The “Green” and “Gold” Roads to Open Access: The Case for Mixing and Matching

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Abstract

Recent discussions on Open Access (OA) have tended to treat OA journals and self-archiving as two distinct routes. Some supporters of self-archiving even suggest that it alone can bring about full Open Access to the world's scientific literature. In this paper, it is argued that each route actually corresponds to a phase in the movement toward Open Access; that the mere fact of self-archiving is not enough; that providing some branding ability to the repositories is needed. However, doing so will eventually bring about the creation of overlay (or database) journals. The two roads, therefore, will merge to create a mature OA landscape.

Section snippets

“Green” and “Gold” Open Access: Are They in Competition?

Various Internet lists (e.g., Liblicense-L discussion list or American Scientist Open Access Forum) have been the site of vigorous discussions about the two strategies identified in the original Budapest meeting and now regularly labeled as the “green” and the “gold” roads to Open Access. This colorful vocabulary emerged in a study led in the United Kingdom under the name of Rights Metadata for Open Archiving (RoMEO) and now located within another project called Securing a Hybrid Environment

Open Access vs. Accessibility: A Potential Source of Confusion

Intuitively, the advantages of Open Access appear obvious: Better access should enhance more reading, and more reading should enhance more citations so that any right-thinking scientist ought to respond positively to such strong incitations. Spontaneously, he should rush and “self-archive.” No mandating should even be needed. The reality, however, is a little different. Even defenders of “self-archiving” have had to admit this:

Institutional archives are being created, but need to be filled more

How Should We Build Open Access?

Does all this mean that Open Access will not work? Of course not! It does not even mean that “self-archiving” is fundamentally a bad idea. It only means that claiming that the only or, more modestly, the best road to Open Access is “self-archiving” is excessive, not to say wrong. But it also means that building Open Access collections must be thought out more cautiously than has been the case until now. Finally, it means that we had better think about ways to mix and match the “green” and the

Conclusion

The vision presented here is nondogmatic. It leaves plenty of room for revisions, critiques, and reevaluations. It tries to present a constructive evolutionary scenario where the “green” and “gold” roads can find their proper place without feeling in competition with one another. It also rests on the two following premises that some advocates of the “green” road do not seem ready to accept:

  • 1.

    The finality of the scientific exchange is not just for scientists-as-authors; it must also take into

Acknowledgement

Several people have had a very direct and most precious input into this paper and I would like to thank them for having taken the time to read this little study. I want also to thank them for having occasionally saved me from my own foolishness. In this group, I would like to include Fred Friend, the well named, David Prosser, Colin Steele, and Ray Siemens. I would also like to thank the editors and referees for their useful and important comments. Last, but not least, I want to mention my very

Notes (60)

  • The Open Access movement has been characterized by a common objective—namely Open Access to peer-reviewed, scholarly...
  • This “reader pays” phraseology is as inaccurate as the “author pays” expression. Later in this text, we shall speak...
  • This is, at best, shorthand for journals deriving their income at the point of production and not at the point of sale....
  • In India, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, etc. See notes...
  • http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~Harnad/Temp/self-archiving.ppt, slide 47. Specifically, Harnad writes: “Open access through...
  • See http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/. The SHERPA version of RoMEO, which is to be preferred as...
  • ...
  • A summary of the House Committee recommendations (July 15, 2004) can be found at the following URL:...
  • ...
  • The tradition of exchanging offprints among scholars and researchers is a clear example of a situation where...
  • This is an allusive reference to a very recent discussion (August 6, 2004),...
  • For an interesting discussion on the number of refereed journals and articles, see...
  • It must be noted that until publishers gave their various forms of green light to self-archiving, its very possibility...
  • ...
  • See, for example, Stevan Harnad's reaction to an article in an Indian publication at...
  • See, for example, http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~Harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3161.html (accessed November 12, 2003) where...
  • See http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3162.html. Harnad estimates that 10% of all articles are in Open...
  • Harnad, http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~Harnad/Temp/self-archiving.ppt, slides...
  • Steve Hitchcock, Tim Brody, Christopher Gutteridge, Les Carr, and Stevan Harnad, “The Impact of OAI-based Search on...
  • Some authors have defined impact differently. For example, Sidney Redner suggests to multiply the total number of...
  • Steve Lawrence, “Online or Invisible?” http://www.neci.nec.com/~lawrence/papers/online-nature01/. Edited version...
  • See, for example, Stevan Harnad, Tim Brody, Francois Vallières, Les Carr, Steve Hitchcock, Yves Gingras, Charles...
  • See note 9...
  • Educom Review Staff, “Networked Information: Finding What's Out There—Clifford A. Lynch Interview,” Educom Review 32–36...
  • Incidentally, why has no librarian, so far as I know, ever tried to implement a similar system on any campus? I have...
  • Kenneth Frazier

    “The Librarians' Dilemma. Contemplating the costs of the ‘Big Deal’”

    D-Lib Magazine

    (March 2001)
  • http://www.crossref.org/, http://www.exlibrisgroup.com/sfx.htm. Elsevier's Scopus proceeds from the same argument. It...
  • This is the case with the “Digital Object Identifier” (DOI). As stated in the DOI Handbook, “specifically, DOI relies...
  • See http://paracite.eprints.org/,...
  • Carl Lagoze (Cornell University) and Herbert Van de Sompel (Los Alamos National Laboratories) are two of the leaders of...
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