Re: Free Access vs. Open Access

From: Sally Morris <sec-gen_at_alpsp.org>
Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 10:58:38 +0000

Pace Stevan, I think this is an interesting discussion and would ask him to
let it run its course unmolested...

I'd see the distinction slightly differently:

The core, essential feature is free, unrestricted access (to primary
research articles) for everyone. This can take 2 forms:

1) In Stevan's term, 'self-archiving' - posting, generally by authors or
institutions, of preprints, postprints or both, on personal/departmental
websites, discipline-based archives, or - more recently - institutional
archives. These may or may not replicate what appears in published
journals; many, but not all, publishers readily permit this. The articles
may or not be OAI-discoverable.

2) What are becoming known as 'Open Access journals' - that is to say,
journals which (in all probability) maintain the traditional standards of
peer review, and as much as possible of the other value that the publication
process adds (editing, linking etc), but which recover costs (not forgetting
overheads, and whatever degree of surplus/profit is necessary to the
operation of the organisation doing the publishing) in some other way than
by charging for access.

In neither case is any of the following a sine qua non, though they appear
to be 'articles of faith' for some:

* Copyright retention by the author, or the author's institution (or, for
that matter, absence of copyright - i.e. 'public domain')
* OAI compliance
* Absence of restrictions on re-use (including commercial re-use)
* Deposit in a specific type of archive

Am I alone in seeing it this way?

Sally

NOTE NEW EMAIL ADDRESS - PLEASE UPDATE YOUR RECORDS. THANKS!

Sally Morris, Chief Executive
Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers
South House, The Street, Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK

Phone: +44 (0)1903 871686 Fax: +44 (0)1903 871457
E-mail: chief-exec_at_alpsp.org
ALPSP Website http://www.alpsp.org

Our journal, Learned Publishing, is included in the
ALPSP Learned Journals Collection, www.alpsp-collection.org


----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Eisen" <mbeisen_at_LBL.GOV>
To: <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2003 11:07 PM
Subject: Re: Free Access vs. Open Access


