Talk:Open access/Archive 1

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. ^[1]"

Silent1 02:35, 17 October 2011 (UTC)

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)

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)

We really should mention the Finch committee and related developments: , . --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 15:24, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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 Wikipedia:Workshop/Open_Science_Workshop_(Geneva)/References#Main_References. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:23, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

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

I've started pruning the list. I'm tempted to be bold and just delete almost all of the rest. There are now thousands of similar articles about open access, so there's no need to list any particular ones except perhaps truly important ones. Lawsonstu (talk) 09:28, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

I've now deleted over half of the further reading/external links. I think it makes for a more useful encyclopedia article. If anyone thinks there's vital information in the ones that got removed, please work that information into the article and reference it. Lawsonstu (talk) 13:11, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello! I've just added some external links, but I agree with you that it would be better to reference them in the text. My problem is only that I find the whole article very long already, so it is not easy to add more content without making the reading more complicated ;) Any suggestions on how to add the content (sub-titles, create other articles)? Michela Vignoli (talk) 13:53, 19 September 2013 (CET)

Hi, I've moved the list to here, and will delete it from the article. That way we still have this (very useful) list which can then be used to add content/better reference the article, but doesn't fill up the article page with so many extra external links. Lawsonstu (talk) 07:59, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

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)

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)

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 Wikipedia:HYPHEN#Hyphens, 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 Kwamikagami. 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)

Kwamikagami, 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)

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.^[1]

Ankababel (talk) 11:34, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Ankababel 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)

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)

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#Open_access_release_request. It would be nice for Wikipedia to provide a usable request form. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:17, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

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)

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)

Randykitty 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 Wikipedia: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 {{Main|...}} 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.

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)

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)

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.

• Suber, Peter (21 October 2013). "Open access: six myths to put to rest". theguardian.com. Retrieved 23 October 2013.

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)

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)

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)

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

Any opinions? T.Shafee(Evo&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&Evo)^talk 01:20, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

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&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)

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#Correlation between impact factor and quality
• Open_access#Representativeness of proprietary databases

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&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:

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.

T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 12:10, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

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:

• #Correlation_between_impact_factor_and_quality → Impact factor
• #Views_of_peer_review & #Peer_review_and_trust → Peer review

Will make another effort to move the editing forward in the coming week. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 12:05, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

I've done some further work integrating the new content (aiming to retain the OA-specific aspects) and also updating much of the old

• 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.

I've also done some more updates of older content

• 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 {{Primary sources}} tag.

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&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 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)

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)

@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&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)

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

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&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)

Hi! I'm an library science grad student taking a look at this page as part of a Wikipedia editing assignment for a course on Information Policy. This page has been identified by our instructor as needing some work, both structurally and for minor issues. I'm going to be making some edits, most likely starting with working on wordiness and readability but I wanted to introduce myself as you may be seeing a lot of edits from a new user! I'm reviewing the talk page for areas that have been previously highlighted for improvement. Feel free to share priorities or feedback.~~~~ ACBatSLIS (talk) 18:30, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

Baldwin, Peter (2023). Athena unbound : why and how scholarly knowledge should be free for all. Cambridge, Massachusetts. ISBN 9780262048002.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262048002/athena-unbound/

I think this book tries to be a complete story of open access, and as such, should be a resource for developing this article. I do not yet have a copy. Bluerasberry (talk) 18:43, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

The "Venn diagram highlighting the key features of different types of open access in scholarly publishing" contains mistakes. For example Gold OA and Diamond OA are exclusive, with Gold OA restricted to "author pays", whereas the definition of Gold OA in the page specifies correctly:

The majority of gold open access journals charging APCs follow an "author-pays" model,[13] although this is not an intrinsic property of gold OA.

The diagram also includes two types of "Vanity press", neither of which are defined in the page nor in the source article . Marcrr (talk) 15:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I agree. The conflation of "gold" with "APC" is a long standing and frustrating mistake for many. If reproduced here, it should be explained that some people define "gold OA" as for-fee even though the label was not intended to mean that. Diprose, et al. reflect on this problem (https://doi.org/10.3998/jep.3398). They propose a less complicated set of labels without really resolving the problem that these labels are meant to describe both how things are paid for and what version they might be. They focus on the latter. -- Jaireeodell (talk) 20:29, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I've removed the diagram. There's no need to keep such obviously incorrect imagery. Nemo 18:48, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

FAIR and open access have nothing to do with each other.

A FAIR object can in fact be not open access. They are two different concepts. It's bizarre to see FAIR included in an article on open access.

This could be seen as a personalised assertion, so to support this I refer to external sources including: 1. https://www.go-fair.org/resources/faq/ask-question-difference-fair-data-open-data/

"FAIR is not equal to Open: The ‘A’ in FAIR stands for ‘Accessible under well defined conditions’. There may be legitimate reasons to shield data and services generated with public funding from public access... None of these [FAIR] principles necessitate data being “open” or “free”."

I propose therefore deleting the section on FAIR in this article. Metacladistics (talk) 08:42, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

I came across this opinion piece today & then went to www.openlibhums.org. I am not sure where to put this, but I thought of this talk page as a starting point. Perhaps someone can point me to a better place to post this.

• Abizadeh, Arash (2024-07-16). "Opinion: Academic journals are a lucrative scam – and we're determined to change that". the Guardian. Retrieved 2024-07-19.
• "OLH journals". Open Library of Humanities. Retrieved 2024-07-19.
• "Who we are". Open Library of Humanities. Retrieved 2024-07-19.

Peaceray (talk) 20:28, 19 July 2024 (UTC)