Talk:Open access/Archive 1

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 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 * The section was getting outdated, and has now been removed.DGG 05:03, 26 February 2007 (UTC)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: Opinion? DGG 05:08, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
 * 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.

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)

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)

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)

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  &amp;  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)

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)

Merge/scope proposal
I don't see any real evidence that "open access" beyond scholarly journals is anything more than extrapolation on the part of Wikipedia editors, unless anyone has any references of note. There is an interesting comparison between open access scholarly journals and "free" business models (advertising supported, donation supported, etc.), and this should be covered in electronic publishing, and probably also publishing and broadcasting.

Open access journal was trying to be the article on "full open access journals" in parallel with Hybrid open access journal and Delayed open access journal which are mostly pros and cons and lists. But the ambiguous title has resulted in lots of overlap with Open access (publishing), including a general overview, advantages, disadvantages, criticism, and history. I think a merge of the two articles would make the content considerably less redundant and easier to navigate. "Open access journal" is a fine title for the resulting article, given the assumption of a scope which only covers scholarly journals. Given the length of the resulting article, spinning off "History of open access journals" would also be necessary. Any objections? -- Beland (talk) 08:38, 11 May 2009 (UTC)

I. Are you proposingto merge OAJ with hybrid OAJ and delayed OAJ? or to merge OAJ with OA(publishing) I hope you do not mean the later: Open access journal means a journal which is published open access. "gold open access", like PLOS. The predominant method of open access at the present day is the archiving of author (or published) versions of articles such as PMC or Arxiv, or doing this in institution repositories, as at Southampton or Cornell. ("green" open access). Open access journals refers only to the first. Using it in the more general sense would be a total misunderstanding.

II. I therefore assume you mean the three OA journal articles: It would be difficult to merge delayedOA journals into OAjournals, because delayed oa is not actually OA and does not meet the definitions. A delayed oa journal is not an OA journal. It's a more or less close approach to an OA journal. Nobody who actually supports OA has ever accepted it as OA. Many of us them have supported it as an intirim measure, to get publishers accustomed to the idea, but that's the most. Some don't even support it, as being a harmful diversion from actual OA.

Hybrid OA journals -- that article needs a lot of work to update, because most commercial journals are now hybrid oa in principle, including every springer journal--although not many articles have been published that way yet. The only hybrid journal of importance that does contain a good deal of OA is PNAS.


 * as for other things than journals being OA, sure there are. A small number of academic books have been published that way as experiments, NAS publishes all its reports that way as a routine practice and has for years, and, if it comes to finding some really familiar examples, "How Wikipedia works" and  "Wikipedia the missing manual" have also been published OA. Some newspapers, like the NYT. The WSJ still is also, though Murdoch is reported to plan to change it.

DGG (talk) 00:36, 14 May 2009 (UTC)


 * No, I'm proposing a merger of Open access (publishing) and Open access journal, due to the excessive overlap and confusion. If you think "Open access (publishing)" would be a better title for an inclusive article, that's fine with me, as long as it's clear the focus is on academic journal publishing. -- Beland (talk) 18:23, 20 May 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed then to keep it separate. As for the scope, Open access publishing of books is increasingly acknowledged as a separate problem because of the very different economics. At some point, we might want to split the two.  ("open access journal publishing"?) But not yet. I want to see how your excellent ongoing rewrite looks like when you've finished.  DGG (talk) 03:56, 22 May 2009 (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)

Commercial "scholarly" publishers vs FRPAA
There's a rice-bowl battle afoot between some of the big commercial publishing concerns on one side and open access scholars on the other. I suspect this should find some discussion in the article. Obviously Wikipedia (like the rest of the online world) is intrinsically biased in favour of publications that allow free access, but we still treat wp:PAYWALL sources as nominally equal. This is going to be interesting. LeadSongDog come howl!  18:03, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

2012 developments in the UK
We really should mention the Finch committee and related developments:,. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus&#124; reply here 15:24, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

List of Open Access Publishers
The addition of an unreferenced list of "Major Open Access publishers" many of which are red links is POV and wikipedia is not a directory.Theroadislong (talk) 18:05, 16 October 2012 (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  &amp;  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):
 * Temporarily delete Open access (disambiguation) (currently a redirect to Open access, which acts as a disambiguation page)
 * Move Open access to Open access (disambiguation) (leaving no redirect)
 * 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)

Shouldn't we focus more on the question on who pays? Author-paid content vs. free-to-deposit repositories? "Open-access" focuses only on the reader. Many commercial journals offer open access if the authors pay. That gives well-funded projects an advantage over less well-funded work. The option to waive fees is not realistic, as I have found out. They told me they go by country of origin mostly, individual situations are to difficult for them to verify. So there is author-paid content and free-to-deposit content. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.139.6.250 (talk) 00:51, 20 October 2012 (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)

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.


 * I think this is fixed. Klortho (talk) 11:15, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Merging Predatory open access publishing into criticism section here
I propose to merge the article Predatory open access publishing into the criticism section here. I realize that this article is already very long, but that is mostly due to a long-overdue pruning (the whole article should be brought to compliance with WP:MOS, for example). "Predatory journal" or "predatory publishing" is a concept that for the moment basically rests on one person (Jeffrey Beall) and all sources in the current article are interviews with him or reporting of his views. So while there has been media attention for his concept, I don't think that there is material enough for a stand-alone article and that it would be enough to have a short paragraph in the criticism section here describing his views. --Randykitty (talk) 10:04, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose merge, mainly because the "predatory" concept is not criticism of OA per se but rather describes the abuse some commercially-minded people have perpetrated on it. It's true that the idea originates with Beall, but the attention paid to it shows that he has really captured something with the term, and I think there are enough sources to justify a separate article.  Nomoskedasticity (talk) 11:48, 4 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Then merge it in a different section that you think is more appropriate. The Poap article is quite short and can be shortened even more without losing useful information (as can this article). That way this article will get stronger and the Poap article can always be resurrected if ever this becomes a much-discussed subject, instead of just something that Beall came up with (even though it garnered some attention). --Randykitty (talk) 17:58, 4 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Oppose because it is a very distinct topic, and it is already more than a stub. I don't see that merging would have any value. Klortho (talk) 18:45, 5 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Oppose -- a number of sources independent of Beall discuss this as a distinct phenomena, although it's natural that he closely associated with this topic. a13ean (talk) 21:25, 14 May 2013 (UTC) (I started the article)
 * Oppose It is a distinct topic but it does need to be summarized here and connected, which I have just tried to do.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   14:19, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Looks good; I meant to do that a while back but it slipped my mind.  a13ean (talk) 15:21, 21 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Oppose Hypothetically, delete open access. Predatory open access publishing, or even Beall's List, would still pass the bar for independent notability.
 * Are our readers better served (cf WP:UNDUE) with one article or two? I'm not seeing a virtue to merging them for that reason either. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:56, 21 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Comment -- if there's no other objections I think we can safely close this. User:Randykitty you are welcome to post this to a noticeboard or two if you think it hasn't attracted sufficient attention.  a13ean (talk) 16:45, 8 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree, this can be closed. Mind you, I am not convinced: this is a bad article (way too long) and many WP editors feel strongly about OA, the result being an overcoverage of everything to do with OA: an "Academic Spring" that doesn't exist, a boycott that has fizzled, etc., etc. (and much of that stuff duplicated over several articles, like the "Cost of Knowledge" boycott, which has its own article, is described in Elsevier, and is described in Academic Spring). I'm in favor of OA, too (but with some large reservations concerning the funding model), but I think that with all the OA fervor, we're losing our focus on our main goal: creating an encyclopedia. In any case, it is obvious that I am the only participant in this discussion who feels so and at present there is no consensus to merge. --Randykitty (talk) 17:10, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

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)


