When I want to drive on a public road, whether it is closed or temporarily 
closed makes no difference to me. It is not open. I can't use it.
Embargo is antinomic to open.

Bernard Rentier

> Le 1 juin 2015 à 18:26, Stevan Harnad <[email protected]> a écrit :
> 
>> On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 10:16 AM, Michael Eisen <[email protected]> wrote:
>> There's a difference between trying to be inclusive, and redefining goals 
>> and definitions to the point of being meaningless. I can not tell you how 
>> many times I hear that the NIH provides open access because they make 
>> articles freely available after a year. This is not just semantics. The 
>> belief that the NIH provides open access with its public access policy 
>> provides real drag on the quest to provide actual open access. You can argue 
>> about whether or not the policy is a good thing because it's a step in the 
>> right direction, or a bad thing because it reifies delayed access. But 
>> calling what the provide "open access" serves only to confuse people, to 
>> weaken our objectives and give the still far more powerful forces who do not 
>> want open access a way to resist pressure for it. 
> 
> It's nice to be able to agree with Mike Eisen.
> 
> Open Access (OA) comes in two degrees: Gratis OA is immediate, permanent free 
> online access and Libre OA is Gratis OA plus various re-use rights (up to 
> CC-BY or even public domain).
> 
> What both degrees of OA share is that they are both immediate (and permanent).
> 
> Otherwise, there's just Delayed (Embargoed) Access, which is no more "Open 
> Access" than Toll Access is.
> 
> To treat Delayed Access as if it were a form of Open Access would be to 
> reduce OA to meaninglessness (and would play into the hands of publishers who 
> would like to see precisely that happen).
> 
> Stevan Harnad 
>> 
>>> On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 5:00 AM, Heather Morrison 
>>> <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> hi David,
>>> 
>>> Redefining open access and understanding that a great many people are 
>>> moving towards open access in slightly different ways are two different 
>>> things. My post will focus on the benefits of a more inclusive and 
>>> welcoming approach to open access.
>>> 
>>> For example, I have been conducting interviews and focus groups with 
>>> editors of small journals that either are, or would like to be, open 
>>> access. Behind the more than 10 thousand journals listed in DOAJ are 
>>> probably much more than 10 thousand such editors, working hard to convince 
>>> colleagues to move to open access, struggling to figure out how to do this 
>>> in order to make ends meet. While some of us have been active and vocal in 
>>> OA discussions and policy formulation, others have been quietly doing this 
>>> work, often contributing a great deal of volunteer effort, over the years. 
>>> We rarely hear from these people, but actively listening and figuring out 
>>> how to provide the support needed for the journals to thrive in an OA 
>>> environment is in the best interests of continuing towards a fully open 
>>> access and sustainable system. These people are OA heroes from my 
>>> perspective, whether their journal is currently OA or not. In my 
>>> experience, when someone says their journal is free online after a year and 
>>> they would like to move to OA, asking about the barriers and what is needed 
>>> to move to OA results in productive discussions.
>>> 
>>> OpenDOAR maintains a list of over 2,600 vetted open access archives:
>>> http://opendoar.org/
>>> 
>>> OA archives have made a very great deal of work open access - so much so 
>>> that counting it all is very hard! The thesis, for example, was until 
>>> recently available in perhaps 1 or 2 print copies (that libraries were 
>>> reluctant to lend as they were not replaceable) and microfilm. Today we are 
>>> well on our way to open and online by default for the thesis. arXiv in 
>>> effect flipped high energy physics to full preprint OA close to two decades 
>>> ago. PubMed was an early OA success story making the Medline index 
>>> available for free. In the 1990's I remember how big a deal it was for a 
>>> small Canadian university college to buy access to Medline, and even then 
>>> having access restricted to senior students in biology. Today it's free for 
>>> everyone with internet access. So is Medline Plus, which provides high 
>>> quality free consumer health information. PubMedCentral both makes the 
>>> medical literature available and ensures that it is preserved, working with 
>>> both authors and journals to make this happen. By my calculations, 30% of 
>>> the literature indexed in PubMed is freely available through PubMed 2 years 
>>> after publication (all literature, no restrictions based on funder policy); 
>>> 32% after 3 years. For the data, see the Dramatic Growth of Open Dataverse 
>>> http://dataverse.scholarsportal.info/dvn/dv/dgoa download the latest 
>>> spreadsheet and go to the PMC Free tab.
>>> 
>>> These archives have happened because librarians and others have fought for 
>>> the resources to develop the archives, often the policies (there are a 
>>> great many more thesis deposit policies than are listed in ROARMAP), and 
>>> educating anyone who would listen about OA. Many smart people worked on the 
>>> concept and technology, and many if by no means all authors have taken the 
>>> time to deposit their works.
>>> 
>>> In the early years, the OA movement really was small, and it is a good 
>>> thing that some of us stepped up to defend OA against attacks. Today I 
>>> think we should ask ourselves whether this defensiveness has become a 
>>> habit. Are we starting to snap at OA friends as much as OA detractors? Are 
>>> we over-reacting? The Elsevier archiving policy change is unfortunate, a 
>>> step in the wrong direction, and fully merits critique. But this is not the 
>>> same level of wrongfulness as Elsevier's lobbying for the Research Works 
>>> Act a few years ago, which would have prevented the US from enacting public 
>>> access legislation.
