[GOAL] Re: RE : Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY
Jean-Claude’s approach is very sensible, and very much in the interests of OA. The gratis/libre distinction is valuable but it should not become a fundamental disagreement between OA supporters of good will. Those who need OA content will be the losers if we take too dogmatic an approach to such policy issues. Over the years I have held a deep respect for Stevan’s total commitment to the achievement of OA by the quickest route possible, and without such total commitment there would not be as much OA in place as there is now. It is natural that refinements of policies will come about and that we shall have different views on such refinements. Even in the original BOAI meeting there were differences between us, but we still found a way of keeping our eye on the target of universal OA and committing ourselves to that goal. All OA is good; libre OA may be better than gratis OA, and in many situations may be achievable. I for one do not want to lose the goodness in gratis OA for the sake of pursuing libre OA at all costs, but neither will I pass on the opportunity to use CC-BY or any other OA tool when it can improve users’ experience of OA. With warm wishes to all, Fred Friend From: Jean-ClaudeGuédon Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 11:37 PM To: Jan Velterop Cc: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: RE : Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY Jan, I do not think it does, provided that the *wherever* quest for libre that you suggest does not get confused with the *absolute need* to get libre and nothing else. What I think concerns Stevan is that some people get so hung up on libre as a result of the systematic nature of the *wherever* that they downgrade gratis to the level of an ugly, ultimately unacceptable, compromise. At that point, perfection becomes the enemy of the good. Peter Suber has written some good pages in his book on Open Access, by the way. Also, if libre is not currently realistically possible, why go for it, except to reassert a principle? And going for gratis does not prevent reasserting the ultimate goal of libre, while accepting the temporary gain of gratis. Finally, there are negotiating situations where speaking only in terms of gratis is probably wise to achieve at least gratis. Lawyer-style minds are often concerned about the toe-into-the-door possibility. In such situations, the libre imperative could indeed work against the gratis. I suspect may librarian/publisher negotiations would fall in this category and I suspect many publishers approach the whole issue of open access with a cautionary mind. That is the the best I can do on your question. It is a tough question because each category of actors (researchers, librarians, publishers, administrators) will have a different take on it. Best, Jean-Claude Le mercredi 10 octobre 2012 à 21:53 +0100, Jan Velterop a écrit : Jean-Claude, I get that. But I have a question that I don't think has been answered yet. I'll phrase the question differently: Do you think that going for libre wherever we can, impedes the chances of achieving gratis where libre is not currently realistically possible? Best, Jan On 10 Oct 2012, at 21:04, Guédon Jean-Claude wrote: Jan, Please read again what I wrote. I repeat: The only concern one should have in this kind of tactical choice is whether the intermediate step may act against the ideal goal. In this particular case, I do not see how going first for gratis, and then for libre, would impede the goal of ultimately reaching libre. I believe that what I wrote is not ambiguous or difficult to understand. Ot, to put it differently: No, it does not mean... etc. Jean-Claude Message d'origine De: goal-boun...@eprints.org de la part de Jan Velterop Date: mer. 10/10/2012 13:51 À: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum; BOAI Forum Objet : [GOAL] Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY Jean-Claude, Does this mean that you think trying for ideal OA and settling for Gratis Ocular Access where ideal OA is not yet possible, is acting against the ideal goal? If so, on what basis? Best, Jan On 10 Oct 2012, at 18:25, Guédon Jean-Claude wrote: I have been observing this discussion from afar. It has always seemed to me that Stevan was distinguishing between ideal OA and reachable OA. Gratis OA, if I understand him right, is but the first step, and he argues (rightly in my own opinion) that we should not forfeit gratis simply because we do not reach the ideal solution right away. The only concern one should have in this kind of tactical choice is whether the intermediate step may act against the ideal goal. In this particular case, I do not see how going first for gratis, and then for libre, would impede the goal of ultimately reaching
[GOAL] Re: RE : Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY
