Talk:Open access

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Contents 1 movement or industry strategy? 2 'Free access' 3 Non-notable external links 4 Excessive inline external links 5 Open access publishing revert 6 Wikipedia policy on links to Closed Access 7 Criticisms of Open Access 8 Berlin declaration 9 How Can I Help? 10 Open access 11 prefered terminology? 12 Other Colors 13 new section 14 main article 15 restore main article in progress 16 copyedits. 17 References 18 BOAI 19 cleanup 20 NPOV 21 External Links 22 button 23 Naming Problem & proposed Move 24 Self-archiving vs open access publishing 25 Copy edit and rearrangement 26 by the numbers 27 merge question 28 Public and advocacy section 29 Unsourced arguments

[edit] movement or industry strategy?

Is Open Access more of a Movement or an Industry Strategy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.200.82.106 (talk • contribs) 06:46, 22 April 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 'Free access'

I've heard some poeple (notably someone who works for Oxford University Press) making a distinction between 'open access' (where the author pays) and 'free access' (where no-one pays). Should this distinction be incorporated into the site? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.214.173.238 (talk • contribs) 14:29, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

It is a good point that there are distinctions in terminology on various different types of open access, which would make a good addition to the wikipedia article.

"free access" is often used with subscription-based journals, which are not at all open access, but rather provide free access after a delay or embargo period. A good place to look for these articles is Highwire Free, at http://highwire.stanford.edu/lists/freeart.dtl

There are different business models for open access, one of which is a processing fee approach [payment made on behalf of the author for publishing services]. This is sometimes erroneously referred to as the "author-pays" model. It is erroneous because professional researchers do not pay these fees out of their own pockets; rather, than are paid either by funding agencies or by the institutions. The majority of open access journals do not use the processing-fee model, however. Some, using volunteer labor, open source software and in-kind support, publish quality with no hard costs (not unlike wikidpedia itself, of course!). In other cases, journals are subsidized, whether by governments, universities, scholarly or professional associations. This happens with journals which charge subscription fees, not only the open access ones. Suzannah 01:03, 15 January 2007 (UTC)suzannah

---

Scientists from all major Dutch universities officially launched a website on Tuesday where all their research material can be accessed for free.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/11/open_access_research/

http://www.darenet.nl/en/page/language.view/home - Omegatron 23:09, May 20, 2005 (UTC)

Wicked! Thanks for the link Omegatron. I've included this in the main article. --Username132 23:03, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Non-notable external links

I am not keen on an edit war, but I do agree with Eliezer that the yasharbooks links is non-notable. In fact, it stands out like a sore thumb even in this fairly long list we already have. WP is not a web directory, and we shouldn't list every website that claims to do some sort of open access thingy. Rl 6 July 2005 15:42 (UTC)

It doesn't just claim to do it, it seems to do it, providing free for download some extremely high quality material in an under-represented area. In what way does it "stick out like a sore thumb"? Jayjg ^(talk) 7 July 2005 14:46 (UTC)

==question: preferred terminology this article refers to

It is a link to a highly specific, tiny bit of fringe science. The other links are related to open access (well, duh!), this one belongs into Torah if it is a good source which is not something I am qualified to decide. Rl 7 July 2005 15:17 (UTC)

[edit] Excessive inline external links

This article contains far too many external links inline in the text, and in many cases these could link to existing Wikipedia articles or articles should be created. External links, should they be necessary, should be grouped at the end of the article, or included discreetly as a citation using a bracket, e.g. [1]. Please consult Wikipedia:External links#How to link for the policy on when where to use external links in Wikipedia. Thanks. Lexor|Talk 12:32, July 15, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Open access publishing revert

I removed the following text from the first paragraph. First, open access publishing doesn't always require submission fees. Second, this sentence doesn't fit at this point in the document. Third, other parts of the document do cover this. Fourth, the second sentence is POV

"Open Access publishing, where the author (or a third-party acting on his/her behalf) pays to publish, has been proposed as an alternative to a subscription-based revenue model. Unfortunately, its success has been rather limited."

Liblamb 18:34, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia policy on links to Closed Access

Does Wikipedia have a policy on linking to sites which are not Open Access? In science and medicine this is sometimes necessary since these are the definitive references. They are also usually protected by strong copyright, so abstraction will have to be careful.

