Talk:Open access

Title

On the basis of WP like other encyclopedias preferring entry by the noun, and for consistency with other articles, I ask for opinion on changing the name to "Open access publisher"DGG 05:03, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

No reason to change the title

"Open access publisher" as a title would make no sense. The article is about "open access" in the sense of scientific publishing. The article is not only about "open access publishers" such as PLoS or BioMed Central, it is about the whole concept of open access. There's no reason to change the title. Fences and windows 23:15, 27 December 2006 (UTC)

POV section

The section "Open access by the numbers" used to contain an explicit call for statistics in support of the "open access" movement. I have removed this inappropriate call to action, and tagged the section for merger. Based on Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, I think the best way to handle this material is to convert it into prose, and simply delete any statistics that are blatantly not neutral. (Others have also complained about this section on other talk pages, before this article was reorganized.) -- Beland 02:22, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

the OA by the numbers section does indeed need to be checked again for which ones are neutral--on the OA page.

the part of it for OA journals should probably be moved here after we agreee which parts are NPOV.

== —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DGG (talk • contribs) 07:41, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

I decided to move Journals by the numbers now, and did. This part now has only the by the numbers--OA books. As for the rest of the content, it needs some looking over. DGG 08:56, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

The section was getting outdated, and has now been removed.DGG 05:03, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

merge question

The question of whether this page should be merged with open access journal has been asked again. There are some reasons for having two pages:

1. the open access journal page links to pages for lists of oa journals, and oa journals in the various disciplines. Though not all of this has been done yet, there's a project around working on getting them all.
2. There seems to be no common term for (OA journal + hybrid OA journal + delayed OA journal). This would imply that this present open access publishing page should be the main page for the concept, with the other three leading off it.
3. Doing this would take some rearranging, but it wouldn't be too difficult. I think it could be done without moving too many links.

Opinion? DGG 05:08, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

name of the article

As sharnad points out, "open access publishing" is ambiguous. It means either the publication of open access journals, or a system of whatever sort for publishing that produces open access, whether through open access journals ("gold OA") or self-archiving ("green OA"). This is the general article, and I have therefore moved this article back to the term Open access (publishing) DGG (talk) 06:05, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

annals of mathematics..

the article appears to claim that the Annals of Mathematics is open access. It is not. Try their webpage; you can't read the articles without a subscription (which costs money). 137.82.175.12 (talk) 01:03, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

WP:SOFIXIT. Gone. Fences and windows (talk) 01:55, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

It was once, they changed it this year. The fix should reflect that. DGG (talk) 00:37, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Scope

Surely this is about scholarly literature, not all information. So why are newspapers mentioned? This article is degenerating, it needs a total overhaul. Fences and windows (talk) 01:55, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

That's somewhat unclear, since we have an article specifically on open access journal. If discussion of the topic in referenced sources goes beyond academic journals, it makes sense to me that the Wikipedia article would too. (And the comparison is actually interesting.) But that section is unreferenced. -- Beland (talk) 06:55, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

criticism section problem

There is a short paragraph noting that some people argue that the public does not need access to specialized journal, etc... and references an article to that effect. The reference number is 83. I went through this article and could not find that argument anywhere. I could have missed it, but if I didn't, the reference ought to be removed. Perhaps the whole par. should be tossed if we can't find a ref to anyone who holds it. I'm sure SOMEONE holds that pov? But maybe not...I sure don't.

External links

The sections with external links, article as a whole but especially "External links," "Further reading," and "Empirical studies" all need cleanup per WP:EL and WP:NOTLINK. Given how well-referenced the article is, there's really no need for all but a few external links. --Ronz (talk) 16:01, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Last paragraph of Research funders and universities

The last paragraph which begins, "In May 2006, the US Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA)" seems to be an unsourced commentary for the most part. Anyone want to take a stab at finding some sources? Otherwise, I'll move it here for further discussion. --Ronz (talk) 23:06, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Same thing as free content, i.e. free to further distribute?

I found a text saying that free access only allows downloading and private printing for personal use. Is that correct?