 * I'd like to bring up this point about abbreviating the term 'open access' to 'OA' again. I agree that we shouldn't do it in the article, and if you read the whole thing you see that both terms are used throughout, rather than just one. Using 'open access' in full - which, to be honest, is already a rather short phrase that doesn't really need abbreviating - will be much clearer for people approaching the article/topic for the first time. If no-one objects to this, then in a week or so I will go through the whole article and change every instance of 'OA' to 'open access'. Any comments? Does anyone disagree? Lawsonstu (talk) 15:57, 8 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Okay I'm going to go ahead and do this now. Lawsonstu (talk) 13:13, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I support this change.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   13:51, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

edit reverts/not NPOV
I realize this page is on a topic of great interest to Wikipedians, but as a working profesor in the humanities, it contains far too many unsourced assertions of opinion, stated as fact. I deleted one sentence that was framed as opinion, completely unsourced and quite inaccurate on several points: "However, this argument has no relevance to academic publishing, because scientific journals do not pay royalties to article authors and researchers are funded by their institutions and funders." User:Randykitty chose to revert my deletion without explanation. "Academic publishing" includes much more than science and much more than journals, and professors like Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Charles Baxter, Ann Beattie, and many others earn the majority of their income from sales of books, which are formally considered "academic research" within the university system, and are not funded by taxpayer dollars. Unfortunately the bulk of the research on Open Access is written by advocates and often fails to take into account what are clear and obvious primary facts--for example, directly implying that all professors work in the sciences and stating that all research is taxpayer-funded, none of which is even close to being true, as can easily be seen by looking at the faculty roster of any university. Is there a way to make this page more balanced/NPOV without getting into a giant war? Wichitalineman (talk) 18:11, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It won't be easy. My advice is: go slow, and make sure that any stuff you add is verifiably sourced to reliable sources. --Randykitty (talk) 18:19, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It will not be any more difficult to clean this article than any other Wikipedia article, and on this article, there are people on the sidelines who will always weigh in if there is any dispute. Randykitty is correct - Wikipedia guidelines say that anyone who adds content should provide a citation for what they added. I will provide a citation for that sentence you deleted. The statement may need to be clarified but there is some truth in it and it needs to be expressed in some form.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   10:17, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I appreciate the change you made to the sentence, which now reads more accurately, although of course I still disagree with it, but I think it's OK to let it stand as is for now. Unfortunately I do think it's harder to achieve NPOV here, but that isn't really WP's fault--the problem is that the "scholarly" writing on the topic itself is very one sided. Suber's book is a case in point. Just as one example: throughout the book he distinguishes between "authors who want to sell their work" (2), who he says OA does and should not cover, and scholars, who give away their work for free. He provides no empirical information to justify this distinction, so it is right to report what he says as the pro-OA argument. However, Suber has available to him direct evidence that this distinction is not real: Harvard University, one of Suber's employers, has a long history of science professors (since science is the example on which Suber and others focus; of course there are many non-scientists as well) who routinely publish both bestselling books and magazine articles for which they receive significant compensation, sometimes greatly in excess of their salaries. Two obvious examples are Stephen Jay Gould and EO Wilson--Gould himself published over a dozen NYTimes bestselling books, most of which derived from hundreds of articles (mostly in Natural History) for which he received significant compensation. All of this counts as "academic research" within the university context, which Suber should know, but he provides no evidence to back up his claim that it is otherwise. Hundreds of Harvard professors, like professors at other schools, publish work of various sorts for significant money, and many more hundreds receive limited remuneration for parts of their work, such as royalties on scholarly monographs (which may be small, but are not zero). Reading Suber's book you'd imagine none did at all, and he does much to create this impression, with no evidence to back up his claims, which are contrary to plain and easily accessed fact (for example, by looking at the rosters of Harvard departments and noting the authors who routinely publish books that sell well beyond academic libraries). As a second point, in the book Suber advances the completely novel theory that the fact that private university funding includes "tax exemptions for their property and tax deductions for their donors" (14) means that they are taxpayer funded. I know of no law, statute, or IRS ruling that agrees with this, and to call it a "novel" theory is being generous. No private university president would ever agree that their university is taxpayer-funded, especially when 0% of their operating budget comes from taxes (I am not speaking of directly funded research grants, which are free to impose whatever publication conditions they choose, and as in the case of the NIH, often do now insist on one form or another of OA, but also typically do not prevent the material from being used in commercial publications or prevent the authors from retaining copyright, both of which Suber and other OA advocates often do recommend). Further, if one accepts the argument that tax exemptions and deductions constitute "taxpayer funding," then not only all non-profits in the US, but also many for-profit corporations are "taxpayer-funded" (states, localities, and even the Federal government routinely give huge tax subsidies to for-profit corporations to retain their business) so according to the logic that taxpayer-funded products must be distributed for free, then a huge range of products which are currently sold in fact should be given away for free. That Suber's is the most thorough treatment of the matter and yet presents so little evidence to back up what he claims are facts shows the tilted playing field in which this debate is occurring. As it is the paucity of substantial research making the contrary points makes it hard for WP to represent the contrary POV accurately--so (as this overlong reply suggests) I'm working on publishing some of the contrary viewpoint in a good venue, so that WP can refer to it as a qualified secondary source. I will post updates on this page when/if I find some good secondary sources that make clear some of the arguments I'm making, as I have a few bookmarked back in my files but I'm away from my office right now. (By thew way, despite this comment, I'm actually not entirely opposed to OA, especially various forms of self-archiving and institutionally-based archives, but I am opposed to mandated OA, and opposed to many of the arguments in favor of OA, which capture too much in their wake and would, IMHO, be very destructive to the higher education system were they to be fully accepted--especially the principle that "taxpayer funded research must be made available for free," when "taxpayer-funded" means "anything that any tax dollar has touched, no matter how remotely and no matter how small a fraction of the originating cost it may have paid"). Wichitalineman (talk) 02:00, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Do you have any source which defines "open access" in the way you are describing? My understanding is that "open access" is defined as access to scholarly publications. Popular science works like those of Gould and Wilson should not be considered in discussions of open access, because so far as I know, all definitions of open access recognize such non-scholarly publications (non-scholarly defined as being outside of an academic journal) as being out of scope of the concept of open access. Would you agree with this? Does this Wikipedia article express as much?
 * I would love to see any sources you might have of anyone's talk of the relationship between taxpayer funding of research and OA.
 * To develop this Wikipedia please start by sharing sources here. Nothing happens on Wikipedia without sources so start there. Anyone bringing sources and alternative perspectives will find a home for them in this article. Let me know if I can help further.
 * Your personal stance on OA does not matter here; Wikipedia is not a WP:FORUM for the discussion of an article's subject and often on Wikipedia it is not possible to determine what an editor's opinions are because all good articles develop multiple opposing viewpoints.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   16:44, 23 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree that we should not get into a personal discussion of the issues here, and I'll try to limit my comments. I do think my original post answers some of your questions: it provides examples of Suber himself making the claim about "taxpayer funding" (there are numerous further references by him and others in the book), and it shows that the distinction between "scholarly" and "non-scholarly" publications you rely on is not one that actually operates within the world of scholarship. I'll repeat it again: everything Gould and Wilson publish, when employed as professors, that has anything to do with their areas of study (even baseball in Gould's case--what might be exempt is something like a one-off column on crochet for Crochet Monthly), is considered scholarly publication within the most salient context: the evaluation and judgment of the University that employs the person. Since OA is primarily directed at academics, that is the definition that matters most. To put it another way: were Harvard to mandate that "all scholarly publications must be issued OA," there is absolutely no doubt that this would include all of Gould's and Wilson's publications. This distinction ("scholarly" vs "nonscholarly" publication) is one of those frequently mentioned in OA advocacy, yet I have never seen a shred of empirical evidence to show that this distinction can be or is maintained within the University context. Universities are deliberately expansive as to what counts as scholarship, because places like Harvard want professors like Gould to teach there who can reach a mass audience as part of their work. Even clearer examples are novels by Creative Writers, paintings by Studio artists, and music recordings by music professors, where these are typically the entirety of their "scholarly" output, and are defined as such within the University (especially for promotion and tenure, where this definition is most important). To support the view that these publications are non-scholarly, in my opinion, you would need statements from University chairs and administrators explaining the distinction, and I have seen very few of these. Wichitalineman (talk) 17:53, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I feel I should answer one more question, about "academic journals." While I might agree that this is generally a group of identifiable publications (typically, they are peer-reviewed, published by one or another academic press, and so on), the area is still much more muddy than the distinction makes it sound (there are a lot of publications in a hazy middle area). Further, the arguments for OA don't logically restrict themselves to this group: not the taxpayer funding argument, not the dissemination-of-materials argument, and not the low-cost-of-electronic publication argument, all of which capture much more than academic journals. Further, in practice, OA has not been restricted in this way: for example, the journal article that you linked to discusses mandated OA deposit of dissertations, which are both (a) not academic journal articles by any definition; (b) often creative works of just the sort I have written about with concern; and (c) products whose OA dissemination has already been shown empirically (see the article) to interfere with the career prospects of (some of) their authors. Wichitalineman (talk) 18:05, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I may be wrong in saying that "scholarly publication" only refers to content in academic journals, but I do not think that I am wrong in saying that the focus of open access is the content that goes into academic journals and that the scope of open access is exclusive of other publication. The concept of open access only examines that material which appears in academic journals. Please check your sources to see whether this is so, and tell me if Peter Suber or anyone else has ever said otherwise. I have never heard of a case in which "open access" was applied in the way you are describing. Can you direct me to an "open access" painting, novel, music recording, or even popular science book?
 * I agree that a dissertation not an academic journal article and that case should be addressed, but I think that it is a special case. This article should say something about that, but I feel that sharing dissertations has a different motivation than sharing usual research.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   18:14, 23 July 2013 (UTC)


