Re: The Green and Gold Roads to Open Access

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, Brian Simboli wrote:

> A few questions for Stevan Harnad [AND OTHERS], stated rather cryptically.
> 
> 1. With respect to achieving universal open access to the results of
> research, what is your vision of the best possible world to strive for "in
> the long run" (to borrow a phrase of which economists are fond)?  Would it
> be a future in which the traditional journal as we know it still exists,
> or would it be one in which that model is thoroughly deconstructed, such
> that articles subsist independently of an organizing format such as a
> "journal"?

Yes, it will be a world in which the traditional journal still exists.  
Only one change is necessary: The full digital texts of all 2,500,000
articles published yearly in the world's 24,000 peer-reviewed journals
must be immediately and permanently accessible online toll-free, i.e.,
they must be Open Access (OA).

To achieve this, the only change that is *necessary* is that all their
authors must self-archive their own published articles online in a
OAI-compliant OA Eprint Archive.

No change is necessary in journals. No change is necessary (or desirable)
in peer review.  
http://www.nature.com/nature/webmatters/invisible/invisible.html

For critiques of "constructed" journals see:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?O34F25209
or
http://www.google.ca/search?q=+site:www.ecs.soton.ac.uk+harnad+amsci+deconstructed+journals&num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&filter=0 

A peer-reviewed journal is (and always has been) just a peer-review
service-provider and certifier, plus an access-provider. As long as the
articles are all OA, there is no need for any of this to change, but it
might, e.g.: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#4.2

> 2. What role does the green road play in achieving that best possible
> world? For example, is it a dialectical moment toward a world of pure gold
> access, or is "green"/ in se/ a worthwhile goal, regardlesss whether the
> purely gold universe is ever achieved?

Author-institution self-archiving (i.e., the green road) is the fastest
and surest way to attain 100% OA, immediately. 100% OA may or may not
thereafter lead to an eventual conversion to OA Journal Publishing (gold,
5% currently), but what is sure is that the golden road alone will not
lead to 100% OA within our lifetimes!

The green road will not lead us to 100% OA very soon either, if it keeps
waiting for authors to self-archive spontaneously. Self-archiving needs to
be mandated by their institutions and research-funders, in a natural
online-age update of their already-existing publish-or-perish mandate.
http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php

The recent US House Appropriations Committee and UK Parliamentary Science
and Technology Committee recommendations look as if they are at last
moving in the direction of mandating self-archiving for all government
funded research articles.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/UKSTC.htm
http://www.arl.org/sparc/core/index.asp?page=o31

Stevan Harnad