[sc-announce] New consensus for defining open access -- Science Commons blog
Donna Wentworth
dwentworth at creativecommons.org
Thu May 1 17:22:53 EDT 2008
New consensus for defining open access
May 1st, 2008<http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/archives/2008/05/01/new-consensus-for-defining-open-access/>by
dwentworth
Even among those who follow developments in the open access
(OA<http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/overview.htm>)
movement closely, there is sometimes confusion over definitions. Does open
access publishing mean placing the work online without price barriers (for
free) — or must you also remove permission barriers (for instance, by
adopting a Creative Commons license that permits reuse without permission)?
Earlier this week, open access leader Peter
Suber<http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/hometoc.htm>and
"archivangelist" Stevan
Harnad <http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/harnad> reached
consensus<http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/2008/04/strong-and-weak-oa.html>on
terms to describe these two forms of open access: "weak" OA (removing
price barriers alone) and "strong" OA (removing price and permission
barriers). Explains Suber:
There are two good reasons why our central term became ambiguous. Most of
our success stories deliver OA in the first sense, while the major public
statements from Budapest <http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml>,
Bethesda <http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/bethesda.htm>, and
Berlin<http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html>(together,
the BBB
definition <http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/overview.htm#definition> of
OA) describe OA in the second sense. […]
We have agreed to use the term "*weak OA*" for the removal of price barriers
alone and "*strong OA*" for the removal of both price and permission
barriers. To me, the new terms are a distinct improvement upon the previous
state of ambiguity because they label one of those species weak and the
other strong. To Stevan, the new terms are an improvement because they make
clear that weak OA is still a kind of OA.
On this new terminology, the BBB definition describes one kind of strong OA.
A typical funder or university mandate provides weak OA. Many OA journals
provide strong OA, but many others provide weak OA.
Forging agreement on the terms "weak" and "strong" OA is a promising
development. Not only could it bring more clarity to the discussion about
open access in the community, it could also help more people understand
intuitively that there is a spectrum of openness, and choices you can make
to maximize the value of that openness.
For further discussion, check out Why weakOA and strongOA are so
important<http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=1060>,
What is strongOA? <http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=1061> and Klaus
Graff on what is
strongOA<http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=1063>over @
Peter
Murray-Rust <http://www.ch.cam.ac.uk/staff/pm.html>'s
blog<http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/>
.
................
Donna Wentworth
Communications Specialist
Science Commons
http://sciencecommons.org
dwentworth at creativecommons.org <kaitlin at creativecommons.org>
................
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/sc-announce/attachments/20080501/58ed222a/attachment.htm
More information about the sc-announce
mailing list