> Stevan,
>
> First, for the sake of clarity, can we just agree that, whatever relative
> value you place on the two, free access and open access are not equivalent
> and that it does noone any good to confuse the two.
>
> Free access gives all potential users immediate and permanent toll-free
> access to the text at a single fixed point on the internet (e.g. a
> self-archive or a journal website). Copyright would (in general) reside
with
> authors or their assignee, and users would have fair use rights, such as
the
> right to read, print, crawl and mine this copy of the article, but in
> general would not have any further rights, such as the right to
redistribute
> or make derivative works.
>
> Open access grants all of the rights inherrent to free access, but the
> copyright holders grant (by signing some form of license) all users
> additional rights, especially the right to redistribute and make
derivative
> works, in general asking only that the original work be properly cited.
(The
> different definitions of open access are not identical, but all
essentially
> say this).
>
> I hope we can agree that these are not equivalent, so that we can get onto
> the more important question, which is is this a meaningful difference -
that
> is, are the additional rights given to users under open access meaningful,
> and does granting them benefit authors, readers and the research community
> in general. Obviously, you think the answer is no, while I think it is
yes.
>
> I address your 6 points below, although I think that you are conflating
two
> different points.
>
> 1) Open access is unnecessary - everything that a user would want to do
with
> a paper they can do with free access.
> 2) Open access is an obstacle to free access - demanding that publishers
> provide open access delays or obstructs their providing free access.
>
> I hope my answers below address why I think these are both incorrect.
>
> > So here is my list, again:
> >
> > (1) UBIQUITOUS DIRECT ONLINE ACCESS MAKES DERIVATIVE ACCESS SUPERFLUOUS:
> > Once the full-text is immediately, permanently, and ubiquitously
> > (i.e., webwide) accessible toll-free, so any user anywhere, any time,
> > can read the full-text on-screen, download it, store it, print it off,
> > search/grep it, computationally process it, etc. -- which any user can
> > do if the author self-archives it -- the further rights and uses that
> > distinguish "free" from "open" become either moot or supererogatory:
> >
>
> If all you are concerned about is getting toll free access to papers - in
> the form that they exist in self-archives or on journal websites - then
the
> distinction between free and open is superfluous. However many readers
> (myself included) like to read articles in a familiar and user-friendly
> format that is often very different from the deposited version (in my
> opinion, this is one of the reasons that self-archiving isn't as popular
as
> it should be). It is possible to take all of the free access articles and
> convert them into a more flexible format (e.g. the publishing XML being
used
> now by PubMed Central) where users could control the way in which the text
> is rendered. I believe many readers would value this option. However,
under
> free-access this is not possible without getting permission from every
> author or copyright holder, while under open access this is not only
> allowed, it is encouraged. Ditto for someone who wants to translate into
> another language (by machine or by hand) a body of free access works.
>
> It seems to me that there are two issues here. 1) Rights description. Many
> authors who make their works freely available through self-archiving would
> be happy to allow these uses, but don't currently have a way to say this.
> This is why it is important to PLoS that we use the creative commons
license
> that describes user rights in advance. I see that the open archives group
> has launched an effort to embed rights descriptions with text, so I think
> this case will be covered. 2) Rights restictions by publishers. I think
you
> feel that many publishers are/would be willing to allow self-archiving,
but
> only on the condition that they retain all other rights to the text, and
> that if they are allowed to do this, then they would be willing to provide
> free access. The problem, in my mind, is that this would prevent the kinds
> of uses that I describe above (which are, in my opinion, only the tip of
the
> iceberg). You apparently think that getting free-access is the most
> important thing, even if the manner of achieving free access precludes
> optimal use of the material, while I think this is a needless compromise
of
> the interests of the scientific community and the public to the narrow
> commercial interest of publishers. Again, this is an open argument, but
it's
> important not to glaze over this argument by pretending that free and open
> access are equivalent.
>
>
> > (2) NO EXTRA DOWNLOAD/PRINT RIGHTS NEEDED, OR NEED BE SPECIFIED: Users
> > don't need a further specified right to download, store, process or
> > print off any of the other material that they can download, store and
> > print off from the web -- as long as the material is itself not pirated
> > by another consumer, but provided by its own author, as is the case with
> > one's own self-archived journal articles.
>
> What you are saying, in essence, is that fair use gives all users all the
> rights they need, and that there is no need to specify any additional
> rights. This is simply incorrect, a good example of a use that is not
> allowed under fair use is the inclusion of text in course readers, which
(at
> least in the US) is not covered by fair use. Nor are other forms of
> aggregation. For example, I might want to print a series of virtual
> journals that contain the best works in given fields, and send them (by
> subscription) to scientists in that field. I think a lot of people would