Would it be a useful idea to have a flag on the link indicating that the site is not Open Access (i.e. the reader would have to pay to read it)? I have done this for Mauveine.

Petermr 12:45, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

No, Wikipedia does not have any such policy. Though easily-accessed sources are preferred for verification purposes, either in addition to more authoritative hard-to-access sources or instead of equivalent offline or closed sources. -- Beland 23:40, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Criticisms of Open Access

There should be some possible downsides of the open access philosophy included in the article, at the moment anyone reading it would be unaware that any arguments against full OA exist - they're alluded to at the beginning but aren't covered later on and the later paragraphs are relentlessly positive. For example, many librarians may indeed be in favour of OA, but equally many may not wish their subscription budgets to be transferred to pay for academics' submission charges. And if these charges don't exist, where does the sustainable money come from for the publishing process? Paraffinbrain 14:38, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed - at the moment, this article feels rather biased Papervolcano 11:14, 29 July 2006 (UTC)papervolcano

Well, it's still biased as of November 2006. Since Wikipedia is open access, I guess it demonstrates one particular flaw: mass lunacy. Open Access says "yes" to the Dark Ages and unpaid contribution, and "no" to fair reward for great ideas and individual thought. I guess we're all supposed to do things for free in the future and live in a shack while doing research. I don't know about you, but I can't think when I'm eating two-day old pizza. Here, let's smoke a bong together and sleep in our own feces. Hooray for Open Access! --24.77.216.252 16:17, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Have you actually read the article? As I understand it, researchers don't get paid when people buy journals containing their work - Open Access wont affect a researcher's income (no-one is asking them to work for free). What is being asked, is that they publish with one of the many Open Access journals who then provide the work for free (traditionally, journals would keep the money for themselves). --Username132 (talk) 23:41, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Claims that open access can be duplicated by interlibrary loans, can only be from those who have never conducted research. Anyone who has, knows that the process needs an overview of all the literature - not just individual papers ordered at £10 a pop. As for the user who equates Open Access to the 'Dark Ages' of unpaid contributions, well I've got news for him ... Journals don't pay researchers for their contributions - RESEARCHERS PAY JOURNALS to publish their work. Last time I submitted to the IEEE they were charging OVER $100 PER PAGE to publish my contibution. (82.22.160.108 16:10, 18 April 2007 (UTC))

And here is a point that should be at least mentioned criticaly. In the Eysenbach-Research he says, that the oa-option costs $1000 per article. The posibility raises, that journals lower their expectations to earn the fast money. I don't say, that has to happen. But only that it is a point of critics. (09:15, 04 May 2007)

[edit] Berlin declaration

I have been told that the Wikimedia chapter Germany signed the Berlin declaration. GerardM 13:14, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How Can I Help?

How can individuals support open access? What can we do?

see What you can do to promote open access --Username132 (talk) 23:42, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Open access

At the Open access article is this section of numbers/trivia, Open_access#Open_access_by_the_numbers. Should it be there? I've not seen anything like it elsewhere on Wikipedia, and it even makes reference to the reader, saying "If you know of numbers that measure the benefits, growth, or status of open access, please add them here". Since cross-namespace redirects are not allowed due to problems with forking and Wikipedia's wider aims as an encyclopedia, should this section not be removed?

[edit] prefered terminology?

What do the people here prefer:

• subject repository
• subject-based repository
• discipline repository
• disciplinary repository
• discipline-based repository

one advantage of the -based repository is that it would be parallel with funder-based repository etc. . DGG 08:36, 1 October 2006 (UTC) (without getting into a discussion of the general merits of this approach)

I like subject suppository, myself --24.77.216.252 16:21, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other Colors

I've heard of other colors being used for different methods of OA, like the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) which is supposedly free after six months. Anyone know anything about this ? Ericblazek 23:45, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

See 'Free Access' above. This is not the same as open access.

[edit] new section

Shouldn't the newly added large section "Towards Understanding the Role of Open Repositories in the Information Landscape, Open Repositories Conference 2007" be either a separate artcle or integrated into the main article better? WP is not a blog. DGG 04:01, 2 December 2006 (UTC) DGG 04:04, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] main article

Open access is the universally used term for the concept, and should not be a redirect. its where the main article should be. I think there's consensus of the editors who have been working on it--this isnt a matter of opinion, its the use in the real world, and supported by the references. The article is being restored here, as it was on Saturday but with some improvements from subsequent edits retained. (& as specifically agreed by the other main editors)DGG 05:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] restore main article in progress

This is the correct article under the correct name. For documentation that Open access is the generally --indeed the universally--used name, see the books and documents cited in the article. For additional discussion, see the talk page for Open access journal

Many of the recent edits have greatly helped the article by improvingthe language and improving the NPOV. It is possible that not all of them have been included here while restoring, but this may take a few days.