 * OK, I have actually done a little research and found some good stuff. Harvard's Open Access policy is explicit about many of these questions, and maybe some of this language could be incorporated into the page itself (from https://osc.hul.harvard.edu/policies). As you might guess, I dislike the word "shortcomings" in the final sentence:


 * Only scholarly articles. Using terms from the Budapest Open Access Initiative, faculty’s scholarly articles are articles that describe the fruits of their research and that they give to the world for the sake of inquiry and knowledge without expectation of payment. Such articles are typically presented in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and conference proceedings.
 * Many of the written products of faculty effort are not encompassed under this notion of scholarly article: books, popular articles, commissioned articles, fiction and poetry, encyclopedia entries, ephemeral writings, lecture notes, lecture videos, or other copyrighted works. This is not to denigrate such writings. Rather, they are generated as part of separate publishing or distribution mechanisms that function in different ways and whose shortcomings, if any, the present policies do not and are not meant to address.


 * The Harvard policy is mandatory but waivable and does not transfer copyright, and creates an institutional repository, but does not prevent authors from publishing in venues that are themselves not OA. It seems to me that the end of the second sentence of the WP OA page leads in the direction that worries me: "it is also increasingly being provided to theses, scholarly monographs and book chapters" Wichitalineman (talk) 18:18, 23 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I think there is growing evidence that dissertations are being lumped in with articles, and possibly not wisely. In addition to the article we've discuss below, just today, the American Historical Association (professional association of historians) issued a statement urging universities simply not to mandate immediate open access to dissertations. Considering that the AHA is only advocating choice, the comments accusing it of being stuck in the 19c, unwilling to allow young scholars to disseminate their work and a wide range of other very snarky remarks and blog responses (none of which provide evidence to counter the basic facts on which the AHA statement is based--among others, that about 50% of book publishers are less likely to consider material from unembargoed dissertations) are indicative of the knee-jerk "OPEN = GOOD/regular publishing = evil" attitude that pervades this topic. Worth reading and possibly worth some mention on WP page: http://blog.historians.org/2013/07/american-historical-association-statement-on-policies-regarding-the-embargoing-of-completed-history-phd-dissertations/ Wichitalineman (talk) 00:30, 24 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I am not sure that either the Harvard Open Access Policy or this blog post meet Wikipedia's reliable sources guidelines for talking about the general concept of open access. I suppose that it depends what one would want to say. I recommend collecting sources first then summarizing them, rather than starting with a concept and trying to source it. I am not sure what the current best sources are but I am sure more commentary is available now than the last time this page was revised. Please continue to share sources and let's see what exists.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   01:55, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree about their relevance to the general concept of OA, but that wasn't how I'd envisioned them being used. They are both eminently reliable as to the understanding of two major, directly-involved institutions with regard to the implementation and meaning of OA (I believe, though this would need some research, that Harvard was one of the first US institutions of higher education in the US to implement a mandatory OA policy, and Peter Suber himself was instrumental in drafting it). "One major US university that has implemented OA, Harvard University, explicitly restricts the policy to academic journals, and does not apply its policy to 'books, popular articles, commissioned articles, fiction and poetry, encyclopedia entries, ephemeral writings, lecture notes, lecture videos, or other copyrighted works'" or something of the sort, which I think would add important information for readers, and in early replies you indicated a desire to show the main focus of OA was understood to be journal articles, so this would provide some confirmation of that. The blog post is an official communication of the official association of academic historians in the US: it could certainly be referenced in either the criticism section or "OA beyond academic journal articles" section with phrasing like, "The American Historical Association, the official association of academic historians in the US, has issued a request that universities not mandate OA for dissertations, expressing concern about the potential for publication of material from the dissertation in later work by early-career scholars." (or again, something like that; I'm writing fast). Wichitalineman (talk) 14:13, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Open access applied to things other than academic journals
User:Wichitalineman expressed a desire to have sections in this article describing the application of the open access content to things other than academic journals. This is not the focus of open access, however, this has been done. I wanted to make a request for sources about these things.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   01:51, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Other scholarly publications
Some scholarly publications are like academic journal articles in the sense that the writers have always given them away for free and requested that all people be able to read them. Such publications include theses, dissertations, preprints, postprints, and perhaps related datasets. If anyone has sources which describe how the open access concept applies to these things then please share.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   01:51, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I do not think it is true that theses and dissertations have always been given away for free, except in a very limited sense, and not at all the way that journal articles are. Would like to see references supporting this before it is asserted in the article. Deposit in a single university library is very different from giving something away for free. Theses and dissertations are often considered "apprentice" work, and while they may be available through ILL or ProQuest (a non-free database) that does not equal traditional publication and I believe allows the user to completely embargo their work but for the abstract. Dissertations are not meant to be publicly released, necessarily, in my experience. Wichitalineman (talk) 14:01, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * The open access movement has largely focused on journal articles because this has been seen as the easiest area to change, but the intention has always been to open up all research outputs no matter what the format is. We are seeing a continuing increase in open access to theses, data, and scholarly monographs now.


 * At least in the UK, PhD theses are more and more often being made open access by being deposited in an institutional repository. Some universities have introduces mandates requiring this. ROARMAP lists organisations that have open access mandates, including thesis mandates. This index at OATD claims to index over 1.6 million theses and dissertations, but I've only just found it so I'm not sure whether it is saying they are all open access.


 * In terms of datasets, the growing area of research data management is leading to many researchers depositing their data in data archives. Some of the UK research councils are starting to mandate this. Only some of this data is open access, but the amount is growing. The Digital Curation Centre is a useful source of information for this. Dryad (repository) and figshare are open data repositories where anyone can deposit research outputs; everything on figshare is licensed under either CC-BY or CC0. Lawsonstu (talk) 07:27, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Publications which enter popular culture
Some publications written by scholars have traditionally been sold or produced for hire, such as magazine or newspaper articles, books, and various creative derivatives of academic journal articles. If anyone has sources which describe how the open access concept applies to these things then please share.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   01:51, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Open access scholarly monographs are certainly growing in number and importance. The OAPEN (Open Access Publishing in European Networks) project is investigating the issues surrounding it in the humanities and social sciences. Affiliated with this is OAPEN-UK, which held a two-day conference at the British Library earlier this month. Examples of innovative publishers in this area are Open Book Publishers, who are using Wikisource to host source material for one of their books; Knowledge Unlatched; Ubiquity Press; and Open Edition.


 * This area of scholarly monographs intended for an academic audience is quite distinct from popular writing aimed at a general audience published by the big publishers (with a few cross-over exceptions, such as Stephen Jay Gould and Jared Diamond).Lawsonstu (talk) 07:06, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Can you define "quite distinct" and provide sources to indicate how this distinction is maintained in both universities and at publishers and that the definition is widely-accepted? As an academic for more than 20 years, my experience is very much the contrary, as some of my posts above provide in more detail. A great number of the major university presses, for example, target many books at a popular audience and have them distributed through Barnes & Noble and other major bookstores, without knowing in advance how many copies of a book will sell.