Jean-Claude, I get that. But I have a question that I don't think has been answered yet. I'll phrase the question differently: Do you think that going for libre wherever we can, impedes the chances of achieving gratis where libre is not currently realistically possible? Best, Jan On 10 Oct 2012, at 21:04, Guédon Jean-Claude wrote: Jan, Please read again what I wrote. I repeat: The only concern one should have in this kind of tactical choice is whether the intermediate step may act against the ideal goal. In this particular case, I do not see how going first for gratis, and then for libre, would impede the goal of ultimately reaching libre. I believe that what I wrote is not ambiguous or difficult to understand. Ot, to put it differently: No, it does not mean... etc. Jean-Claude Message d'origine De: goal-boun...@eprints.org de la part de Jan Velterop Date: mer. 10/10/2012 13:51 À: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum; BOAI Forum Objet : [GOAL] Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY Jean-Claude, Does this mean that you think trying for ideal OA and settling for Gratis Ocular Access where ideal OA is not yet possible, is acting against the ideal goal? If so, on what basis? Best, Jan On 10 Oct 2012, at 18:25, Guédon Jean-Claude wrote: I have been observing this discussion from afar. It has always seemed to me that Stevan was distinguishing between ideal OA and reachable OA. Gratis OA, if I understand him right, is but the first step, and he argues (rightly in my own opinion) that we should not forfeit gratis simply because we do not reach the ideal solution right away. The only concern one should have in this kind of tactical choice is whether the intermediate step may act against the ideal goal. In this particular case, I do not see how going first for gratis, and then for libre, would impede the goal of ultimately reaching libre. Jean-Claude Guédon Message d'origine De: goal-boun...@eprints.org de la part de Jan Velterop Date: mer. 10/10/2012 12:07 À: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum; BOAI Forum Objet : [GOAL] Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY Stevan is not trying to achieve open access. (Although, admittedly, the definition of open access is so much subject to revision, that it depends on the day you looked what it, or one of its flavours, actually means or can mean - for the avoidance of doubt, my anchor point is the definition found here). What Stevan is advocating is just gratis 'ocular' online access (no machine-access, no text- or data-mining, no reuse of any sort - cross). If that is the case, I have no beef with him. We're just on different ships to different destinations which makes travelling in convoy impossible. The destination of the ship I'm on was mapped out at the BOAI in December 2001. I find it important to stay on course. The trouble arises where he regards the course of the ship that I am on as a threat to the course of his ship. That is misguided. Jan Velterop On 10 Oct 2012, at 14:49, Stevan Harnad wrote: ** Cross-Posted ** This is a response to a proposal (by some individuals in the researcher community) to raise the goalposts of Green OA self-archiving and Green OA mandates from where they are now (free online access) to CC-BY (free online access plus unlimited re-use and re-publication rights): 1. The goal-posts for Green OA self-archiving and Green OA mandates should on no account be raised to CC-BY (free online access PLUS unlimited re-use and re-publication rights). That would be an absolute disaster for Green OA growth, Green OA mandate growth, and hence global OA growth (and hence another triumph for the publisher lobby and double-paid hybrid-Gold CC-BY). 2. The fundamental practical reason why global Green Gratis OA (free online access) is readily reachable is precisely because it requires only free online access and not more. 3. That is also why 60% of journals endorse immediate, un-embargoed Green OA today. 4. That is also why repositories' Almost-OA Button can tide over user needs during any embargo for the remaining 40% of journals. 5. Upgrading Green OA and Green OA mandates to requiring CC-BY would mean that most journals would immediately adopt Green OA embargoes, and their length would be years, not months. 6. It would also mean that emailing (or mailing) eprints would become legally actionable, if the eprint was tagged and treated as CC-BY, thereby doing in a half-century's worth of established scholarly practice. 7. And all because impatient ideology got the better of patient pragmatics and realism, a few fields' urgent need for CC-BY was put ahead of all fields' urgent need for free
[GOAL] Re: RE : Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY
On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 9:04 PM, Guédon Jean-Claude jean.claude.gue...@umontreal.ca wrote: Jan, Please read again what I wrote. I repeat: The only concern one should have in this kind of tactical choice is whether the intermediate step may act against the ideal goal. In this particular case, I do not see how going first for gratis, and then for libre, would impede the goal of ultimately reaching libre. I hate to use libre in an OA context as it's operationally meaningless. You could probably argue that most Green is already OA-libre as it removes some permission barriers (e.g. the permission to copy for dark-archival). So I suggest we use BOAI or CC-BY in further discussions. The problem is that this is a serial approach and suffers from at least: * it takes at least twice as long * the world doesn't stand still. Let's hypothesize that we could achieve 80% green (visible Green, not hidden AlmostVisible) in 7 years' time. (I think that's optimistic). Are we then allowed to initiate a CC-BY activity? And by that time the nature of publication will have changed dramatically (because if it doesn't academia will be seriously out of step with this the philosophy and practice of this century). We have to proceed in parallel. No-one - not even SH - can predict the future accurately. I believe that Green-CC-BY is possible and that if we do it on a coherent positive basis it can work. There is no legal reason why we cannot archive Green CC-BY and it is not currently explicitly prevented by any publisher I know of. Try it - rapidly - and see what happens. My guess is that a lot of publishers will let it go forward. The publishers own the citation space. It is their manuscript which is the citable one. Green-CC-BY doesn't remove that. Actually it makes it better because it will increase citations through all the enhancements we can add to re-usable manuscripts. And I will state again that for my purposes (and those of many others) Green CC-BY gives me everything I want without , I believe, destroying the publishers' market. We are in a period of very rapid technical and social change and we need to be actively changing the world of scholarship, not waiting for others to constrain our future. 