Unfortunately, some of the edit history has gotten lost during the process, and some sections are missing. They will be restored as soon as they can be located. It is possdible that only older versions of these sections will be found, and then they will need to be updated as best wee can. I firmly believe that when we are finished, we will have a much improved article here for the main article, and much improved articles for some of the assoicated article as well.

Please make what improvements you can in the meantime. But please do not rearrange the material in a radical way without prior consultation on the talk page to attain consensus. It has been a long night restoring it to this point. I apologize to my fellow editors if I have made some errors in the process, or contributedto the confusion. Because of the unfinished state, I have placed an underconstruction tag on the page. And I hope all the redirects work. I know we'll need some work on the links, both in and out. DGG 07:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] copyedits.

Now that we've gotten the article back, I am editing it to maintain a NPOV between OA as publishing as open access journals, and OA as self-archiving in a repository. I am usingthe prefered language of those who follow those roads--"open access journals" and "self-archiving". People who run open access journals call them open access journals. (The article also needs a NPOV between pubishing OA and publishing non OA, but that will take more than a copy-edit.) DGG 19:11, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] References

The reference numbers do not match. It might be better to follow one of the standard WP formats, as shown in WP:CITES —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DGG (talk • contribs) 19:33, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] BOAI

The BOAI I and II links were to the same place, http://www.soros.org/openaccess/index.shtml, which mentions both of the methods equally. Is there any published use calling one of them BOAI I and the other BOAI II? If not, this cannot be the place to introduce the distinction. DGG 23:42, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] cleanup

A fair bit of clean-up seems to have taken place already. How does the cleanup notice get taken off? Suzannah 01:03, 15 January 2007 (UTC)suzannah

I think the basic structure is more or less agreeable to all the editors involved, though undoubtedly there will be some additions and deletions and changes to many of the details, based on the attention to detail which has always been shown to articles on this topic. The tag served the purpose of saying, yes, we know there's more to do, don't bite us about it. Anyone can put it on, anyone can put it off. I just took it off.DGG 04:42, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV

True NPOV requires that the depth of opposition not be glossed over, and that the arguments of those who think OA unnecessary, undesirable, impossible, or not worth the trouble, be presented in the strongest possible form, to match the arguments for OA that are already being presented in the strongest possible way. I expanded a little, but there is more to come. It would be better if those opposed to OA were aware of this article, so they could add their own arguments, but I will do the best for them that I can. Eventually, each individual argument, pro and con, must be sourced. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by DGG (talk • contribs) 23:16, 16 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] External Links

A large number of useful external links have been removed. Why was this ignored? --Seans Potato Business 00:19, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

The article and several related articles were totally reshuffled a few weeks ago (although with good intentions) Most of the edit history of several articles disappeared, and the articles had to be reconstructed using what prior versions could be found. From memory, I think essentially all of the links also appear in the more specific articles or as inline references in this article. If you can remember something you think is particularly useful, I'll see what I can reconstruct or if necessary recompose, with help from friends. DGG 08:49, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Relevant? — Omegatron 17:01, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] button

I almost removed the entire section on this as COI. However, the nature of the button is supported by the website of the guy who made the button & much other eprint software, which be considered an RS. The statement on usefulness depends entirely on opinion--expressed in postings on the e-mail list of the WP editor who made the edit. I don't want to fight over opinion, I have elsewhere expressed my own (somewhat skeptical) opinion of the virtues of this feature. but I have no business inserting such opinion in the article. There is certainly no consensus--I tried for neutral purely descriptive NPOV. DGG 01:52, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Naming Problem & proposed Move