> greatly value such a service, but it is not possible under narrow
> free-access.
>
> >
> > (3) NO NEED OR RIGHT TO RE-PUBLISH: There is no need or justification
> > for demanding the further right to re-publish a full-text in further
> > *print-on-paper* publications ("derivative works") when it is already
> > ubiquitously accessible toll-free. That was never part of the rationale
> > or justification for demanding free/open access in the first place. What
> > ushered in the open-access era was the newfound possibility of providing
> > all would-be users with free, ubiquitous *online* access to texts,
> > thereby maximizing their research impact. This newfound possibility,
> > created by the Web, had nothing whatsoever to do with the right to
> > re-publish those texts on paper!
> >
>
> This may never have been your rational for demanding FREE access, but it
was
> a key part of my and many other users demands for OPEN access. My reason
for
> getting into this in the first place was my desire to better link
> experimental data (in my case genome sequence and experimental genomics
> data) with the primary literature. I wanted to build a database that would
> hold our experimental data along with a large collection of relevant
papers
> that would be marked up in a unique way that allowed for integrated
browsing
> of the data and literature. The only practical way to do this is to have
> local copies of the papers in our database, something that is needlessly
> precluded by strict free-access.
>
> > (4) OPEN ACCESS PROVISION IS NOT IDENTICAL WITH OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING:
> > It may be that (some) open-access journals do not need or want to
> > have exclusive publication or republication rights. But open-access
> > journal-publication is not the only form of open-access provision.
> > Author/institution self-archiving of one's own toll-access journal
> > articles is another way to provide open access, and a much more
> > immediate and powerful way than to wait for toll-access journals
> > to become open-access journals.
>
> Yes, it is true that open access publishing is not the only path to open
> access. However, it is also true that self-archiving does not provide open
> access - it provides free access. While self-archiving may be more
> immediate, unless it ultimately leads to open access it is not more
> powerful.
>
> >
> > (5) DEMANDING REPUBLICATION RIGHTS WOULD NEEDLESSLY CONSTRAIN AND
> > DELAY OPEN-ACCESS PROVISION VIA SELF-ARCHIVING: To try to impose
> > the open-access journal's republication policy on the definition of
> > what counts as open access itself would be to impose an arbitrary and
> > unnecessary constraint on the second (and larger) of the two means of
> > providing open access. It is one thing to ask toll-access publishers to
> > support author/institution self-archiving, so as to maximize the impact
> > (usage, application, citation) of a text by maximizing access to it
> > online; it is quite another thing to demand that toll-access publishers
> > agree to put anyone and everyone on a par with themselves, in having the
> > right to publish that text in print. That would only serve to provoke
> > (justifiable) toll-access publisher opposition to self-archiving --
> > and hence to open-access provision by that means.
>
> Now this is a completely different point. First, there seems to be
> conflation of open access and free access here again. While it is possible
> to provide open access by self-archiving, without the redistribution
rights
> it is only free access. This is not an imposition of the "redistribution
> policy" (sic - this is an oversimplication - it is really about
> redistribution and, more importantly, reuse).
>
> It seems like what you are really saying is that open access is the enemy
of
> free access, because toll-access publishers would allow free-access
through
> self-archiving, but are unwilling to go to real open access, and that
> demanding open access delays the implementation of free access. I
understand
> your argument, but I think you are wrong. I believe that the it is an
> illusion to imagine that it is possible to have universal free access
> through self-archiving AND to support journals through subscriptions.
> Self-archiving is, almost by definition, parasitic (and I say that in a
good
> way!). And, like most parasites, the host has to be healthy for it to
> survive. If we imagine that all works are suddenly self-archived, who is
> going to subscribe to journals? I just don't see how self-archiving can
> provide universal free access without killing off toll-access journals in
> the process (do you really think selling print subscriptions will sustain
> them?). I feel that living under and promulgating the illusion that
> self-archiving and toll-access journals are mutually compatible does not
> hasten universal access, it delays it because it delays us facing up to
the
> reality that we need a new economic model for scientific publishing.
>
> >
> > (6) SELF-ARCHIVED FULL-TEXTS CAN BE COMPUTATIONALLY DATA-MINED: Research
> > articles are not themselves research data (though they may contain
> > some research data), but they can be treated as computational data if
> > they are accessible toll-free online. Again, there is no need for any
> > further rights or computational capabilities to do be able to do this:
> > The full-text need merely be immediately, permanently, and ubiquitously
> > (i.e., webwide) accessible toll-free, so any user anywhere, any time,
> > can read the full-text on-screen, download it, store it, print it off,
> > search/grep it, computationally process it, etc.
>
> While there is a lot that can/could be done with self-archived free-access
> works, the inability to serve up cached, or more importantly, digested and
> reprocessed versions of works greatly and needlessly limits the types of