In the context of academic publishing, does free content mean that I can further distribute to anyone, for example on paper or on my own website? I.e. does it mean the same thing as free content? Are usually free content licenses like creative commons or GFDL used, or some othern license form? Any restrictions regarding non-commercial use?

In other contexts than academic publishing, "free access" does not necesserely mean free content.

/Magnus

Full open access means free to read, redistribute, reuse, and will usually be Creative Commons licensed. Some journals have restrictions on commercial use, but they're a minority. 'Open access' is also possible via self-archiving, but those texts aren't CC licensed. See Gratis versus Libre. Fences&Windows 00:49, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

Anti-OA Bias, but not just from recent reverts

I'm concerned that many of the recent edits from User:Crusio have been to the net effect of preserving anti-OA bias. He personally has somewhat of a conflict of interest (as founding editor of one academic journal), but the problem is broader than that. There are sections which are fair; but others where there's lots of subtle anti-OA bias, which I believe should be removed because of WP:NPV goals.

Exactly how is it that assertions that grant requirements for OA can be described as unwarranted governmental intrusion, with no cite provided -- my cite request was reverted!! -- without even acknowledging the hypocrisy deriving from the fact that much of that research was in the first place funded by "intrusion" from said government? Or that non-governmental funders also exist, and also have interests in OA? I see three resolutions: provide the cite; note the hypocrisy/bias; or remove the biased assertion. I've tried the first two. Is there another, or is it perhaps time to try the third? I get the feeling I'll see another bias-preserving revert the instant I do so...

There are other examples of such subtle bias. Presenting, unopposed, arguments which presume everyone interested in research has access to well connected and populated research libraries comes to mind. Denying that just being able to browse a research collection is an important process, too ... that's just basic cognitive science, new ideas often are seeded by random juxtapositions which can't happen when the only way you get access to papers is to search cites and wait a month to get them all via some interlibrary loan. (Librarians are not always eager to do the inter-library thing either, so the fact that it might be theoretically possible may be insignificant.) Ease of access to information can be a significant factor; certainly when I've done research, a month's lag would have completely prevented success.

It's perhaps understandable that this article not really dive into the institutional politics underpinning some OA objections ("this is a threat to my institution"), and advocates ("that institution is an obstacle"), but refusal to acknowledge existence of such conflicts does not prevent them from being significant factors. And such refusal is itself a subtle form of anti-OA bias, in that it permits established institutions to present themselves as neutral actors ... when they are anything but that.

And another big issue here is that large parts of this article are fairly chaotic. How can such stuff be fixed when folk like User:Crusio instantly revert anything fix-like ... instead of providing better fixes? Including in some cases, removing valid cites; or facts that could only be claimed to be controversial as part of an effort to hide uncomfortable issues.

Color me puzzled. It's long been my understanding that WP prefers incremental improvements. How do we get there from here?

--69.226.238.251 (talk) 09:41, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

• (response to IP) As you are editing anonymously, I'll answer here instead of on your talk page. To start with my presumed COI, for your information, I am also Academic Editor of PLoS ONE and editorial board member for several BioMed Central journals. So I have experience with both sides of the medal. As for whether or not you might have a COI, there's no way of knowing given that you do not edit under your own name, now is there?

• Going for inline responses here, for clarity; hope you don't mind. You don't believe one of my aliases is an IP address, eh?!? I haven't bothered getting Yet Another Account because ... I have way too many of them already! Re COI, I have no horse in this race. --69.226.238.251 (talk) 12:25, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

• Anyway, you are certainly correct that the current article on OA is not good and contains some unsourced POV. However, I don't think that the solution to that is to insert more unsourced POV.

• Then why did you remove edits of mine which (a) added sources, and (b) requested sources where there were clear cases of unsourced POV? Your justifications here do not match your previous actions. --69.226.238.251 (talk) 12:25, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

• I don't have the time to clean up that article, but I will not let it get even worse than it is. If you have sourced material, it can be included. If, when reversing your edits, I inadvertently also removed a "citation needed" template, I apologize and feel free to re-insert it. As for the 3RR warning on my talk page, I have deleted it, because 1 revert in 24 hours does not come even close to a 3RR violation (edit conflict, John Vandenberg was faster, thanks! :-).

