The thing I find equally annoying is the way people assume
author-pays Gold OA = OA. When they criticise its peer
review (allegedly poor or non-existent) or the excessive
$3,000 per submission cost disenfranchising those who
cannot afford it and so on, they are referring to a small
(albeit important in some subject areas) component of the
entire OA scene. They need to understand that there's
also Gold OA which involves no payments and of course
Green OA.
Charles
On Sun, 28 Sep 2008 10:12:26 -0400
Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> Many silly, mindless things have been standing in the
> way of the optimal and
> inevitable (i.e., universal OA) for years now (canards
> about permissions,
> peer review, preservation, etc.) , but perhaps the
> biggest of them is the
> persistent conflation of OA with OA publishing:
> OA means free online access to refereed journal articles
> ("gratis" OA means
> access only, "libre" OA means also various re-use
> rights).
>
> OA to refereed journal articles can be provided in two
> ways: by publishing
> in an OA journal that provides OA (OA publishing, "Gold"
> OA) or by
> publishing in a non-OA journals and self-archiving the
> article (Green OA).
>
> Hence Green OA, which is full-blooded OA, is OA, but it
> is *not* OA
> publishing.
>
> Hence the many OA mandates that are being adopted by
> universities and
> research funders worldwide are *not* Gold OA publishing
> mandates, they are
> Green OA mandates.
>
> It is not doing the OA cause, or progress towards
> universal OA one bit of
> good to keep portraying it as a publishing reform
> movement, with Gold OA
> publishing as its sole and true goal.
>
> The OA movement's sole and true goal is OA itself,
> universal OA.
>
> Whether or not universal OA will eventually lead to
> universal Gold OA
> publishing is a separate, speculative question.
>
> OA means OA, and OA publishing is merely one of the
> forms it can take.
>
> (I post this out of daily frustration at continuing to
> see OA spoken of as
> synonymous with OA publishing, and of even hearing Green
> OA self-archiving
> mandates misdescribed as "OA publishing mandates".)
>
> If only we could stop doing this conflation, OA would
> have a better chance
> of reaching the optimal and inevitable more swiftly.
>
> Amen.
>
> Your weary archivangelist,
>
> Stevan Harnad
Received on Tue Sep 30 2008 - 00:20:17 BST