Re: Elsevier and IOP Still Fully Green and Onside With the Angels

[Sandy Thatcher <sandy.thatcher@alumni.princeton.edu>]

For those who wish some further clarification of these 
terminological and related issues, please see my essay "What Is 
Open Access?" here:

http://www.copyrightlaws.com/us/what-is-open-access-article-in-the-copyright-new-media-law-newsletter/

Sandy Thatcher

>Stevan's message brings out the importance of having a clear 
>view of what is meant by the self-archiving by authors of 
>research articles. As the FAQ to the Budapest Open Access 
>Initiative makes clear, the original focus was on the 
>self-archiving of preprints. I cannot remember us using the term 
>"author's final draft" at the Budapest meeting but effectively 
>that is what we meant. Since then some OA advocates (including 
>myself) have been less precise than we should have been in our 
>definition of the version to be deposited in repositories. In an 
>atmosphere of lobbying by many publishers against any form of 
>open access, the push was to secure the deposit of any version 
>that an author felt able to place into their home repository. 
>With hindsight the looseness of some definitions for 
>self-archiving beyond the original definition may have led to 
>claims from publishers that mandates are unfunded, in that while 
>publishers would have made no contribution to the author's final 
>version, they could claim that the deposit of a copy-edited 
>version did not recognise their contribution in copy-editing. 
>Calls for repository deposit of versions beyond the author's 
>final version may also have fuelled publishers' fears of 
>subscription cancellations.
>
>Now that some publishers previously opposed to open access are 
>taking a more positive approach, there is an opportunity to 
>return to the vision of the original BOAI definitions of 
>self-archiving and open access journals as complementary, with 
>neither being a threat to the future of journal publishing. If 
>(and for some publishers this may still be a barrier) 
>publishers can accept the legitimacy of the self-archiving of 
>the author's final manuscript (whether or not mandated by an 
>author's funder or employer), there should be no problem for 
>open access advocates in accepting the legitimacy of treating 
>versions into which publishers have invested resources for 
>copy-editing as "gold" rather than "green". There is a grey area 
>in respect of articles peer-reviewed but not copy-edited, as 
>publishers will have invested in the administration of peer 
>review while the cost of peer review itself has been borne by 
>the academic community. There is also need to clarify the 
>distinction between "libre" and "gratis" OA as applied to the 
>two routes to open access. The re-use rights embodied in "libre" 
>are vital for research and teaching, and it can be argued that 
>these rights can be applied to the author's final draft in the 
>repository without permission from the publisher. However, the 
>actual implementation of re-use rights may be more applicable to 
>"gold" versions.
>
>I am sending this message as a contribution to the dialogue 
>between publishers and the academic and library communities on 
>future developments.  Clearly open access is here to stay. It 
>may be that some in every stakeholder community will disagree 
>with the approach outlined above, but agreement on what we are 
>all trying to achieve would enable open access to be successful 
>for all stakeholders.
>
>Fred Friend