 * Proquest provides direct access to dissertations that have been designated as OA by their authors at http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/. This, like the OATD site, lends credence to the view that OA is not taken by the world at large to refer to journal articles exclusively. Wichitalineman (talk) 14:48, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

OA criticism sources
User:Wichitalineman informed me that Elsevier published an OA issue of one of its journals - see here. This journal includes some excellent criticism of OA which could be integrated into this article.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   16:46, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I misread this the first time: it's a special issue of The Journal of Academic Librarianship on the subject of OA, which makes way more sense than how I parsed this the first time -- that they made a single issue of some journal OA. Several of the articles look like good resources.  Kinda meta.  a13ean (talk) 17:10, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I spoke without clarity - what you say is what I meant.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   19:41, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Develop this article Friday 19 September 2013
Hello! On Friday 19 September 2013 some attendees at OKCon, a conference of the Open Knowledge Foundation, will be participating in an effort to improve this Wikipedia article and others related to the concept of open science. Anyone who would like to contribute to this article as part of this drive to improvement should do so! Details of the event are at Workshop/Open_Science_Workshop_(Geneva)/References.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   15:23, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

General links

 * Budapest Open Access Inititiative (BOAI)
 * Open Access, by Peter Suber (MIT Press, June 2012)
 * Open Access Overview, by Peter Suber
 * What is Open Access?, by Stevan Harnad
 * Open Access Archivangelism, by Stevan Harnad
 * Open Access to scientific communication, by Hans Dillaerts and Hélène Bosc
 * "Open and Shut?" Blog on open access by Richard Poynder, a freelance journalist, who has done a series of interviews with a few of the leaders of the open access movement.
 * Open-access.net, an information platform
 * Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook (OASIS)
 * Open Access Scholarly Publishers' Association (OASPA)
 * Open Access Tracking Project (OATP)

Directories

 * Directory of Open Access Journals
 * Directory of Open Access Books


 * Open Access Directory, with an Open Access Bibliography

Open Access Policies (some examples)

 * Good practices for university open-access policies, by Stuart Shieber and Peter Suber.
 * Quick guide to 10 recent open access policy and positioning statements (IOP Publishing)
 * G8 Science Ministers Statement about Open Scientific Research Data (3.) and Expanding Access to Scientific Research Results (4.)
 * UNESCO's Open Access Policy
 * Open Access Policy Objectives for the research funded by the European Commission through "Horizon 2020": Press release (EU)
 * Principles for Open Access to research publications by Science Europe (EU)
 * Open Access Guidelines for researchers funded by the ERC (EU)
 * Finch Report (UK)
 * RCUK Policy on Open Access and Supporting Guidance (UK)
 * NIH Public Access Policy (US)
 * University of California Open Access Policy (US)
 * CERN Open Access Policy (CH)
 * Open Access Policy for FWF-funded projects (Austria)
 * Open Access Policy of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Austria)

Definition
I've commented out two paragraphs from the 'Definition' section, rather then delete them, because I'd like to heard other people's opinions on whether they should be removed. My reasons are twofold. Firstly, it reads rather like original research, rather than being a summation of relevant other sources. Secondly, the paragraphs in question broaden the term open access to include many other things beyond research literature. I believe that these other materials that are mentioned, such as newspapers and broadcasts, should not be included in the category open access, even when they share similar characteristics. The Budapest/Bethesda/Berlin declarations refer only to open access to the research literature and I would argue that this narrower definition is what is generally meant by open access. -Lawsonstu (talk) 15:25, 4 October 2013 (UTC)


 * I've just noticed the comments above about open access to things other than journal articles. Perhaps it would be useful to have a paragraph in the definition referring to scholarly monographs, conference papers, theses, data etc., to emphasise that it's not just about journal articles. That might be an appropriate replacement for the bits that I've commented out? I could write it I guess. -Lawsonstu (talk) 15:31, 4 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I am still thinking about this. It is probably best to define open access by the BBB definition and call non-scholarly work open content, rather than open access works. I am not sure right now how to put this.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   11:59, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Changing emphasis
Currently this article emphasizes the differences between green and gold OA and the adoption of OA. I would rather this article emphasize what OA is rather than how it can be implemented. I added a history section and a motivation section. I may make other changes. I just wanted to say hello here if anyone wants to discuss what I am doing.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   13:31, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree, the article should be about what OA is. The implementation can either be covered in a subsection or elsewhere if size would become an issue. --Randykitty (talk) 13:57, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree too. I think having for-and-against lists probably isn't the best way to present it, not quite in keeping with it being an encyclopedia article, but it's good to have that information there and I'm all for trying to think of better ways to organise this article. I still think the whole article could do with a big re-organisation, and agree with Randykitty that focusing on what open access is can help us to see when information might be better placed in other articles. As a part of my involvement with Wikimania 2014 one of the things I'd like to happen is for us to have a truly great article article on open access. It will take a lot of work but with people like  Blue Rasberry   working on it I'm sure it will get there! Definitely interested in talking more about how we can contintue to improve it. Lawsonstu (talk) 19:09, 25 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The list I inserted is lame, but still it has new information that I think should be in the article. I will rework it. I am still thinking about this article and just made a navigational template to help me come to terms with the scope of this topic. It is broader than I expected - see here.


 * Probably this article should summarize the articles expanding on facets of the concept of open access. Thanks for the feedback Randykitty and the vote of confidence, Lawsonstu. I have faith in any Wikipedian who wants to come here and do anything. I think I would like to see this article get WP:GA status sometime perhaps before the end of the year.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   02:18, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I moved that pro/con list to academic journal publishing reform because I thought that would be a better place for it. A lot of the items in that list were actually general complaints about publishing which transcend the scope of open access. I was thinking to work that list and keep a summary of it along with a link to that article in this article.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   21:52, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Rearranged article
Since I did a major rearrange of this article I wanted to share my rationale. I am not soliciting for feedback at this time but any feedback here or development of the article would be welcome. I intend to begin working regularly on this article for a while.

I have been reading Suber's book. It is available gratis here if anyone wants to check it out with me. I do not think the section headings of the book are right for replication in a Wikipedia article but I am still thinking about Peter's presentation, and obviously Peter has been putting a lot of thought into outlining this himself. I just rearranged this article a lot, but in all these edits, I was not adding or removing content. Right now I have condensed all the content into four sections I want to get rid of the "see also" section by having better wikilinks in the article and replicating this content in the navboxes below. I also want the further reading section gone after integrating most of those sources into the article and putting just a few in external links. These are just thoughts. Thanks.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   02:29, 3 September 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Definitions - I also would like to add information about scope and licensing here
 * 2) Stakeholders - right now the article is missing publisher, industry, and government perspectives
 * 3) Implementation practices - concepts of libre and gratis would go in "definitions", and concepts of green and gold would go here. I wanted to add a section on open access policies and mandates here also, because these currently are not in the article.
 * 4) History - the other three sections would have abstract content but this section would give solid information about history, practice, advocacy events, growth, opposition, and everything else related to the actual intervention of open access in society


 * Great work! The changes to the layout so far have already made a more logical article I think. I don't have much time right now, but I'll be keeping an eye on it and over the next few months I'd like to contribute a lot to this article. I can help with a section on open access policies. I'll also add more recent sources and make try and make sure there isn't any outdated information in it. --Lawsonstu (talk) 12:26, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

To use a hyphen or not?
There is disagreement as to whether Wikipedia articles should use the phrase 'open access', or 'open-access' with a hyphen. Over the years this has resulted in the article Open access journal being moved back and forth a few times. I thought it be a good idea to have a discussion here, with everyone giving their reasons, in order to come up with a general guideline for editors to follow when editing articles on the topic. I am inviting everyone with an opinion on this to leave comments with their reasons below.

Previous discussions include: here, here, and the edit history of the article Open access journal.

As I see it, there are three options:
 * 1) Use 'open access' at all times;
 * 2) use 'open access' when the phrase stands alone and 'open-access' when it is used to describe something which is open access, such as 'open-access journal';
 * 3) use 'open-access' at all times.


 * Argument in favour of option 1

My strong preference is for option 1, for the following reasons.

'Open access' is the preferred term among many of the people and organisations who are responsible for defining the concept (e.g. SPARC, Peter Suber). I believe that it is the version of the term most commonly in use (although I do not have statistics to back up this claim). Many organizations and initiatives outside Wikipedia use the form without a hyphen (e.g., Directory of Open Access Journals, Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, Budapest Open Access Initiative, Global Open Access Forum, Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association, Registry of Open Access Repositories, Social Science Open Access Repository). I light of this fact, I see no reason why Wikipedia should use the hyphenated version when the term stands alone.