• Hmm, you reverted three edits. I'd count that as three reverts. Maybe WP needs to clarify what's meant by a "revert" ... it seems to me like you're cheating if you don't count reverting three focussed edits as being three reverts. The entire point of change control is to allow incremental improvements and rollbacks. Regardless of whether you can get away with combining multiple reverts into one, while not providing an accurate WP:REVEXP, what you did seems sleazy to me.

• And if you somehow managed to "inadvertently remove" something ... that should be as clear a sign to you as it is to me, that you are just reflexively reverting everything rather than actually looking at the content. I may add a few more cite requests where I observe particularly biased and unfounded assertions. Or maybe not; the reception here has been remarkably negative and un-thoughtful so far. --69.226.238.251 (talk) 12:25, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

• A final remark on the financial aspects of OA: Most OA publishers (and certainly the larger ones) are commercial companies (BMC was bought by Springer, for example). All need at least to cover their expenses. Being involved with OA publishing I know that this also costs a lot of money to do well and this has to come from somewhere. Things are not as black and white as you seem to think. I will copy this comment on the talk page of the OA article to make sure that you see it. --Crusio (talk) 10:34, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

• I don't deny that there are costs involved. Never did. I'm not sure what you mean to imply by "black and white"; I'm big on grey, actually. In fact some of my edits just surfaced a few of the monetary transfers. When you reverted edits highlighting various transfers ... including future revenue streams ... I presume you didn't read those either? Calling attention to those isn't a black/white issue, or even a POV; it's just reality. I'm puzzled why you claimed pointing out such things is OR. --69.226.238.251 (talk) 12:25, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

• If you don't source it, it's OR. As for the 3RR thing, read that policy. If you then still think it is "sleazy", then take it up with ANI or something. According to your reasoning, anyone could add bad content to an article in, say, 6 subsequent edits and then nobody would be able to revert that without violating 3RR. Not very logical... --Crusio (talk) 12:31, 21 December 2009 (UTC)

Controvery about lemma

There is some discussion in the AMSCI-forum and foundation-l on WP and OA. Although I do not appreciate most of Harnad's positions I also see Open Access (Publishing) as onse-sided and therefore POV. The name of the article should be: Open Access (Scholarly Movement) --FrobenChristoph (talk) 15:19, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

alternative link

I had to fix a link today

An alternative link would be

 http://www.arl.org/sparc/advocacy/frpaa/index.shtml

G. Robert Shiplett 20:24, 26 May 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Grshiplett (talk • contribs)

Introductory paragraph

It's ridiculously bad. I still don't know what exactly it is that should be accessibly openly. By the way, in Wikipedia, you don't abbreviate the main topic of the article. Write "open access" and not "OA". 130.92.9.55 (talk) 12:57, 9 August 2010 (UTC)

Criticism Section

In the criticism section there is: "The "article processing charges" for open access shifts the burden of payment from readers to authors," How is this different from the fees charged by all Journals? —Preceding unsigned comment added by IRWolfie- (talk • contribs) 10:55, 24 November 2010 (UTC)

Gold OA and Green OA as separate articles?

Gold OA and Green OA currently redirect here, and a brief definition of both is given in the introductory paragraph. I think, though, that they both merit their own article. Any opinions on that? -- Daniel Mietchen 01:30, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Open access journal and Self-archiving cover that. Fences&Windows 00:35, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, thanks. I will redirect the two redirects to these two pages then. -- Daniel Mietchen —Preceding undated comment added 11:34, 2 December 2010 (UTC).

right; it too us quite a long time to get consensus on the present arrangement, and I think we'd be wise to continue it. (And better a meaningful phrase than arbitrary jargon as article title). DGG ( talk ) 00:55, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

There is now a growing number of publishers that engage in Gold OA beyond journals (e.g. books), so redirecting Gold OA to Open access journal is not always appropriate. -- Daniel Mietchen 02:18, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Title of the article on Open Access

New section title added, so as to better reflect the discussion below.