> computational analysis and data-mining that can be done on the literature.
> If all you want to do is search, then self-archiving is ok (although still
> subotimal), but for any more sophisticated analyses it is not.
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> To: <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
> Sent: Tuesday, December 30, 2003 7:45 AM
> Subject: Re: Free Access vs. Open Access
>
>
> > ~On Mon, 29 Dec 2003, Michael Eisen wrote:
> >
> > >sh> Perhaps all Sally means here is that she thinks it would be more
> useful
> > >sh> if open-access ("gold") journals did not use the creative-commons
> > >sh> license, and instead, apart from providing immediate, permanent,
> > >sh> toll-free, non-gerrymandered, online access to the full-text, the
> journal
> > >sh> required *exclusive* copyright transfer for its sale in derivative
> works.
> > > >
> > >sh> I'd say: No harm in that; go ahead! There was never any need for
the
> > >sh> creative-commons license here anyway! Open-access provision was all
> that was
> > >sh> needed -- whether via the golden road or the green one.
> > > >
> > >sh> (But again, what market is there likely to be for derivative works
> when the
> > >sh> full-text is forever freely available online?)
> > >
> > > I couldn't disagree more. You are redefining open access to be no more
> than
> > > free access. For many of us involved in open access the ability to
reuse
> and
> > > republish text is a critical part of making optimal use of the
> scientific
> > > literature. PLoS chose the creative commons license in order to
> encourage
> > > creative reuse of the content we publish.
> >
> > Mike,
> >
> > In this discussion thread
> >
> > "Free Access Vs. Open Access"
> > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2956.html
> >
> > I have several times laid out in some detail the reasons I believe the
> > distinction between "free access" and "open access" is not only vacuous,
> > but is now even becoming an obstacle to the understanding and growth of
> > free/open access itself.
> >
> > I will again summarize the points, but please, by way of reply, do not
> > just reinvoke the distinction, as if it were valid and unchallenged,
> > but rather defend it against the 6 points I make, if it can be defended.
> >
> > I hasten to add that it is not a defence to say that the free/open
> > distinction is enshrined in the wording of the Budapest Open Access
> > Initiative that we both had a hand in drafting and that we both signed:
> > I considered the distinction just as empty then as I do now, but then I
> > thought it was harmless, like adding "for the candidate of your choice"
to
> > the demand for voting rights. I would never have thought that anyone
would
> > call it not "true" voting rights or less than "full" voting rights if
> > you got to vote, but the candidate of your choice was not on the ballot!
> >
> > Here is the BOAI definition:
> >
> > What does BOAI mean by "open access"?
> > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#openaccess
> >
> > "By 'open access' to this literature, we mean its free availability
> > on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download,
> > copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these
> > articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software,
> > or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal,
> > or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining
> > access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction
> > and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain,
> > should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work
> > and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited."
> >
> > So here is my list, again:
> >
> > (1) UBIQUITOUS DIRECT ONLINE ACCESS MAKES DERIVATIVE ACCESS SUPERFLUOUS:
> > Once the full-text is immediately, permanently, and ubiquitously
> > (i.e., webwide) accessible toll-free, so any user anywhere, any time,
> > can read the full-text on-screen, download it, store it, print it off,
> > search/grep it, computationally process it, etc. -- which any user can
> > do if the author self-archives it -- the further rights and uses that
> > distinguish "free" from "open" become either moot or supererogatory:
> >
> > (2) NO EXTRA DOWNLOAD/PRINT RIGHTS NEEDED, OR NEED BE SPECIFIED: Users
> > don't need a further specified right to download, store, process or
> > print off any of the other material that they can download, store and
> > print off from the web -- as long as the material is itself not pirated
> > by another consumer, but provided by its own author, as is the case with
> > one's own self-archived journal articles.
> >
> > (3) NO NEED OR RIGHT TO RE-PUBLISH: There is no need or justification
> > for demanding the further right to re-publish a full-text in further
> > *print-on-paper* publications ("derivative works") when it is already
> > ubiquitously accessible toll-free. That was never part of the rationale
> > or justification for demanding free/open access in the first place. What
> > ushered in the open-access era was the newfound possibility of providing
> > all would-be users with free, ubiquitous *online* access to texts,
> > thereby maximizing their research impact. This newfound possibility,
> > created by the Web, had nothing whatsoever to do with the right to
> > re-publish those texts on paper!
> >
> > (4) OPEN ACCESS PROVISION IS NOT IDENTICAL WITH OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING:
> > It may be that (some) open-access journals do not need or want to
> > have exclusive publication or republication rights. But open-access
> > journal-publication is not the only form of open-access provision.
> > Author/institution self-archiving of one's own toll-access journal
> > articles is another way to provide open access, and a much more
> > immediate and powerful way than to wait for toll-access journals
> > to become open-access journals.
