Date: Sun, 9 Nov 2003 14:55:13 +0530
From: Subbiah Arunachalam
The Gold and Green Roads to Open Access
The editorial is of course very timely and useful, because it describes
access and the open-access journals. But it is unfortunately far from being as useful as it could be, for it is in fact merely a direct echo of the proportion of press attention that open-access journal-publishing (the "golden road to open access") has been getting in the Western Press. That attention too would be well and good if it were
with the emphasis being on *open access* itself, rather than only on the golden road to it! For if open access is identified with open-access journal-publishing alone, or even primarily, we overlook
open proportionate, the
complementary "green road to open access" (open-access self-archiving
of toll-access articles) that is in a position to provide (and
is already providing) far more open access, far sooner, and with no attendant certainty.
It is satisfying to focus on the triumphs of the golden road; the editorial names all the causes and the desiderata; it echoes the widespread sense of momentum and of nearing the goal. But in reality it is a blueprint for yet another decade of needless waiting for open access!
The editorial mentions the relevant figures: 20,000 journals (probably more like 24,000 today, according to Bowker's), 1 million articles every year (probably 2.5 million) and about 550 "gold" journals (publishing about 60,000 open-access articles yearly). http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/analysis/ http://www.doaj.org/ http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2983.html of toll-access articles) that is in a position to provide (and is already providing) far more open access, far sooner, and with no attendant certainty.
It is satisfying to focus on the triumphs of the golden road; the
editorial names all the causes and the desiderata; it echoes the widespread sense of momentum and of nearing the goal. But in reality it is a blueprint for yet another decade of needless waiting for open access!
The editorial mentions the relevant figures: 20,000 journals (probably more like 24,000 today, according to Bowker's), 1 million articles every year (probably 2.5 million) and about 550 "gold" journals (publishing about 60,000 open-access articles yearly). http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/analysis/ http://www.doaj.org/ http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2983.html
But the editorial does not put 2+2 together! 550/24,000 and 60,000/2,500,000 are *minuscule* ratios, and their rate and likelihood of growth are equally minuscule. And there is still uncertainty about the viability of the golden journal cost-recovery model at this time. It is satisfying to focus on the triumphs of the golden road; the editorial names all the causes and the desiderata; it echoes the widespread sense of momentum and of nearing the goal. But in reality it is a blueprint for yet another decade of needless waiting for open access!
The editorial mentions the relevant figures: 20,000 journals (probably more like 24,000 today, according to Bowker's), 1 million articles every year (probably 2.5 million) and about 550 "gold" journals (publishing about 60,000 open-access articles yearly). http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/analysis/ http://www.doaj.org/ http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2983.html
But the editorial does not put 2+2 together! 550/24,000 and 60,000/2,500,000 are *minuscule* ratios, and their rate and likelihood of growth are equally minuscule. And there is still uncertainty about the viability of the golden journal cost-recovery model at this time. K> It is satisfying to focus on the triumphs of the golden road; the editorial names all the causes and the desiderata; it echoes the widespread sense of momentum and of nearing the goal. But in reality it is a blueprint for yet another decade of needless waiting for open access!
The editorial mentions the relevant figures: 20,000 journals (probably more like 24,000 today, according to Bowker's), 1 million articles every year (probably 2.5 million) and about 550 "gold" journals (publishing about 60,000 open-access articles yearly). http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/analysis/ http://www.doaj.org/ http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2983.html
It is satisfying to focus on the triumphs of the golden road; the
editorial names all the causes and the desiderata; it echoes the widespread sense of momentum and of nearing the goal. But in reality it is a blueprint for yet another decade of needless waiting for open access!
The editorial mentions the relevant figures: 20,000 journals (probably more like 24,000 today, according to Bowker's), 1 million articles every year (probably 2.5 million) and about 550 "gold" journals (publishing about 60,000 open-access articles yearly). http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/analysis/ http://www.doaj.org/ http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2983.html
But the editorial does not put 2+2 together! 550/24,000 and 60,000/2,500,000 are *minuscule* ratios, and their rate and likelihood of growth are equally minuscule. And there is still uncertainty about the viability of the golden journal cost-recovery model at this time. So whereas pointing out the growing awareness among both researchers and the general public, at last, of the value and desirability and the possibility of open access, is a good thing, pinning the hopes of attaining open access on the golden road alone, or even primarily, represents a great opportunity lost.
At the very end of the editorial, almost as an afterthought, there is indeed a brief mention of the *other* road, the "green" road.
"In addition, even when papers are published in conventional journals, the pre-print (and sometimes the post-print) versions can often be placed in open electronic archives to ensure free access. Physicists have been doing this for years and scientists from other disciplines, especially biology and medicine, need to follow suit."
But this brief passing mention fails to point out that open-access But this brief passing mention fails to point out that open-access self-archiving *is* indeed the other road to open access, and the road that *can* bring us (and *is* already bringing us) to open access far faster -- not having to face the obstacle of (1) creating 23,450 new journals, (2) finding a way to fund them, and (3) then persuading the authors of the 2,440,000 yearly articles to submit their work to those journals instead of their established competitors, but facing instead only the one obstacle of (1) persuading the authors of the 2,440,000 yearly articles to self-archive!
Nor is it clear enough from this ever-so-brief afterthought, and the relative proportion of space and attention accorded to it in the editorial, that the green road has also already been shown to be navigable, that it already transports at least three times as many articles to open access yearly, and that the "traffic" is growing faster on the green road than the golden road, mainly because it already has "official" clearance for at least 55% of the yearly 2,500,000 articles (and can in reality accommodate 100% of them), whereas the golden road
can accommodate less than 5% of the traffic today.
I would not cavil at this oversight if it were not for the fact that the disproportionate emphasis in this editorial, and so much else that is being written about open access today, misses the opportunity to marshal the mounting enthusiasm for open access to help persuade the authors of those remaining 2,260,000 articles to make them open-access today, by taking the one simple step, already within their reach, of self-archiving them! For the result would not be another decade of
golden
dreams but a green reality of 100% open access, overnight.
Do we really want to continue sitting and waiting waiting passively for the golden road to be enlarged for us, journal by journal, or do we want to fast-forward to open access via the green road in the meanwhile? http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#4.1 http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Tp/resolution.htm#4.2 Stevan Harnad Chaire de Recherche du Canada Centre de Neuroscience de la Cognition (CNC) Universite du Quebec a Montreal Montreal, Quebec, Canada H3C 3P8 tel: 1-514-987-3000 2461# fax: 1-514-987-8952 harnad@uqam.ca http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/