Reconsidering the matter, I think it would be good to spice up Open access journal with some information on OA book publishing and to rename that article to Open access publishing then. As this may easily lead to confusion with Open access (publishing), what about renaming this one into something like Open access (scientific literature)? -- Daniel Mietchen - WiR/OS (talk) 00:11, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

This is why I was opposed to calling the generic Open Access entry "Open Access (publishing) in the first place. OA is not about publishing, it is about access -- and access, in the first and foremost instance -- to peer-reviewed, published journal articles. I agree it should now be renamed, perhaps as "Open Access (to scientific and scholarly research)": It's not only scientific, but scholarly as well. And by calling it research, the focus by default goes on peer-reviewed journals, but does not rule out books or data either. harnad ( talk ) Stevan Harnad 12:16, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think the rather subtle distinction between scholarly and scientific research should be made in the title of the article on OA, and the guidelines for naming disambiguation pages require short qualifiers anyway. Focusing on research, on the other hand, does make sense, so what about Open Access (research) or Open Access (to research) or Open Access (research literature) or Open Access (to research literature) or Open Access (published research) or Open Access (to published research)? -- Daniel Mietchen - WiR/OS (talk) 15:14, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

I would vote for Open access (to research literature). "published" is an unnecessary qualifier, and it might actually apply to non-published material, right? Klortho (talk) 16:27, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

I like Open access (to research literature) too. (By the way, in English -- contrairement qu'en français où « scientifique » porte sur les sciences naturelles et biologiques ainsi que les sciences humaines -- in English "scientific" definitely does not cover scholarly research in the humanities. harnad (talk) Stevan Harnad 01:27, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I believe Open access journal is a subtopic within Open access publishing. Open access books (or Open access monographs) and Open access (research data) could be other topics. Each of these topics should be briefly introduced in the main Open Access article, with a lead to "main article:" at top. I think the scope of Open access journal should remain focussed as it is, not spiced up or watered down (depending on perspective). However, do we need Open access (publishing)? Reading through the disambiguation page, is seems that Open access should become Open access (disambiguation) and Open access (publishing) should become Open access. -- G.Hagedorn (talk) 08:05, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

