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

[Stevan Harnad]

PS I forgot to reply to the most important point in David's query: The  
relation between point 1 (the vast majority of articles are neither  
Green OA nor Gold OA) and point 7 (the vast majority of the top  
journals -- and indeed also the vast majority of all journals -- are  
Green OA) is simple this:

Although the vast majority of journals endorse Green OA self-archiving  
by the author (and are hence Green) the vast majority of authors do  
not yet *act upon* this Green light to deposit! That is why the  
mandates are needed. Another relevant datum is the vast majority (95%)  
of authors surveyed (by Alma Swan of Key Perspectives, for JISC), in  
all fields and all countries, have stated that they would comply with  
a mandate to self-archive from their universities and/or their funders  
(over 80% of them say they would do it willingly), the vast majority  
do *not* do it spontaneously, without a mandate.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11006/

That is the basis for my overall conclusion, below.

SH

On 15-Jun-09, at 3:02 PM, Stevan Harnad wrote:

> 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