The Green and Gold Roads to Open Access to Refereed Research
http://wizards-of-os.org/index.php?id=708&L=3
ABSTRACT: The problem of journal pricing/affordability and the
problem of article access/impact are not the same problem, the
solution to the one is not the solution to the other, and it is a
great mistake to treat them as if they were the same. The solution
to the journal pricing/affordability problem is lower journal
prices and/or a conversion to "golden" journal publishing (Open
Access [OA] Journals whose articles are free to all user online):
http://www.doaj.org/ The solution to the access/impact problem is
for authors to provide Open Access to all their journal articles
in order to maximize their usage and impact, either by publishing
them in OA journals or by publishing them in conventional journals
but also self-archiving them on their institutional OA websites
(preferably OAI-compliant Eprint Archives for visibility and
interoperability):
http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php
Over 80% of journals are already "green," i.e., they have
given their official green light to author self-archiving:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Romeo/romeosum.html But
only 5% of journals are gold (i.e., OA journals). It takes far
more time, effort, resources and risk to create or convert gold
journals, whereas it takes virtually no time, effort, resources
or risk to create and fill OA Archives. Several studies have now
confirmed the dramatic degree to which OA enhances research impact:
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html It is now
time for institutions to adopt official policies requiring all their
researchers to provide OA to all their research articles, via either
the gold or green road:
http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php What
is holding this up is partly author/institution inertia but partly
also an unfortunate tendency to conflate the article access/impact
problem with the journal pricing/affordability problem, and hence to
focus solely or mainly on the slow, narrow and uncertain golden road
(5%) to OA, rather than the fast, wide, and certain green road (95%).
Stevan Harnad
NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2004)
is available at the American Scientist Open Access Forum:
To join the Forum:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
Post discussion to:
american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
Hypermail Archive:
http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
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 Fri Jun 04 2004 - 20:49:27 BST