"Open Access" is not a form of publishing. I'm afraid I completely disagree that Open access (publishing) should be be replaced by or subsumed under "Open access publishing" (and this has been the subject of much prior discussion in previous years). Let me explain why: There is a worldwide Open Access (OA) movement. Although the idea itself came earlier, "Open Access" received its name in 2002 with the launch of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI). BOAI defined "Open Access (OA)" as two kinds of online access: free online access ("Gratis OA") and free online access plus certain re-use rights ("Libre OA"). In addition, BOAI also identified the primary target content of the OA movement, namely, peer-reviewed journal articles, and identified the two alternative ways to provide OA (whether Gratis OA or Libre OA) to those peer-reviewed journal articles, namely, (BOAI-1): through authors self-archiving their peer-reviewed final drafts, free for all, online, immediately upon acceptance for publication by whatever journal is publishing them (this is now called "Green open access") or (BOAI-2) by publishing them in OA journals that make all their articles free for all online (this is now called Open Access publishing or "Gold open access"). The most frequent and persistent misunderstanding about OA is that it is synonymous with OA publishing (Gold OA). It is not. OA is about access, not about publishing. Gold OA publishing is one of the ways to provide OA and it is indeed a form of publishing; but Green OA, the other way, is not a form of publishing: It is a way of providing OA to conventionally published content. Hence subsuming "OA" under "OA publishing" would be like subsuming "fruit" under "apples." That is why Daniel Mietchen's option "Open access (to research literature)" to replace "Open access (publishing)" is not only the most suitable of his options, but also preferable to the present name: Open access (publishing). What is needed in the Wikipedia entry is information that prevents the apple/fruit error that has been slowing the understanding and progress of OA, rather than compounding the misunderstanding further. harnad (talk) Stevan Harnad 14:03, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Stevan, I think none of the discussants in this thread suggested that " Open access (publishing) should be be replaced by or subsumed under "Open access publishing"". What Gregor suggested is to rename the current page Open access (which serves as a disambiguation page) into Open access (disambiguation) and then to rename what is currently Open access (publishing) (which describes, as you explain above, both Gold and Green OA) into Open access. The same opinion has been voiced by Heather Morrison and Andrea Zanni in a related thread, and I agree. -- Daniel Mietchen - WiR/OS (talk) 13:17, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Daniel, you are right, and Gregor, my apologies for misunderstanding your suggestion! I completely agree that the generic entry for "Open Access" should be Open Access (as it had been originally, and back then I tried and failed to suggest that it should be kept that way)! But then how will the re-directs work? Right now, "Open Access" is not assigned to any entry. Typing in "Open Access" takes you to the disambiguation page. If that Open access disambiguation page is renamed Open access (disambiguation) and it then points to the various available "open X" pages, including re-naming and re-directing the present Open access (publishing) page to the new generic Open access page, then how will generic redirects from a query about "Open access" get to the Open access (disambiguation) page? Right now, if someone types "Open access," they will be sent to the Open access disambiguation page. But if Open access (publishing) gets re-directed to Open access and "Open access" gets re-directed to Open access (disambiguation), then (unless my logic fails me), there's either a loop, or no way to get directly to "Open access"! harnad (talk) Stevan Harnad 17:20, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Another misunderstanding, though we are homing in. To be clear, what we require is to request an admin to perform the following steps (I plan to file the request in a few days, to allow some more time for discussion):

1. Temporarily delete Open access (disambiguation) (currently a redirect to Open access, which acts as a disambiguation page)
2. Move Open access to Open access (disambiguation) (leaving no redirect)
3. Move Open access (publishing) to Open access (leaving a redirect), since the topic of "Open Access to research literature", which is currently contained in Open access (publishing) is the primary topic for Open access.

A bot will then fix the double redirects that have been caused by these page moves. What remains to be worked out is whether the then page Open access should actually be named Open Access (currently a redirect to Open access), as is customary in a research context, and whether and how to merge Open Access movement into that. -- Daniel Mietchen - WiR/OS (talk) 19:53, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Good luck, Daniel! harnad (talk) Stevan Harnad 21:21, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

PS: Further redirect-complications: See (and read) Talk:Open access (disambiguation) which has been redirected to Talk:Open access -- harnad (talk) Stevan Harnad 17:14, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I've been trying to straighten this out since I started here. If it is clear that Open access to research literature is the primary meaning of open access, I would fully support such a move. It always has had that meaning to me, but that's due to my own personal interests. The other meanings certainly were significant to others a number of years ago, and I think they are still now. But very possibly the relative significance has changed. Mietchen argues it certainly means it in a research environment, which is clearly true, but that's not the only environment-- Wikipedia covers all sorts of things in which I may have little interest, but that doesn't determine their importance. If there is agreement, I am prepared to move the Open access (publishing) article.

Let me clarify a little as fairly as I can the reason why my long time colleague (and sometimes adversary) Stevan does not want the title to be Open access publishing. It has come to mean to some Open access journals (conventionally called Gold) which is only one of the two ways of having Open access--the other is Open access repositories, containing either refereed preprints, published articles, or a mixture, conventionally called Green. Stevan is a long time advocate of Green as an strategy, as opposed to many others who do not think it preferable. There is no real consensus--opinion was bitterly divided 4 years ago, and it remains so today. Both methods have had some successes, but neither has seen all that was hoped for. (I personally do not agree with Stevan that Green is preferable, at least in the long run--I see it as only a temporary expedient. I do not propose to outline the reasons for each side now, or renew the argument--he and I have done it too many times already. And Stevan is far more important and active in all of this than I am, in addition to being distinguished in other fields also.) , I would be very glad to have the way of dealing with it by moving the article to Open access, plain and simple, with the necessary disam not, and possibly changes in other article titles, and I will do it as an admin. I want to wait a few days before doing it, though, to hear other views. It affects too many articles.

