The Spectrum of E-Journal Access Policies: Open to Restricted Access

["Charles W. Bailey, Jr." <cbailey@uh.edu>]

 From the 5/13/05 DigitalKoans posting:

http://www.escholarlypub.com/digitalkoans/

As journal publishing continues to evolve, the access policies of
publishers become more differentiated. The open access movement has been
an important catalyst for change in this regard, prodding publishers to
reexamine their access policies and, in some cases, to move towards new
access models.

To fully understand where things stand with journal access policies, we
need to clarify and name the policies in use. While the below list may not
be comprehensive, it attempts to provide a first-cut model for key journal
access policies, adopting the now popular use of colors as a second form
of shorthand for identifying the policy types.

   1. Open Access journals (OA journals, color code: green): These
journals provide free access to all articles and utilize a form of
licensing that puts minimal restrictions on the use of articles, such as
the Creative Commons Attribution License. Example: Biomedical Digital
Libraries.

   2. Free Access journals (FA journals, color code: cyan): These journals
provide free access to all articles and utilize a variety of copyright
statements (e.g., the journal copyright statement may grant liberal
educational copying provisions), but they do not use a Creative Commons
Attribution License or similar license. Example: The Public-Access
Computer Systems Review.

   3. Embargoed Access journals (EA journals, color code: yellow): These
journals provide free access to all articles after a specified embargo
period and typically utilize conventional copyright statements. Example:
Learned Publishing.

   4. Partial Access journals (PA journals, color code: orange): These
journals provide free access to selected articles and typically utilize
conventional copyright statements. Example: College & Research Libraries.

   5. Restricted Access journals (RA journals, color code: red): These
journals provide no free access to articles and typically utilize
conventional copyright statements. Example: Library Administration and
Management.  (Available in electronic form from Library Literature &
Information Science Full Text and other databases.)

Using this taxonomy, an examination of the contents of the Directory of
Open Access Journals quickly reveals that, in reality, it is the Directory
of Open and Free Access Journals, because many listed journals do not use
a Creative Commons Attribution License or similar license.

Some may argue that the distinction between OA and FA journals is
meaningless; however, to do so suggests that the below sections of the
"Budapest Open Access Initiative" in brackets are meaningless and,
consequently, that the Open Access movement is really just the Free Access
movement.

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.]

Not that there would be anything wrong with the Free Access movement, but
some may feel that the broader scope of the Open Access movement is much
more desirable.

In any case, the journal universe is not just green or red, and it's a
pity that we don't know the breakdown of the spectrum (e.g., x number of
green journals and y number of cyan journals), for that would give us a
better handle on how the world has changed from the days when all journals
were red journals.


Best Regards,
Charles

Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Assistant Dean for Digital Library
Planning and Development, University of Houston,
Library Administration, 114 University Libraries,
Houston, TX 77204-2000.  E-mail: cbailey@uh.edu.
Voice: (713) 743-9804.  Fax: (713) 743-9811.
DigitalKoans: http://www.escholarlypub.com/digitalkoans/
Open Access Bibliography: http://info.lib.uh.edu/cwb/oab.htm
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography: http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepb.html
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog: http://info.lib.uh.edu/sepb/sepw.htm