open scholarship v. open access
Glenn Hampson
Congratulations to Rachel Samberg and her team for another successful “Choosing Pathways to Open Access” event (https://news.lib.berkeley.edu/CP2OA)! Rachel---it looks like you had a great turnout and came away with some solid work.
Reading through this summary---and this is going to sound like I’m picking on you Rachel but in fact the summary just reminded me of this issue---one thing I’d like to ask the OSI community to consider is to not use the terms “open” and “open access” interchangeably. For instance, the introductory sentence in the article about Rachel’s event says “Can we move more quickly toward an open access publishing world in which all scholarly literature is free to read?” The answer is I’m not sure. Can we move toward an open access publishing world? Maybe. Can we move toward a world in which all scholarly literature is free to read? Sure! Sign us up. But this is just open, not open access.
Open access means free to read, immediate, and free to reuse without restriction. It’s these last two conditions where the disagreement and confusion about open happen. Our “open spectrum”---which is now part of the annual STM report---describes that there are a wide variety of “open” outcomes (including public access, which has more content than green and gold combined; Heather Piwowar and Eric Archambault both call this ilk of open “bronze” in their research papers).
Embracing the full spectrum gives us a truer picture of where open stands and gives us a clearer view of where we need to improve and where the roadblocks are to improvement. Noting that “only 15 percent of peer-reviewed journal articles [are] published in fully open access journals,” does not give us a clear sense of the current state of open. In reality, somewhere around half of what gets published today is in some kind of open---maybe around 20-30 percent in green or gold open (varying widely by region and discipline). OSI’s forthcoming briefs will help explain the details and the numbers. But the 15% figure needs to be retired unless we’re talking about the historical total for BOAI-compliant open, as does the sentiment that it will take decades to see a fully open scholarly universe. We’re heading there quickly. Exactly what we mean by “there” is the $64,000 question---an APC-ruled world, a pre-print world, a world where we have mostly public-access open (free to read but with a lot of material embargoed and copyrighted), and so on.
So to recap, I would suggest saying “open” unless you mean BOAI-compliant open, in which case saying “open access” is the way to go. Clear as mud?
Thanks,
Glenn
Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)
Program Director
Open Scholarship Initiative (OSI)
From: scholcom...@lists.ala.org <scholcom...@lists.ala.org> On Behalf Of Rachael Samberg
Sent: Friday, October 19, 2018 12:27 PM
To: scho...@lists.ala.org
Subject: [SCHOLCOMM] Choosing Pathways to Open Access (CP2OA) working forum: The Recap
Colleagues,
This week, UC Berkeley was the host campus for the Choosing Pathways to OA working forum sponsored by the University of California's Council of University Librarians.
The goal was for all those attending to engage in action-focused deliberations about a range of open access funding strategies, and leave with their own customized plans for how they will repurpose subscription and other funds within their home organization or community — and more broadly, through collective efforts, move the OA needle forward.
For those of you who were not able to attend or wish to read more about how things went, we have prepared a recap: https://news.lib.berkeley.edu/CP2OA
You can also review some of the discussion topics via the #CP2OA18 on Twitter.
Please enjoy!
Best,
Rachael (on behalf of the CP2OA18 Planning Committee)
--
Rachael G. Samberg, J.D., MLIS
Scholarly Communication Officer
University of California, Berkeley
438 Doe Library
Berkeley, CA 94720-6000
Ph. 510.664.5095 [N.B. new number]
Pronouns: she/her
Guidance: lib.berkeley.edu/scholarly-communication
Updates: @UCB_ScholComm