I also need to say that Stevan has in my opinion had too great an influence on the text of the articles Open Access (publishing) and Open access movement as they currently stand, which emphasises too greatly his own views and references too many of his postings--and this was much more the case in the past, as the earlier history of the article will demonstrate, when he had effective OWNership of it. I would urge him as strongly as I possibly can to stay far away from the rewriting of articles on this subject. He's a promoter of a particular viewpoint, and a wonderfully effective one, but Wikipedia, unlike the AmSci list, is not the place for promotion. I hope he'll understand this is not hostile criticism , but in a tribute. DGG ( talk ) 01:41, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

David is far wiser in wikipedia ways than I, so I shall heed his words. But I hope you won't mind, David, if I occasionally do an edit on the OA page, when I think it has gotten something factually wrong, or when a bias has been introduced? I will try to stay neutral on point of view (e.g., on green OA vs gold OA, and on gratis OA vs libre OA)... harnad (talk) Stevan Harnad 02:23, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

if it directly concerns you, or is about a reference to one of your works, suggest it on the talk p.; otherwise, just make the edit. That's the standard way, that avoids all possible trouble . DGG ( talk ) 02:41, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

• • I have performed the move as suggested and cleaned up some related wording. As for the redirects, I shall have to check a little later if the bot takes care of them. Anyone who sees problems and needs admin help to fix them, ask me on my talk p. DGG ( talk ) 03:44, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, David! -- Daniel Mietchen - WiR/OS (talk) 10:32, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

OA means free (and permanent) online access immediately upon publication

User:78.15.203.238 has suggested that it is a violation of viewpoint neutrality to call journals that do not provide immediate free online access "non-OA journals," if they ever, at any time, in the near or distant future following publication, make their articles free online. By that reasoning, all people who ever give up smoking in the near or distant future are already "non-smokers," now (and it's non-neutral to suggest otherwise). So are all women who eventually get pregnant, in fact "pregnant" now.

There is of course a simple solution to this: distinguish OA journals from OA articles. An article is OA if and when it is freely accessible online. No ambiguity there. It can be non-OA yesterday and OA today. Indeed, it can be non-OA again tomorrow. Not so for journals. If a journal is an OA journal, that means all if its articles are freely accessible, permanently, immediately upon publication. Otherwise it is simply not an OA journal (though some of its articles might eventually be made OA, either by the journal or by their author). The only special case worth naming is "hybrid OA/non-OA" journals -- the ones for which articles are non-OA, except if the author pays for OA publication, in which case they are made freely accessible, permanently, immediately upon publication. All other journals that do not make all their articles permanently free online immediately upon publication are simply non-OA journals. A journal may make its articles free online after a delay; but that does not make it an "OA journal," any more than giving up smoking or getting pregnant Thursday makes you a non-smoker or pregnant on the preceding Tuesday.

For an article, OA is a "state"; for a journal, it is a "trait." Loosen up the latter and you will not only generate a huge batch of "OA" journals because they free their contents online 80 years after publication (calling themselves "DOA" journals), but the slippery slope will also lead to "OA" journals that cost only a little online ("LOA" journals).

This is all just word-play -- vendors trying to promote their product by attaching buzz-words to it that connote something people value. But what is valued here is unambiguous: free online access. And if that's not there, now, it's not OA. harnad (talk) Stevan Harnad 03:37, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Ref by 76.24.227.74

I've removed this update as it really is illegible but i invite anyone else who can make sense of it to re-insert it in a format that makes sense.

"Publishers help to widely disseminate information and compensation is needed to ensure continuation of information dissemination. "

Silent1 02:35, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

Critcism section

This section just reaks of weasels (ie. the wall-buiders like Elsevier) clinging to their defenses. Would somebody more knowledgable care to clean it up? --90.157.169.77 (talk) 15:38, 30 December 2011 (UTC)