The question of whether to use a hyphen to describe something which is open access, such as 'open-access journal', is perhaps a slightly different question. I think the phrase 'open access' is the name of a concept, and should thus be treated as a single phrase to describe this concept. Therefore an open access journal is a journal which is 'open access'. This means that a hyphen is not needed. I hyphen would be needed if you were to say 'openly-accessible journal', for instance, because this phrase describes a journal which is openly-accessible, rather than a journal which is 'open access'.

For these reasons, I believe that we should only use the term 'open access'. This differs from the standard usage for hyphens set out in HYPHEN, but is consistent with how the term is used outside Wikipedia. The Manual of Style is there to inform the way we write on Wikipedia, and not to dictate how language should be used. Wikipedia articles should reflect the real world.

- Lawsonstu (talk) 08:59, 17 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Why, ever, would you hyphenate it as a stand-alone (such as the article title)? That would be inexplicable and would contridict general rules of styling. While not wanting to be utterly inflexible on this: open = adjective; access = noun. However, refusing to hyphenate it when a compound adjective breaks fundamental rules of English styling; I don't really care that some major author on open access didn't hyphenate it, even if he invented the term originally. English is full of bad usage that has evolved to be more reader-friendly. Writers within a field often get lazy about typography because they see the item many times a day; we write for a wider readership, and refusing to use the hyphen doesn't help the reading process for non-experts. This argument has been hashed out time and time again on WP, and the result is most often to go with ease of reading for non-experts. That might account for the fact that a third of occurrences on the ngram search are hyphenated (the ngram system, for some reason, renders the hyphenated legend as spaced: it's an artefact of the display, not the search). The issue was resolved for open source on WP, and I believe this article was at least at one stage hyphenated according to your option 2. Tony   (talk)  11:39, 17 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Comment I have moved the article back until this discussion finishes, as it was moved without moving the attached talkpage. If this discussion concludes that it should be hyphenated, an admin can move both the article and its talk page to the correct location. --Randykitty (talk) 14:11, 17 January 2014 (UTC)


 * #2 of course. As Toni said.  This tired debate of "let's have an MOS as long as it agrees with how I write" is simply not workable with more than one WP editor.  ("Following sources" doesn't work either, as that just devolves into competing Google counts and cherry-picking sources.)  This article belongs where it is, no hyphen, but we do need to hyphenate open-access journal.  Proper nouns may be an exception (I don't remember what the MOS says for such cases), but the whole reason for having an MOS is so that we don't have endless debates over such trivia in every GD'd article.  — kwami (talk) 00:11, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Kwami, do you mean this article title belongs as it is? There are many examples of open access as a compound adjective in the main text, such as open-access publication. Tony   (talk)  11:59, 20 January 2014 (UTC) PS There was never a hyphen in this article title. Randykitty neglected to specify that s/he has moved Open-access journal back, so that it has no hyphen. Not a useful move.  Tony   (talk)  12:02, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Perhaps not a useful move, but your move was a/ certainly not uncontroversial (and a quick check of history/talk would have shown that) and b/ left the talk pages in place, so that article and talk page became disconnected. Talk about an unhelpful move... --Randykitty (talk) 12:40, 20 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Prefer no hyphen See English compound for discussion of the grammar. It is my opinion that English language has no clear guidelines to follow, nor does Wikipedia'a manual of style. Assuming that no one finds a grammatical rule and that it is a matter of personal preference, then I think it is best to follow the personal preferences of the leading publishers in the field. As Lawsonstu noted, the most important precedents use the term with no hyphen. I would reconsider if someone identified comparable sources which prefer the term to be hyphenated.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   21:08, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for bringing the English compound article to our attention, it articulates the point I was trying to make but I didn't have the right vocabulary to explain it clearly enough. - Lawsonstu (talk) 22:07, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I don't understand the argument. English compound and the MOS quite clearly say hyphenation is appropriate here.  The one reason for not hyphenating would be the lack of any possibility of confusion, but a good number of our sources feel that hyphenation is warranted.  As an encyclopedia, I think we should err on the side of clarity.  — kwami (talk) 22:21, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Kwamy, far as I can see, this discussion has yet to reach consensus. So why are you now unilaterally moving pages around? --Randykitty (talk) 22:37, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * kwami, I am disappointed that you have added the hyphen back in to so many articles while this discussion is still in progress.
 * Before I refer to specific lines in the English compound article, could someone clarify for me whether I'm correct in thinking of 'open access' as a compound noun and 'open access journal' as a compound modifier? I am new to this terminology - Lawsonstu (talk) 22:43, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * "Open" is an adjective, so "open access" is an adjective–noun compound. In "open~access journal", it's a compound modifier.  The hyphen is clearly appropriate there:  Without it (and taken literally), it would mean an access journal that's open.  However, like high school student, which no-one would normally read as a school student that's high, the hyphen could be omitted as being too obvious to bother with.  So I guess that's the question.  However, publishers that value precision and clarity will hyphenate even high-school student so that there's no possibility of misinterpretation.  IMO an encyclopedia should strive for precision and clarity, even when it seems redundant to us editors.  But it's not a grammatical rule, as some are putting it; rather, it's an orthographic rule to clarify the grammar:  whether the phrase is to be understood as [(open access) journal] (compound modifier) or [open (access journal)] (independent modifiers).  — kwami (talk) 22:56, 20 January 2014 (UTC)


 * One interpretation is that "open access" in the phrase "open access journal" is a compound modifier, and that "open access" standing alone is a compound noun. This is as you say.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   22:52, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks . I presented two arguments. The first was that omitting the hyphen is not grammatically improper, and the second was that there is an established precedent for omitting the hyphen. Please show the part of the Wikipedia MOS which is saying that hyphenation should be used. Purdue publishes a guide which says, "Use a hyphen to join two or more words serving as a single adjective before a noun", which is contrary to what I propose. Purdue also says that authorities differ about this. The Chicago Manual is aligned with my thought, saying "hyphenate only if doing so will aid readability". My overarching argument is that if there is no clear guidance, then follow established precedent. If you are aware of clear grammatical guidance or established Wikipedia practices then share.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   22:44, 20 January 2014 (UTC)


 * At WP:HYPHEN in the MOS, #3, it says a hyphen is used "to link related terms in compound modifiers [fn: Specifically, compound attributives, which are modifiers of a noun that occur within the noun phrase. (See Hyphenated compound modifiers.)" They don't mention an exception for cases that are too obvious to bother with.
 * Consider also delayed open access journal. For a reader unfamiliar with the topic, are they going to recognize that that is a delayed open-access journal, or are they going to read it as a delayed-open access journal, until they realize part-way through the article that that makes no sense?  — kwami (talk) 23:02, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * , I see this at WP:HYPHEN, and the third point under section 3 seems most relevant. This aligns with the second scheme, which would proscribe talking of "open access", "open-access journals", and "journals which are open access". Is this what you favor?  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   23:45, 20 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, #2, as above. — kwami (talk) 06:02, 21 January 2014 (UTC)


 * For me, #2 also "feels" the most clear and logical. However, I am not a native English speaker, so I abstain from casting a formal !vote here (insofar as we are voting :-). --Randykitty (talk) 16:11, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Funding issues
Suggest adding the text (to the end of the last paragraph of this section):

although this is often not the case with mathematicians everywhere, and researchers in all areas working in institutions in developing countries. Strictly speaking, if it is a requirement for authors to pay to have their articles published, then open access is put on the level of advertising or the vanity press.

