Journals can simply disappear, or be sold by open access publishers to toll access publishers. For this reason I argue that open access archives are absolutely essential to sustainable open access. best, Heather _______________________________________________ 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