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 GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: RE : Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY
Jan, I do not think it does, provided that the *wherever* quest for libre that you suggest does not get confused with the *absolute need* to get libre and nothing else. What I think concerns Stevan is that some people get so hung up on libre as a result of the systematic nature of the *wherever* that they downgrade gratis to the level of an ugly, ultimately unacceptable, compromise. At that point, perfection becomes the enemy of the good. Peter Suber has written some good pages in his book on Open Access, by the way. Also, if libre is not currently realistically possible, why go for it, except to reassert a principle? And going for gratis does not prevent reasserting the ultimate goal of libre, while accepting the temporary gain of gratis. Finally, there are negotiating situations where speaking only in terms of gratis is probably wise to achieve at least gratis. Lawyer-style minds are often concerned about the toe-into-the-door possibility. In such situations, the libre imperative could indeed work against the gratis. I suspect may librarian/publisher negotiations would fall in this category and I suspect many publishers approach the whole issue of open access with a cautionary mind. That is the the best I can do on your question. It is a tough question because each category of actors (researchers, librarians, publishers, administrators) will have a different take on it. Best, Jean-Claude Le mercredi 10 octobre 2012 à 21:53 +0100, Jan Velterop a écrit : Jean-Claude, I get that. But I have a question that I don't think has been answered yet. I'll phrase the question differently: Do you think that going for libre wherever we can, impedes the chances of achieving gratis where libre is not currently realistically possible? Best, Jan On 10 Oct 2012, at 21:04, Guédon Jean-Claude wrote: Jan, Please read again what I wrote. I repeat: The only concern one should have in this kind of tactical choice is whether the intermediate step may act against the ideal goal. In this particular case, I do not see how going first for gratis, and then for libre, would impede the goal of ultimately reaching libre. I believe that what I wrote is not ambiguous or difficult to understand. Ot, to put it differently: No, it does not mean... etc. Jean-Claude Message d'origine De: goal-boun...@eprints.org de la part de Jan Velterop Date: mer. 10/10/2012 13:51 À: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum; BOAI Forum Objet : [GOAL] Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY Jean-Claude, Does this mean that you think trying for ideal OA and settling for Gratis Ocular Access where ideal OA is not yet possible, is acting against the ideal goal? If so, on what basis? Best, Jan On 10 Oct 2012, at 18:25, Guédon Jean-Claude wrote: I have been observing this discussion from afar. It has always seemed to me that Stevan was distinguishing between ideal OA and reachable OA. Gratis OA, if I understand him right, is but the first step, and he argues (rightly in my own opinion) that we should not forfeit gratis simply because we do not reach the ideal solution right away. The only concern one should have in this kind of tactical choice is whether the intermediate step may act against the ideal goal. In this particular case, I do not see how going first for gratis, and then for libre, would impede the goal of ultimately reaching libre. Jean-Claude Guédon Message d'origine De: goal-boun...@eprints.org de la part de Jan Velterop Date: mer. 10/10/2012 12:07 À: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum; BOAI Forum Objet : [GOAL] Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY Stevan is not trying to achieve open access. (Although, admittedly, the definition of open access is so much subject to revision, that it depends on the day you looked what it, or one of its flavours, actually means or can mean - for the avoidance of doubt, my anchor point is the definition found here). What Stevan is advocating is just gratis 'ocular' online access (no machine-access, no text- or data-mining, no reuse of any sort - cross). If that is the case, I have no beef with him. We're just on different ships to different destinations which makes travelling in convoy impossible. The destination of the ship I'm on was mapped out at the BOAI in December 2001. I find it important to stay on course. The trouble arises where he regards the course of the ship that I am on as a threat to the course of his ship. That is misguided. Jan Velterop On 10 Oct 2012, at 14:49, Stevan Harnad wrote: ** Cross-Posted ** This is a response to a proposal (by some individuals in the researcher