Ankababel (talk) 11:34, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Could you provide a link or more information about this source? The heavily cited Suber book suggests that this has not been reported to happen with established publications, which make way for authors to choose this without paying themselves. There is a concept of Predatory open-access publishing, which refers to fake new journals which publish anything and exist to prey on people who do not understand the Internet.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  22:19, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
 * "advertising or vanity press": this is absolute nonsense. Don't tell me that PLOS is a vanity press and that you can publish anything you like there just because you pay! As for the discussion about payment being necessary, this is apparently strongly field-dependent. In my own field (and related ones) there are dozens upon dozens of respectable OA journals (and even more disrepectable ones, I fear, see remark above about predatory publishing). As far as I know, all of them require authors to pay a publication fee. --Randykitty (talk) 14:06, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Seconded. a13ean (talk) 16:26, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Seconded here too. Permafrost46 (talk) 01:59, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

It is a matter of degree. A clue is in the fact that, as you state above, "...there are dozens upon dozens of respectable OA journals (and even more disrepectable ones..." ("dozens upon dozens" — surely an exaggeration!). My point is that accepting payment for publication moves the journal from a pure scholarly publication towards the vanity press.  This, surely, is indisputable.  Perhaps you are just disputing where the boundary should be put — I put it at the pure end. Ankababel (talk) 09:40, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * "Dozens upon dozens" is absolutely not an exaggeration! BioMed Central alone has that many journals, Springer, Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell and other respectable publishers are also publishing OA journals. Many highly respected journals have always had page charges, even if they are subscription based (PNAS, Journal of Neuroscience, etc). Nobody will call these journals "vanity press", or even "moving towars" vanity publishing. Please be serious! --Randykitty (talk) 11:39, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * And in most of these journals (if not all), submissions still have to go through a peer-review process so I'm pretty sure this does not constitute vanity publishing. On a side note, I tried accessing Ankababel's reference in J. Biol. Phys. Chem. and all I could find was this page . Permafrost46 (talk) 12:56, 19 March 2014 (UTC)
 * DOAJ lists almost 10,000 open access journals. The major publishers listed by Randykitty publish many hundreds of open access journals between them. I think I'm right in saying that every single one of these is peer-reviewed. The peer review process, and thus the scholarly integrity of a journal, most often is identical between subscription or open access journals. - Lawsonstu (talk) 17:19, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Are the terms 'Libre OA' and 'Gratis OA' widely used? Isn't 'libre' superfluous? Doesn't gratis-only contradict definition of OA?
New to talk pages but thought I'd raise this.

I propose the deletion of the definitions of the 'Libre OA' and 'Gratis OA' in the definition section of this article. These terms are not widely used IMHO, and they are not well defined (unlike that of Open Access itself which has clearly been well defined in this article).

Furthermore, given the definition of Open Access. It seems to me that the term 'libre' is a superfluous addition. Open Access is already libre in it's definition. Gratis (only?) would also seem to contradict the defintion of Open Access. Can one have a longer couplet e.g. 'Gratis OA' that is not compatible with an element of the couplet (OA)? I think this is confusing and is presumably why people do not frequently use these terms.

I suggest we use the term cost-free to unambiguously denote cost-free access to a resource.

Metacladistics (talk) 14:15, 7 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi, thanks for raising this. I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts. While the terms Libre OA and Gratis OA and not particularly widespread, the use of what you term 'cost-free' access is often used to mean open access - erroneous as this practice might be according to the BBB definition, which this article follows. So I think it's important to have something in the article about this issue, but I agree that your suggestion of using the term 'cost-free' has merit.


 * I interpreted the primary purpose of the Definitions section to be about defining what open access is, rather than being about definitions. Calling the section 'Concept' or similar would make that clearer; or perhaps we could have Definitions as a subsection of Concept. - Lawsonstu (talk) 15:12, 7 January 2014 (UTC)


 * If you choose not to remove the definitions, at least point out that the term "Libre OA" (introduced by Suber in 2008 "... a provisional decision as an individual writer ...") is a departure from (and which introduces ambiguity and conflicts with) established use of the word "libre" in the context of software (e.g. libre software, FLOSS), content (free/libre content or cultural works) and knowledge (libre knowledge). In essence, "Libre OA" as defined here conflates the issues of freedom and price which are regarded as separate issues in the free/libre software, culture and knowledge communities in which free/libre requires that all four core freedoms are satisfied for a work to be regarded as free/libre. Definitions of open source software and some definitions of "open" also do not require gratis distribution. See also Gratis versus libre and Say Libre. --K (talk) 16:59, 10 November 2014 (UTC)

Added form
I added this form to the article.

Surprisingly - many open access request forms do not themselves have open licenses. Thanks to Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition for providing this one. It does have some problems. This particular OA request form is from about 2006. It references to Science Commons, which is defunct now and a distraction. Also it is a PDF when we need a version with more accessible text.

Workup of this document is discussed at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Open. It would be nice for Wikipedia to provide a usable request form.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  15:17, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Inappropriate self-reference in the image caption
While I understand the point, I think that linking to WP:SIGNAL in an article is not appropriate. The project space is not appropriate for a reference, explicit or implied, because of their internal nature, and for the simple fact that it is a wiki. The information referenced should either be included in the article with the proper references, or else just not mentioned at all.--17:01, 8 October 2015 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Open access movement in India
Really nothing special about India; most of this article are minor, non-notable non-events ("Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) adopted its Open Access policy in September 2013"). Whatever is salvageable can be integrated into the article on open access. Randykitty (talk) 10:19, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
 * It is difficult for me to imagine a merge of so much content here. Before discussing the merge, I would want to see someone remove all the inappropriate content from that article. After the article is trimmed to include only the information meeting Wikipedia standards, then I think it would be easier to decide whether that content would add WP:DUE weight to this article.
 * I think everyone would agree that adding all of that content here before it is trimmed would be WP:UNDUE.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  13:58, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
 * The important thing here is indeed what you say: "before it is trimmed". The largest part of the "India" article consist of trivialities that can be trimmed (like the announcement that I cited, which at best could be mentioned briefly in the article on the organization). I don't think there will be much left to merge here and that little should not pose a problem. --Randykitty (talk) 14:19, 15 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose: their timeline seems both factual and informative in its context -- events that are non-notable worldwide may still be notable regionally. It'd be too detailed if merged into Open access (which, incidentally, would benefit from a timeline of its own). The main trouble with that article is the unsourced Agents of change section. There are other similar local histories of open access, e.g., wikiversity:Open Access in Latin America. fgnievinski (talk) 14:34, 15 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I've been wondering about creating a separate History of open access page. Transferring some of the history stuff out of this main article and into a dedicated one might help this overview to be more concise, while still retaining the detail elsewhere. If we did this, then the History of open access page could potentially have sections for different regions, e.g. India, Latin America, Europe. Does this sound like a good idea? (Whether the Open access movement in India page would be fully merged into such an article is a separate but related question.) - Lawsonstu (talk) 15:25, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
 * That sounds like a good idea to me. --Randykitty (talk) 15:46, 15 April 2016 (UTC)
 * You might want to start with following the format of Timeline then expand it as prose. fgnievinski (talk) 21:50, 15 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose per Fgnievinski. I note that there is precedent for articles on the broad history of a movement to coexist with articles on the movement in a particular country.  (History of feminism and Feminism in India.)  I think it would be better to have more 'local' articles (Open Access in Latin America, etc.) and a history article that would link to local articles - maybe in a sidebar.  --211.30.17.74 (talk) 00:29, 16 April 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose - per User:Fgnievinski & User talk:211.30.17.74. However this article may profit from having 1-3 sentences on the movement in India (and other countries) with a link to the article (if it's a small section the one.) --Fixuture (talk) 20:54, 10 May 2016 (UTC)


 * Oppose - Open Access Movement in India article can explore India specific issues, projects and initiatives. There is a large scope for this article to be expanded.  For example, Tamil Nadu government has an initiative to buy and release major Tamil works into public domain (including Research oriented works).  --Natkeeran (talk) 15:55, 18 July 2016 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Harvard Biases
I am a little circumspect of changes made by ‎140.247.136.255 on Oct 4th. Adding the point about Harvard 2012 guidelines seems fair enough, but the user also replaced a couple of the sources with ones from Harvard (same content different web host). Quickly searching the IP shows that it belongs to Harvard universityip trace. Does anyone want to weight in that might be more familiar with WP:COI ?? --Frederika Eilers (talk) 12:51, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

Disadvantages of open access?
The lead article mentions advantages and disadvantages of open access. I know there have been financial arguments against open access publishing. Are there other arguments? Megs (talk) 00:02, 10 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Some arguments are used by anti-OA advocates against certain flavours of OA, usually revolving around a supposed threat to the quality of scholarship. Stated in general terms, it's just fear mongering.
 * More accurately, we might speak of advantages and disadvantages or specific aspects, for instance APC-centred funding of journal operations. Or just describe what aspects are generally considered and what models are adopted to deal with this or that. --Nemo 15:50, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Framework for misconceptions
I do not think I want a misconception in this article but several people and Suber especially like to articulate myths. This was just published.



