BePress still gets the green and the silver, if not the gold!
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 12:52:06 -0800
From: Greg Tananbaum <greg_at_bepress.com>
To: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Berkeley Electronic Press's Self-Archiving Policy
Thanks for the kind words, Stevan. Our policy does indeed require
the short guest access form (name, email address, affiliation, and
optional comments) to be completed for each article. It is our hope
that readers will recognize the value of the content we are providing
them, and view this extra step as akin to the "Pledge Breaks" used by
US public television and radio. We have been pleased that both
readers and libraries have validated this model, allowing us to keep
our prices unchanged since our inception 5 years ago.
More details may be found here:
http://www.bepress.com/crisis.html
Best, Greg
P.S. - Feel free to forward this to the list.
At 8:41 PM +0000 3/16/06, Stevan Harnad wrote:
>t's a pleasure to laud occasionally, and not just carp. Berkeley
>Electronic Press's Self-Archiving Policy was somewhat ambiguous
>in 2002:
>
> "Berkeley Electronic Press's Self-Archiving Policy"
> http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1897.html
>
>but its policy has since been clarified and Bepress has been a fully
>green publisher for some time now:
>
> http://www.bepress.com/bejm/policies.html#rights
> http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo.php?all=yes
> http://romeo.eprints.org/publishers.html
>
>However, in addition, I think BePress is being too diffident about
>whether it can truly call itself a gold (OA) publisher. This is what
>Greg Tananbaum, BePress's President, said in a recent interview:
>http://www.educateinnovate.com/blackboard/2006/03/scholarly_publi.html
>excerpted in OA News by Peter Suber
>http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_03_12_fosblogarchive.html#114251794808467165
>
> "our peer-reviewed journals follow a quasi-open access model...
> a middle ground between the existing poles of free open access and
> fee-based subscription access... Those without subscriptions can
> access any article by filling out a short form that allows us to
> inform their library of their interest in reading our journals....
> Afterwards access for all faculty, staff, and students at that
> institution is immediate and there are no more forms to fill out."
>
>Assuming that this means one time for that article, and then no more forms
>for any BePress article -- rather than that the same has to be done for
>every BePress article the first time -- I would unhesitatingly call that
>a 24-carat gold OA journal. (Anyone who thinks that one person having to
>fill out one form, one time -- for permanent access for everyone at his
>institution thenceforward -- constitutes a "barrier" that that warrants
>calling BePress any less than pure gold would earn this longtime OA
>archivangelist's 24-carat Parsnip, for pure, unadulterated pedantry,
>out of touch with what OA was and is really about and for!)
>
>Bravo BePress: 100% Green *and* 24-carat Gold, and a fine example for all!
>
>(But even if my assumption is wrong, and the form-filling must be done
>for each BePress article -- Greg? -- BePress would still be 100% Green, in
>a silver inlay, which would still be a sterling example for all journals!)
>
>Stevan Harnad
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Received on Thu Mar 16 2006 - 21:01:56 GMT