---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 5 Jun 2004 12:01:47 +0530
From: Subbiah Arunachalam
Cc: lis-forum@ncsi.iisc.ernet.in
Friends:
Here is a well argued case for interoperable institutional open access
archives by Stevan Harnad. The full paper will be presented at the Free
Science Panel at Wizards of OS 3: The Future of the Digital Commons, to be
held at Berlin during 10-12 June. For deatils of the conference, please
visit http://wizards-of-os.org/index.php?id=36&L=3. Thanks and regards.
Arun
[forwarded mail ...]
The Green and Gold Roads to Open Access to Refereed Research
http://wizards-of-os.org/index.php?id=708&L=3
ABSTRACT: The problem of journal pricing/affordability and the problem of
article access/impact are not the same problem, the solution to the one is
not the solution to the other, and it is a great mistake to treat them as if
they were the same. The solution to the journal pricing/affordability
problem is lower journal prices and/or a conversion to "golden" journal
publishing (Open Access [OA] Journals whose articles are free to all user
online): http://www.doaj.org/ The solution to the access/impact problem is
for authors to provide Open Access to all their journal articles in order to
maximize their usage and impact, either by publishing them in OA journals or
by publishing them in conventional journals but also self-archiving them on
their institutional OA websites (preferably OAI-compliant Eprint Archives
for visibility and interoperability):
http://archives.eprints.org/eprints.php Over 80% of journals are already
"green," i.e., they have given their official green light to author
self-archiving:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Romeo/romeosum.html But only 5% of
journals are gold (i.e., OA journals). It takes far more time, effort,
resources and risk to create or convert gold journals, whereas it takes
virtually no time, effort, resources or risk to create and fill OA Archives.
Several studies have now confirmed the dramatic degree to which OA enhances
research impact: http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html
It is now time for institutions to adopt official policies requiring all
their researchers to provide OA to all their research articles, via either
the gold or green road: http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php What is
holding this up is partly author/institution inertia but partly also an
unfortunate tendency to conflate the article access/impact problem with the
journal pricing/affordability problem, and hence to focus solely or mainly
on the slow, narrow and uncertain golden road (5%) to OA, rather than the
fast, wide, and certain green road (95%). Stevan Harnad