In order to clear up terminology, an attempt was made by another editor to improve the open access disam page so it went to Open Access publishing, which is of course only one of the 2 methods. This completely lost access to this page, and I have reverted it. But since this is the 2nd mixup in two months, obviously the names we are accustomed to use use are confusing people. So we need to change, unfortunately. Calling this page Open access (academic publishing) has also proved confusing, and led to a move that lost content. I think I have found a good name, which would adequately reflect the actual contents of this page, lead naturally into the two methods, and not be confused with the other meanings of the phrase "open access" that have been accumulating.: Open access movement. I think that describes it, and should be recognisable by all the advocates, and the opponents. This is Sunday night, so it might be best to wait one day and make the change Monday or Tuesday, and then--alas--fix up all the many links. I will assume agreement as the default, because it is clear we must do something to prevent accidental dismemberment. And if I fix the links I don't want to have to do it a second time. DGG

I strongly urge that the defintion of Open Access simply be made explicit and crystal clear from the outset, to discourage further bright lights from scrambling it. Open Access means what is means, and the fact that some people, uninformed about Open Access, keep conflatiung it with Open Access Publishing is not a reason to do away with the Wikipedia entry on Open Access: Open Access Publishing is a subset of Open Access, not the supraset. It is illogical and simply further promulgates the misunderstanding is "open access" is given an entry as a "movement". Open access means free online access (to journal articles, in the first instance). There are two ways to provide open access. One is through the author putting the article online free. The other is through the author publishing it in a journal that pots the articel online free. There can be 100% OA without a single OA journal ever existing, so it is absurd to subsume OA under OAP. Not only absurd, but highly misleading, because there is far more OA via OA self-archiving than via OA journal publishing, and it is OA self-archiving that is about to be mandated worldwide. One of the factors delaying the adoption of the mandate is precisely the common misconception that OA means OAP. Please let Wikipedia not capitulate to and compound that misconception, but correct it! Harnad 19:10, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

The problem is errors that will be made individual editors, and not all of them will read the article or even the top two lines--and any editor can alter them at any time. (The arguments about which method will give the most OA are not relevant to the problem of finding the page in WP.) It is apparently not the least clear to a non specialist that OA publishing is the subdivision, because to a non-specialist OA is about publishing. I myself haven't the least objection to the current names, but I want a maintainable article.

I've removed the informal proposed change, since it is clear it does not have unmistakable consensus. Let's see how long it is before they get mixed up again. If that should happen, I will then propose the name change through the formal mechanism so the community can decide.

Alternative formulation: merge Open access publishing into Open access journal. DGG 02:25, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

~ Although I quite like the suggestion of "Open access movement", that's a little obscure. "Open access" will do for the main page, I feel. I like the suggestion of merging "Open access publishing" into "open access journal". Fences and windows 00:50, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Self-archiving vs open access publishing

The addition of the preamble by Stevan was awkward, and placed too great an emphasis on his own interpretation/beliefs around open access. I would be happy to see a discussion of OA with self-archiving in the article, but not right at the top. NPOV is king, right? Even the terminology used in the background of "gold" (OA publishing) and "green" (self-archiving) is not universally accepted in the OA movement.

[edit] Copy edit and rearrangement

I'd add another criticism of the article as a whole - it begins terribly with no real lead in to what it actually means or why it is argued for - instead there is a morass of jargon and dates. Would anyone unfamiliar with open access have a clue what was being discussed? The whole article has a cobbled together feel to it. I don't have the energy in me to properly edit it, but perhaps someone could give it a go? I'd propose two solutions - merge in the content from "Open access journals", "Open access publishing" and "Self-archiving", or else cut down the content of this main article substantially, and direct readers to these other articles. At the moment there is considerable duplication and confusion.

My own COI: I work for BioMed Central. I hope there won't be an edit war over the preamble, it really was out of place. Fences and windows 00:46, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I had a go at editing the first half of this article - I hope it flows better and is less repetitive now, and has less POV. I didn't get to Public and Advocacy onwards, and some of those sections really still need a heavy edit, especially the History of OA. Fences and windows 00:44, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Glad to see the changes. The former non-standard opening was intended to to answer criticisms about the unclear scope of the article, but I think the improvements you have made now make it clear enough.

In the recent past, attempts to merge in content have resulted in chaos, further complicating the article, confusing readers, and losing text. It would probably be better to move out some of the details into the separate articles.

The material in the history does duplicate much of the opening; either the history section should be moved to a separate article, or it should be retained and the opening part describing the basics considerably shortened. Personally, I prefer the latter. After moving out some of the detailed content, the article will no longer be so big that it must be split.