>>> 
>>> respectfully,
>>> 
>>> Heather
>>> 
>>> On 2015-06-01, at 5:09 AM, David Prosser wrote:
>>> 
>>> >
>>> > Ever since ‘Open Access’ was first defined there have been people who 
>>> > have wanted to redefine it.  Heather is the latest of these.  The trouble 
>>> > is, by broadening the definition of ‘Open Access’ it is in danger of 
>>> > becoming meaningless.
>>> >
>>> > So, Heather wants to include journals who make their content freely 
>>> > available after one or two years.  I certainly agree that free access 
>>> > after two years is better than no free access after two years, but where 
>>> > do we draw the line - is a five year embargo ‘Open Access'? Ten? Fifty?  
>>> > And Heather has warned us of the hypothetical dangers of CC-BY papers 
>>> > being re-enclosed, but wants us to consider entire archives where free 
>>> > access can be turned off at the flick of a switch at the whim of the 
>>> > publisher as being open access!
>>> >
>>> > I’m all for celebrating free archives, and if somebody wants to compile a 
>>> > list then that would be great - but let’s not call it ‘Open Access’.  The 
>>> > trouble with all the attempts to redefine ‘Open Access’ is that nobody 
>>> > has come up with a definition that improves on that of the Budapest Open 
>>> > Access Initiative of 2002.
>>> >
>>> > Heather’s final paragraph is frankly baffling.  I know of nobody who 
>>> > feels that 'the OA movement consists of the small group of people who 
>>> > have been to meetings in Budapest’.  What I do know is that many of those 
>>> > who attended the first meeting in 2002 where the definition of Open 
>>> > Access was thrashed out have spend a huge amount of their time over the 
>>> > past 13 years travelling the world promoting open access.  Often, 
>>> > especially in the early years, to audiences that were in single-figures 
>>> > and/or overtly hostile.  The fact that there is an OA movement today is, 
>>> > in great part, thanks to the inspiring efforts of those early pioneers 
>>> > (together with others).  They have advocated for repositories, for 
>>> > mandates, for open source software to allow cheaper journal publishing, 
>>> > for more liberal licensing, etc., etc.   Denigrating them by implication 
>>> > is quite ridiculous revisionism.  (And for full disclosure, I attended 
>>> > the 10th anniversary meeting in Budapest, where we were able to celebrate 
>>> > a vibrant, international OA movement.)
>>> >
>>> > David
>>> >
>>> >
>>> >
>>> > On 30 May 2015, at 20:03, Heather Morrison <[email protected]> 
>>> > wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> What if, instead of condemning the many people who are doing their best 
>>> >> to provide the most open access they feel they can, the OA movement were 
>>> >> to be more inclusive? For example, DOAJ excludes journals that make 
>>> >> their work freely available after one or two years' embargo. I realize 
>>> >> and agree that we want immediate OA, but the vast majority of such 
>>> >> journals are published by people who are completely in favour of open 
>>> >> access but just haven't figured out how to make the economics work for 
>>> >> them.
>>> >>
>>> >> The opposite of open access is closed access. The Big Chill report on 
>>> >> the silencing of federal scientists in Canada is a good illustration. 
>>> >> Excerpt: "the survey [of Canadian federal scientists] ...found that 
>>> >> nearly one-quarter (24%) of respondents had been directly asked to 
>>> >> exclude or alter information for non-scientific reasons and that over 
>>> >> one-third (37%) had been prevented in the past five years from 
>>> >> responding to questions from the public and media" from: 
>>> >> http://www.pipsc.ca/portal/page/portal/website/issues/science/bigchill
>>> >>
>>> >> I understand that the U.S. has had similar problems with political 
>>> >> interference with science, e.g. states such as Florida having 
>>> >> legislature forbidding reference to climate change (example here: 
>>> >> http://fcir.org/2015/03/08/in-florida-officials-ban-term-climate-change/)
>>> >>
>>> >> Even without any political interference, works under toll access can be 
>>> >> locked down for the full term of copyright. In the U.S. that's life of 
>>> >> the author plus 70 years. If a work is written 30 years before an author 
>>> >> dies, that's a century. The great many works freely available within a 
>>> >> year or a few of publication should be understood as a huge success, not 
>>> >> a failure.
>>> >>
>>> >> If the OA movement consists of the small group of people who have been 
>>> >> to meetings in Budapest [sometimes people on this list talk as if this 
>>> >> were the case],  that's a small movement indeed and not likely to grow 
>>> >> very much. On the other hand, if the OA movement is seen as the millions 
>>> >> of authors who have provided free access to their own work (however they 
>>> >> did this), the thousands of journals providing free access (whether we 
>>> >> think they are perfect in this or not), the thousands of repositories - 
>>> >> that's a huge global movement, one that we can build upon to continue 
>>> >> and grow the momentum to date.
>>> >>
>>> >> best,
>>> >>
>>> >> --
>>> >> Dr. Heather Morrison
>>> >> Assistant Professor
>>> >> École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies
>>> >> University of Ottawa
>>> >> http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
>>> >> Sustaining the Knowledge Commons http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/
>>> >> [email protected]
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >>
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>>> >
>>> >
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>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Michael Eisen, Ph.D.
>> Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
>> Professor of Genetics, Genomics and Development
>> Department of Molecular and Cell Biology
>> University of California, Berkeley
>> 
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