> >
> > (5) DEMANDING REPUBLICATION RIGHTS WOULD NEEDLESSLY CONSTRAIN AND
> > DELAY OPEN-ACCESS PROVISION VIA SELF-ARCHIVING: To try to impose
> > the open-access journal's republication policy on the definition of
> > what counts as open access itself would be to impose an arbitrary and
> > unnecessary constraint on the second (and larger) of the two means of
> > providing open access. It is one thing to ask toll-access publishers to
> > support author/institution self-archiving, so as to maximize the impact
> > (usage, application, citation) of a text by maximizing access to it
> > online; it is quite another thing to demand that toll-access publishers
> > agree to put anyone and everyone on a par with themselves, in having the
> > right to publish that text in print. That would only serve to provoke
> > (justifiable) toll-access publisher opposition to self-archiving --
> > and hence to open-access provision by that means.
> >
> > (6) SELF-ARCHIVED FULL-TEXTS CAN BE COMPUTATIONALLY DATA-MINED: Research
> > articles are not themselves research data (though they may contain
> > some research data), but they can be treated as computational data if
> > they are accessible toll-free online. Again, there is no need for any
> > further rights or computational capabilities to do be able to do this:
> > The full-text need merely be immediately, permanently, and ubiquitously
> > (i.e., webwide) accessible toll-free, so any user anywhere, any time,
> > can read the full-text on-screen, download it, store it, print it off,
> > search/grep it, computationally process it, etc.
> >
> > > You may not see the value in allowing redistribution, derivative works
> and
> > > other forms of reuse, but you have to recognize that others do and
that
> this
> > > is an central part of the definition of open access.
> >
> > Please specify concretely those features of redistribution and
derivative
> > works and other forms of reuse that are not already covered by having
the
> > full-text accessible toll-free to everyone webwide at all times. You
want
> > to read or process it? Go to the URL and download it. You want to quote
> > it in your own work? Quote reasonable-sized chunks according to fair
use,
> > and otherwise simply insert the URL and specify the passages. You want
> > to data-crunch it? Go ahead, You want to print it out for your own use,
> > or your lab's? Go ahead. You want to redistribute it to a large number
> > of people? Send them the URL. You must, for some reason, republish and
> > redistribute it as print on paper? Ask the publisher's and/or author's
> > permission, because nothing has changed in this regard! What the online
> > era has made possible is open *online* access. Other distribution media
> > are not covered; that is not what has changed. (But, looked at more
> > reflectively, most of the would-be uses in the other media are covered
> > by the uses that ubiquitous online access afford.)
> >
> > So, no, I definitely do *not* recognise that "allowing redistribution,
> > derivative works and other forms of reuse [that are not already inherent
> > in permanent, ubiquitous toll-free full-text online access]... [are a]
> > central part of the definition of open access." And I think it would
> > constitute a *monumental* historical mistake to deny or delay access
> > to the substantial and reachable benefits of open access through
> > self-archiving by denying that it meets the definition of "open access"!
> >
> > > And you shouldn't be encouraging this kind of confusion of open access
> > > and free access. If all you care about is free access, then lobby for
> that,
> > > but don't dilute the meaning of open access.
> >
> > I am "lobbying" for the exactly the same thing I have lobbying for
> > for at least a decade: Toll-free online access to the full-texts of the
> > annual 2,500,000 articles in the world's 24,000 peer-reviewed journals.
> > http://www.arl.org/sc/subversive/
> > The BOAI and its "definition" came late in the day, and only after --
> > and as a consequence of -- a good deal of footwork that had already been
> > done on behalf of the capability which was baptised by the BOAI with a
> > name. But the BOAI definition has not quite reached the status of
> > constitution or holy writ, and I'll warrant that most users of the term
> > "open access" have no idea of the wording used by the BOAI.
> >
> > And wording -- if it has not been etched in stone -- is there to be
> > amended, if it steers us false. And I for one am inclined to draw the
> > increasingly obvious conclusion that the open/free distinction is
steering
> > us false, and hence that the BOAI definition (if it really sustains such
> > a distinction -- I'm not even sure it does!) needs to be updated.
> >
> > Unless you have a substantive reply to points (1) - (6) above?
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Stevan
> >
> > NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
> > access to the peer-reviewed research literature online is available at
> > the American Scientist Open Access Forum (98 & 99 & 00 & 01 & 02 & 03):
> > http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
> > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
> > Post discussion to: american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
> >
> > Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy:
> > BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
> > journal whenever one exists.
> > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals
> > BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
> > toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
> > http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
> > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
> > http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
> >
Received on Wed Dec 31 2003 - 10:58:38 GMT

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