The section "by the numbers" is no longer being maintained, and unless there are plans to do so, it should be removed. The data is readily available elsewhere & the article already has the necessary links.

I have further made a slight copyedit. COI: I am not associated with any organization having an active role in either self-archiving or open access publishing.

Suggestions for next round of copyediting

1. Changing references to standard format using the "cite" template, and using fewer of them. At present, they don't even show the OA version of some of the published articles referred to.The template can deal with this, and also automatically handle any duplicate citations.
2. Adjusting links so they are made only at first appearance of a word.
3. Writing articles for the red-links. This may also permit some simplification of the article. DGG 22:11, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

I will leave it to seasoned Wikipedians to edit the references.

I agree that "by the numbers" was always an odd section, and so long as the content is reflected elsewhere, it won't be missed.

Some of the history of open access could be moved to earlier in the article, and then the rest can largely be removed, as it duplicates content elsewhere.

There is too much detail about self-archiving in the section "Research funders and universities" and as the Self-archiving article is so slight, much of this content can be moved there (but it will still need editing to make it less obscure).

In general, I agree that content needs moving into the other articles, and "Open access journal" needs merging with "Open access publishing".

Do we even need to stick to these headings at all? They don't seem natural headings - "Users" is a particularly strange one.

Generally speaking the jargon still needs hacking back. We need this article to be readable by those unfamiliar with open access, not just the select few of us who live and breathe it. Fences and windows 00:14, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] by the numbers

There was earlier consensus, now confirmed, that the by the numbers section would best be removed when it was no longer being actively maintained, and the time has come. They are still available for reference in the page history. DGG 06:06, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] merge question

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

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

Opinion? DGG 05:10, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

There are now at least three articles on this, open access publishing, open access journal, and open access. That seems excessive to me. Superm401 - Talk 06:59, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree. I find it excessive and confusing; and I am familiar with the topic and interested in it. Imagine how confusing it would be for a layperson seeking information. PretentiousSnot (talk) 04:10, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Public and advocacy section

I think this section needs a lot of attention. It is written in a very relaxed way, with few citations. What is the point of this section? What is it driving at? Can't we stick to facts on Wikipedia, and let other websites do OA advocacy? What on earth does "Public and advocacy" mean anyway??

An anonymous user just added a mention of HINARI, which seems fair, but they also stick the boot in to OA with the unsourced claim that "Critics of the various open access initiatives point out that there is little evidence that a significant amount of scientific literature is currently unavailable to those who would benefit from it. While no library has subscriptions to every journal that might be of benefit, virtually all published research can be acquired via interlibrary loan". Well this might be true, but doesn't this belong in the "Criticisms" section? And it needs a citation to back it up, otherwise it is simply POV. I'm guessing that the editor has some kind of COI (as do I, but I've declared mine as working for BioMed Central). It is probably no coincidence that this very issue has just cropped up on the World Association of Medical Editors listserve. As for the substance of the comment, we can't all spend our time taking trips to the British Library or filling in little forms and waiting weeks for one article to turn up... Does anyone know of citations to reputable sources or published literature detailing the problems with access to the scientific literature? Fences and windows 23:54, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, I dug up a few arguments for needing more access from Peter Suber's open access overview: Argument for Taxpayer's access: http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/newsletter/09-04-03.htm#taxpayer OECD report: "fostering broader, open access to and wide use of research data will enhance the quality and productivity of science systems worldwide". http://www.oecd.org/document/0,2340,en_2649_34487_25998799_1_1_1_1,00.html Permissions crisis: http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/writing/acrl.htm Top US universities don't subscribe to all the most cited journals (study by LANL): http://library.lanl.gov/libinfo/news/2003/200312.htm#jourbench Discussion here: http://www.earlham.edu/%7Epeters/fos/newsletter/01-02-04.htm#ullage

These might be worth working in at the right place. Fences and windows 00:13, 7 March 2007 (UTC) add them, then. Adding new reports has gotten a little behind, I'm afraid. DGG 07:01, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

A good deal has gotten out of date. Does anyone want to revise, or have we all become exhausted from discussing this?DGG (talk) 23:05, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Unsourced arguments

I removed most of the criticism section, because it consisted of a back and forth of completely unsourced arguments ("Many people say X, but many people respond Y"). I'm sure there is plenty of criticism that can be sourced for the section. Superm401 - Talk 07:01, 17 April 2008 (UTC)