On Proportion and Strategy: OA, non-OA, Gold-OA, Paid-OA

[Stevan Harnad]

On 15-Jun-09, at 1:12 PM, David E. Wojick wrote:

> Steve, for us non-experts in OA (this is not an OA listserv) can you  
> explain briefly what Gold and Green OA are in these proportions?  
> Especially Green OA in reference to proportions 1 & 7. They seem to  
> be two different measurements. The vast majority of journals are GOA  
> but the vast majority of articles are not.
>
> I don't see how your conclusions follow from these simple  
> proportions, not without additional premises. Perhaps you can  
> explain that.
>
> David

David, with pleasure (and my apologies for assuming transparency). The  
proportions are,
I think, very important not just for OA reasons, but for bibliometric  
reasons too.
Please see the further explanations below. -- Stevan

>> As I do not have exact figures on most of the 9 proportions I
>> highlight below, I am expressing them only in terms of "vast  
>> majority"
>> (75% or higher) vs. "minority" (25% or lower) -- rough figures that  
>> we
>> can be confident are approximately valid. They turn out to have at
>> least one rather important implication.
>>
>> 1. The vast majority of current (peer-reviewed) journal articles are
>> not Open Access (OA) (i.e., they are neither self-archived as Green  
>> OA
>> nor published in a Gold OA journal).

A peer-reviewed journal article is Green OA if it has been made OA by  
its author,
http://www.nature.com/nature/focus/accessdebate/21.html
by depositing it in an Open Access Repository (preferably his own  
institution's OAI-compliant Institutional Repository)
http://roar.eprints.org/
from which anyone can access it for free on the web.

A peer-reviewed journal article is Gold OA if it has been published in  
a Gold OA journal
http://www.doaj.org/
from which anyone can access it for free on the web.

There are at least 25,000 peer-reviewed journals, across all fields  
worldwide.
http://www.ulrichsweb.com/ulrichsweb/

>> 2. The vast majority of journals are Green OA.

Of the 10,000+ journals whose OA policies are indexed in SHERPA/Romeo,
over 90% endorse immediate deposit and immediate OA by the author
63% for the author's peer-reviewed final draft (the postprint), and a  
further
32% for the pre-refereeing preprint.
http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php

>> 3. The vast majority of journals are not Gold OA.

Currently 4221 journals are Gold OA according to DOAJ

(Note that the c. 10,000 journals in Romeo do not include most of the
Gold OA journals, although these would all be classed as Green, and
all Gold OA journals also endorse Green OA self-archiving. Romeo
does, however, index just about all of the top journals.)

>> 4. The vast majority of citations are to the top minority of articles
>> (the Pareto/Seglen 90/10 rule).
>> http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/474-guid.html
>>
>> 5. The vast majority of journals (or journal articles) are not among
>> the top minority of journals (or journal articles).
>>
>> 6. The vast majority of the top journals are not Gold OA.
>>
>> 7. The vast majority of the top journals are Green OA.
>>
>> 8. The vast majority of Gold OA journals are not paid-publication  
>> journals.
>> http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2009/06/careful-confirmation-that-70-of-oa.html
>>
>> 9. The vast majority of the top Gold OA journals are paid- 
>> publication journals.
>>
>> I think two strong conclusions follow from this:
>>
>> The fact that the vast majority of Gold OA journals are not
>> paid-publication journals is not relevant if we are concerned about
>> providing OA to the articles in the top journals.
>>
>> Green OA is the vastly underutilized means of providing OA.
>>
>> The implication is that it is far more productive (of OA) for
>> universities and funders to mandate Green OA than to fund Gold OA.

There are somewhere around 10,000 universities and research institutions
worldwide. So far, 51 of them -- plus 36 research funders -- have  
mandated
(i.e. required) their peer-reviewed research output to be made Green OA
by depositing it in an OA repository.
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/

>> Stevan Harnad