I do feel that there is enough misunderstanding about open access to merit addressing erroneous beliefs in this article, and the sources cover misconceptions well also, but I still feel a little strange about including a "false rumors" section in this article and I am not sure of the right way to do this.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   11:59, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree that this should be addressed. How about "Common misunderstandings"? --Randykitty (talk) 12:49, 23 October 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree too and here are some worth addressing in the article: «The number of misunderstandings is large, and I can’t list them all here. But here are a few of the most harmful and widespread: that all or most OA is gold OA; that all or most OA journals charge APCs; that all or most APCs are paid by authors out of pocket; that all or most OA journals are low in quality, if not predatory; that green OA must be embargoed; that green OA cannot use open licenses like CC-BY; and that permission for green OA must come from publishers rather than authors and institutions under rights-retention policies.» https://openinterview.org/2019/06/29/peter-suber-the-largest-obstacles-to-open-access-are-unfamiliarity-and-misunderstanding-of-open-access-itself/ We could also incorporate the entire https://peerj.com/preprints/27580/ Nemo 06:58, 25 July 2019 (UTC)

deprecate the color scheme
The early discussions about open access nearly 20 years ago imagined that there would be a great difference between the color tagging, particularly green and gold. In practice this distinction hardly mattered to users or publishers even in the beginning and has been less important as time has progressed. The entire philosophy almost seems like a perspective grounded in how paper journals worked. "Journal" is even a fuzzy concept now so many articles are either part of a mega-journal which could never be reasonably bound in paper or they are connected with lightweight journals which either evaporate or publish steadily on focused topics but have so little content that they are more of a themed irregular publication than a journal.

I propose to de-prioritize the color coding description. There was a theory decades ago that it would be fundamental to understanding OA, but it never was and definitely is not now. Instead of focuses on the publisher I think we should focus on how people access the articles, and designations of green/gold/ whatever do little to communicate that. Also I think copyright license has come to matter much more than the color model. Free and open copyright licenses were not even a cultural when this ideology came to be as the 3B statements came 2003-4, Creative Commons was established 15 January 2001 (same day as Wikipedia), and Wikipedia only adopted CC in ~2009, with meta:Licensing update ending 10 years ago in August 2009. I am sharing these dates to demonstrate that (1) the beginning of the open access movement had very different concepts than 2009 and (2) now in 2019 I think a typical person in this field would look back to ~2000 and ~2009 and say that all the ideas people had then were untenable for how things happen now. Also in 10 more years, 2029, everything changes again because we have not even applied machine readability to academic publishing yet but that will be the norm very soon.

The sources are a mess and I am not sure if we can find a narrative of this, but I wanted to post about this because for so long the focus of this article has been color and it would be a big change to de-prioritize that in favor of anything else. Thoughts from anyone else?  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  11:27, 28 August 2019 (UTC)


 * Well, the "colours" are not going away, in fact people keep focusing a lot on them (and bronze was just recently invented). There is a danger in not explaining them, that people think "open access" equals "gold open access" equals "hybrid gold open access" equals "outrageous APC to profiteering megacorporations" even if in practice most OA content comes from green OA and diamond OA (completely free for the authors and super cheap for institutions).
 * The article can certainly be rearranged in a different way, to start from general matters and then go into the specific, with some stop in the middle to explain certain technicalities needed to understand the rest, but I'm not sure how to do that. Nemo 15:39, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Bronze open access?
Hi,

There's a figure with "The number and proportion of open access articles split between Gold, Green, Hybrid, Bronze and closed access (from 1950 - 2016).[2]". But "Bronze" access isn't defined in the article.

The source is "Swan, Alma (2012). "Policy guidelines for the development and promotion of open access". UNESCO. Retrieved 2019-04-14."

But I can't find the word "bronze" in the PDF either ( https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000215863 ). I can't find the graphs themselves.

Is this source correct?

I found another source which confirms the affirmation and defines bronze access though: https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/bronze-open-access-supersedes-green-and-gold

Best,

11:27, 15 May 2019 (UTC)
 * I think I fixed the problem... 11:37, 15 May 2019 (UTC)


 * The additional color definitions were a good solution. Beelzebubbs (talk) 18:59, 17 May 2019 (UTC)

Bronze was "invented" with Piwowar and Priem 2018 https://peerj.com/articles/4375/ Nemo 15:40, 28 August 2019 (UTC)

Possible additional sections
As part of updating the article, I've been thinking about a slight reorganisation and expansion of content:

Current:
 * 1) History
 * 2) Extent
 * 3) Models
 * 4) Gratis and libre open access
 * 5) Open access publishing
 * 6) Article processing charges
 * 7) Subsidized open access publications
 * 8) Distribution
 * 9) Policies and mandates
 * 10) History
 * 11) Policy
 * 12) Motivations
 * 13) Stakeholders and concerned communities
 * 14) Author citation advantage
 * 15) Research funders and universities
 * 16) Universities
 * 17) Libraries and librarians
 * 18) Public
 * 19) Low-income countries
 * 20) Criticism
 * 21) Databases and repositories

Proposed
 * History
 * Background
 * Growth / extent
 * Major transitions
 * Definitions & types
 * Green/gold etc?
 * Gratis/libre? (outdated)
 * ‘Hybrid’
 * ‘Delayed’
 * Open access for monographs
 * FAIR
 * Features
 * Licenses
 * Distribution
 * Archiving
 * APCs
 * Preprint use?
 * Effects on scholarly publishing
 * Access (public, low-income researchers etc)
 * Economics (Library costs, publisher re-structure etc)
 * Citations & impact
 * Criticism (e.g. hijacking by pred. publishers)
 * Incentive structures
 * Policies and mandates (and regulation?)
 * ROARMAP
 * Plan S (though maybe too soon)
 * Infrastructure
 * Lists / databases (DOAJ etc)

Any opinions? T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 10:57, 13 May 2019 (UTC)


 * I think a section on the history and development of policies and mandates may be helpful. Beelzebubbs (talk) 17:08, 25 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Edited above to add in what the structure previously was in May 2019. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 01:20, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Article updates
Inspired by the overhauls of the Gene and Enzyme articles a few years ago, I'd love to have a general update on this article (xtools stats, pageview stats). A few people have been thinking about possible improvements that could be made in terms of structure and content in a this google document. People in the meeting agreed to post subsequent discussion on (or accessible via) this talkpage and start editing the wikipedia page. I'd love to get it up to a level where it could go through internal review (WP:GAN, WP:FAC) and external peer review (WP:JAN). We were also thinking of having some conference all meetups every couple of weeks to keep up momentum. Would love people to get involved (current participant list below). T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 01:46, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Interested participants:
 * Thomas Shafee
 * Theo Bloom
 * Amanda Lawrence
 * Juan Pablo Alperin
 * Ginny Barbour
 * I would meet in video chat, take notes, and publish here.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  12:49, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Voice meeting to discuss page 17-23 Feb 2020
Poll to organising meeting time: https://doodle.com/poll/vn7bkiy67mnekqyu Voice chat location: https://meet.jit.si/OpenAccessWikipedia Meeting notes to be written: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14XabEoQ0FVMRvgvb7Kf0fPhQYQZ7W2qlnRZ8ZsaO7I8/edit# T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 09:22, 10 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Consensus date & Time = 17 Feb 11pm UTC. Location = https://meet.jit.si/OpenAccessWikipedia. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 08:04, 16 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Meeting minutes here, with draft ideas for a diagram here. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 10:02, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Content that doesn't belong here
Today's huge addition of content has also added some stuff that does not appear to belong here, because it is not specific to OA. For example, "Correlation between impact factor and quality", which applies to subscription-based journals just as much as to OA ones. The same goes for the discussion of peer review or a discussion of "Representativeness of proprietary databases". We have articles on these subjects where this material could be merged, but it doesn't belong here. --Randykitty (talk) 17:53, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Open_access
 * Open_access
 * Yes I agree, these sections as written are not obviously on the topic "open access". They might be elsewhere and are OA-adjacent but yes, I do not see the connection.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  19:05, 28 August 2019 (UTC)
 * The connection is that these were found to be the most debated topics on the matter of open access in a publication where you can read the methods too (also at https://peerj.com/preprints/27580/ with additional discussion). You might think that WoS, Scopus and JIF are not "part" of the topic of open access, but in practice whenever one discusses (gold) OA someone brings up "but is this journal in WoS/Scopus" or "what will my JIF be". I can agree that such questions are mistaken, but that's the world we live in, so we do need to have that information in an accessible way on this article.
 * I do agree that some of those sections can be better integrated with the rest of the article. They can also be trimmed, moving those parts which are not discussing OA directly. In some paragraphs, that's hard to disentangle, but I've re-read the two sections mentioned and I think I'll move about half of them to the other pages. Nemo 06:21, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
 * But none of this is specific to OA. Any subscription journal people will also ask "but is this journal in WoS/Scopus" or "what will my JIF be". The JIF, indexing, and peer review are issues that are essential for all academic publishing, not just OA. I would merge this stuff to the appropriate articles and link to that from here. --Randykitty (talk) 09:14, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
 * It is specific to OA because they are arguments used disproportionately in relationship with OA publishing. I already agreed some of the content can be moved, will do it in the coming days. Nemo 09:19, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I'd agree that some of the added sections could be better placed in full in other articles and just the OA-specific elements listed here (e.g. 'Views of peer review' would fit very well in the peer review article, with a portion retained here). I'm hoping to go through in the next few weeks and help integrate the new material in. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 23:24, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Apologies for the delayed response in getting around to this. I've now re-read through all the current sections (initial total 19k words, of which 14k were from the recent additions). I'm make a start by moving some of the sections that'd fit better into other articles and merging a few sections that go well with other info. Initial progress below: T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 12:10, 27 October 2019 (UTC)
 * 1) Merged much of Prevalent economic models into #Definitions, #Article processing charges and #Subsidized or no-fee
 * 2) Converted some of the notes that contain a single URL into inline citations
 * 3) Added archived versions for pages that might change (e.g. Nat Cummun's >$5000 APC!) and found a ref for eLife's APC costing.
 * Thank you! It's much easier to figure out a more effective presentation of the material after a second pair of eyes has gone through it and made some changes. I already spotted a few more unclear passages in the sections you refactored. Nemo 12:49, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

