PS I forgot to reply to the most important point in David's query: The
relation between point 1 (the vast majority of articles are neither
Green OA nor Gold OA) and point 7 (the vast majority of the top
journals -- and indeed also the vast majority of all journals -- are
Green OA) is simple this:
Although the vast majority of journals endorse Green OA self-archiving
by the author (and are hence Green) the vast majority of authors do
not yet *act upon* this Green light to deposit! That is why the
mandates are needed. Another relevant datum is the vast majority (95%)
of authors surveyed (by Alma Swan of Key Perspectives, for JISC), in
all fields and all countries, have stated that they would comply with
a mandate to self-archive from their universities and/or their funders
(over 80% of them say they would do it willingly), the vast majority
do *not* do it spontaneously, without a mandate.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/
That is the basis for my overall conclusion, below.
SH
On 15-Jun-09, at 3:02 PM, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> On 15-Jun-09, at 1:12 PM, David E. Wojick wrote:
>
> > Steve, for us non-experts in OA (this is not an OA listserv) can you
> > explain briefly what Gold and Green OA are in these proportions?
> > Especially Green OA in reference to proportions 1 & 7. They seem to
> > be two different measurements. The vast majority of journals are GOA
> > but the vast majority of articles are not.
> >
> > I don't see how your conclusions follow from these simple
> > proportions, not without additional premises. Perhaps you can
> > explain that.
> >
> > David
>
> David, with pleasure (and my apologies for assuming transparency). The
> proportions are,
> I think, very important not just for OA reasons, but for bibliometric
> reasons too.
> Please see the further explanations below. -- Stevan
>
> > > As I do not have exact figures on most of the 9 proportions I
> > > highlight below, I am expressing them only in terms of "vast
> > > majority"
> > > (75% or higher) vs. "minority" (25% or lower) -- rough figures that
> > > we
> > > can be confident are approximately valid. They turn out to have at
> > > least one rather important implication.
> > >
> > > 1. The vast majority of current (peer-reviewed) journal articles are
> > > not Open Access (OA) (i.e., they are neither self-archived as Green
> > > OA
> > > nor published in a Gold OA journal).
>
> A peer-reviewed journal article is Green OA if it has been made OA by
> its author,
> http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html
> by depositing it in an Open Access Repository (preferably his own
> institution's OAI-compliant Institutional Repository)
> http://roar.eprints.org/
> from which anyone can access it for free on the web.
>
> A peer-reviewed journal article is Gold OA if it has been published in
> a Gold OA journal
> http://www.doaj.org/
> from which anyone can access it for free on the web.
>
> There are at least 25,000 peer-reviewed journals, across all fields
> worldwide.
> http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/
>
> > > 2. The vast majority of journals are Green OA.
>
> Of the 10,000+ journals whose OA policies are indexed in SHERPA/Romeo,
> over 90% endorse immediate deposit and immediate OA by the author
> 63% for the author's peer-reviewed final draft (the postprint), and a
> further
> 32% for the pre-refereeing preprint.
> http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
>
> > > 3. The vast majority of journals are not Gold OA.
>
> Currently 4221 journals are Gold OA according to DOAJ
>
> (Note that the c. 10,000 journals in Romeo do not include most of the
> Gold OA journals, although these would all be classed as Green, and
> all Gold OA journals also endorse Green OA self-archiving. Romeo
> does, however, index just about all of the top journals.)
>
> > > 4. The vast majority of citations are to the top minority of
> > > articles
> > > (the Pareto/Seglen 90/10 rule).
> > > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/474-guid.html
> > >
> > > 5. The vast majority of journals (or journal articles) are not among
> > > the top minority of journals (or journal articles).
> > >
> > > 6. The vast majority of the top journals are not Gold OA.
> > >
> > > 7. The vast majority of the top journals are Green OA.
> > >
> > > 8. The vast majority of Gold OA journals are not paid-publication
> > > journals.
> > > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/careful-confirmation-that-7
> > > 0-of-oa.html
> > >
> > > 9. The vast majority of the top Gold OA journals are paid-
> > > publication journals.
> > >
> > > I think two strong conclusions follow from this:
> > >
> > > The fact that the vast majority of Gold OA journals are not
> > > paid-publication journals is not relevant if we are concerned about
> > > providing OA to the articles in the top journals.
> > >
> > > Green OA is the vastly underutilized means of providing OA.
> > >
> > > The implication is that it is far more productive (of OA) for
> > > universities and funders to mandate Green OA than to fund Gold OA.
>
> There are somewhere around 10,000 universities and research
> institutions
> worldwide. So far, 51 of them -- plus 36 research funders -- have
> mandated
> (i.e. required) their peer-reviewed research output to be made Green
> OA
> by depositing it in an OA repository.
> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/
>
> > > Stevan Harnad
Received on Mon Jun 15 2009 - 20:19:47 BST