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