Apologies for the delay. I've started to do a couple of further content section moves: Will make another effort to move the editing forward in the coming week. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 12:05, 31 December 2019 (UTC)
 * #Correlation_between_impact_factor_and_quality → Impact factor
 * #Views_of_peer_review & #Peer_review_and_trust → Peer review

I've done some further work integrating the new content (aiming to retain the OA-specific aspects) and also updating much of the old I've also done some more updates of older content I'm still unclear why there are so many 'notes' that are basically references. I also think that there's a bit of overall between the #Motivations and #Effects sections (since many of those effects are the motivations for many authors, publishers and funders). I hope it doesn't come across as being too harsh in the pruning but I'm aiming for greater readability and focus. Eventually I'd like to get the page down to maybe 4-6000 words (excluding references). T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 11:27, 4 January 2020 (UTC)  updated 06:15, 5 January 2020 (UTC) & 08:29, 5 January 2020 (UTC), 10:42, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
 * The new #Peer_review_process section now focuses on the effects of open peer review and the rise of OA megajournals (would be good to have stats on the prevalence of these practices for a figure).
 * #Representativeness_of_proprietary_databases → Citation index. Working out what to keep was tricky, since there was little that was OA-specific, and maybe it should be trimmed further. Some info on PMC vs pubmed, DOAJ vs competitors, possibly Wikicite could possibly be useful though.
 * #Prevalence_of_copyright_assignment_to_publishers → Copyright transfer agreement.
 * #Correlation_between_open_access_and_certain_academic_practices → Predatory publishing. Also updated section name to 'Predatory publishing', since was a bit cryptic.
 * #Role_for_publishers_in_scholarly_communication → Copyright_transfer_agreement, since it was focused on publisher value-add and gatekeeping relevant to both subscription and OA journals. Might be worth re-incorporating or a sentence or two in the preprints section of as part of a non-journal-based OA section?
 * #Sustainability_of_embargo_periods → Embargo (academic publishing) and have added more info on estimating the prevalence of embargos.
 * For #Article_impact: I've split readership, citations, and altmetrics (with new summary image)
 * For #Citation_rate: there have now been enough studies that meta-analyses and reviews are available, so I've also focused more on these and removed the tag.
 * The summarising has not been very successful in my opinion. Cutting away all the new content indiscriminately made the article less useful and the structure of the article less representative of modern discussions of open access. Nemo 06:57, 4 May 2020 (UTC)

Reversion of 966045253
Anonymous editor from 68.144.192.39 and reversion of 966291239, "Older source was much better".

The same source was listed twice. The duplicate citation for was removed. It is not clear to me how duplicating the citation is better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noloader (talk • contribs) 19:16, 6 July 2020 (UTC)


 * It was a mistake (I misread the diff) which was reversed a few minutes later. So what's the issue? Alexbrn (talk) 19:50, 6 July 2020 (UTC)

Google's scholar's definition of Open Access
@Sylvain Ribault, Weirdly, Google Scholar isn't quite calculating compliance with funder mandates, most of which require an OA license, not just free-to-read. The tool only checks if the text is available ("We do not check if it has an open-access licence" ).

E.g. it's counting this free-to-read article (OUP uses an open access logo even when it's still under OUP's copyright) but the funder's policy requires "associated licence, such as a Creative Commons licence".

I still think it's notable, but have added a clarifier to the sentence. T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 05:46, 3 April 2021 (UTC)


 * Your clarifier is most welcome. My edit was indeed a bit rushed. Sylvain Ribault (talk) 16:28, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

The downsides of OA
Like everything else, OA model has some advantages and some disadvantages. The advantages are discussed thoroughly in this page but the downsides of OA are not mentioned at all. Here are a few sources that can be used on this topic:

Some Online Journals Will Publish Fake Science, For A Fee

What the Open-Access Movement Doesn't Want You to Know

The Open-Access Movement is Not Really about Open Access

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0099133320301622 How is open access accused of being predatory? The impact of Beall’s lists of predatory journals on academic publishing ]

Replication Crisis

Marzbans (talk) 06:51, 22 October 2021 (UTC)


 * Sort of. Some of the criticisms above are of predatory publishers (on which there's already a section in the page), and which are important not to conflate with OA in general. A couple of the links are also just opinion pieces by Jeffrey Beall, who is certainly an important critic, but some of the 'anti-corporatist movement' criticism is more a political stance than a criticism of OA. The replication crisis link isn't really relevant, since it's just pointing out an anecdote of a rubbish article published by an OA journal, and there are similar anecdotes for articles in paywalled/subscription journals. Frustratingly, I've not found any metanalysis of the quantitative studies done, and most of those either had no subscription journal control group (example) or were only submitted to subscription journals (example).
 * However I think warranted could be:
 * some notes on APC inflation (and comparison to subscription inflation)
 * quality comparisons to subscription journals (if there are quantitative studies around).
 * clarification of limitations of parts of the ecosystem (predatory publishers already given sufficient space TBH), possibly a bit on basing policy on preprints (the current section on Effect of preprints on later publication is way too long).
 * What do people think? T.Shafee(Evo &#38; Evo)talk 04:31, 24 October 2021 (UTC)
 * Actually I found Whitfield's Replication crisis insightful, given the fact that Jeffrey Beall is now being openly criticized for his views on OA. On the DOAJ list, which is unrelated to Beall's work, only 10% of the indexed journals meet the basic standards of academic publishing . They have all sorts of problems, some lack article identifiers (such as DOI), or the required licenses, and sometimes articles simply vanish because the journal does not offer stable digital preservation of the articles. There is no shortage of articles discussing the OA movement, It is no surprise that most praise OA movement, but some give a more critical perspective. You are right, the APC fees are high, Vervoort et al, says it is on average 3000$ for Cardiology journals. Regarding the quality of journals, I think a small percentage of OA journals publish worthy articles. If you take a look at the first 100 journals with the highest impact and notability you will notice that only 5 journals are OA and the rest are non-OA . All that said, imo, what this page needs is a criticism section discussing how the OA is being abused. The OA movement certainly benefits everyone, but in accordance with NPOV policy we also need to address how the model is being abused. Marzbans (talk) 14:38, 24 October 2021 (UTC)