[Open-access] Green Gold Gratis Libre

Fri Feb 24 13:33:23 UTC 2012

This almost all looks right to me.

On 24 February 2012 13:21, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> We had a brief discussion at the end of today's skype on Green/Gold and Open
> Access. We agree that Green and Gold do not define whether something
> is/isNot BOAI-OK. It may be useful to define what some of these are:
>
> LIBRE: This is effectively synonymous with BOAI.
>
> GRATIS: This is free of financial charge. That is all. It does not
> guarantee:
>   * re-use rights
>   * permanency (free beer is usually constrained in time)
>   * lack of technical constraints. (Users may be required to register,
> receive adverts, etc.)
>   * considerations of access (for humans, machines, etc.)

Yes.  It might be worth making the point that CC-BY is a libre licence
(the canonical one, really) whereas CC-BY-NC is merely a gratis
licence.

(We probably don't want to get into discussing CC-BY-SA, since there
are validly differing opinions on where that is more or less free than
CC-BY, just as people disagree over whether the GNU GPL or Modified
BSD licence is more free for software.)

> GREEN: The means that one of the following has put "a scholarly publication"
> on the web:
>   * a human author or their representative
>   * the human's employer/institution/department
>   * a publisher acting on the behalf of the author. An example is that a
> publisher may deposit the manuscript in an institutional repo

Yes.  This doesn't exhaust the possibilities, either.  For example,
the maintainer of a green subject-specific repositiory might reposit.
Basically, I think it's anyone but the publisher.

>   Undefined aspects are:
>     - length of greenness. An author may not guarantee infinite visibility
>     - rights. These are usually poorly defined
>     - time of deposit (i.e. is there a delay after publication)
> [...]
>
> GOLD: This means that a publisher has put the material on the web as part of
> the publication process. Undefined aspects:
>     - length of goldness. this is normally infinite
>     - rights. These are sometimes CC-BY but often NC or poorly defined
>     - time of deposit (i.e. is there a window after publication)

Since these aspects are the same for Green and Gold, it's better not
to list them twice, but just to have a separate section at the end on
what neither Green nor Gold guarantees.

In the end, the ONLY difference between green and gold is who makes
the article physically available.  In gold, it's the publisher, in
green it's someone else.  You could characterise the difference as:
does the publisher actually HELP, or merely not hinder?

On permanence: there is a difference between how permanently something
has access rights (e.g. releasing under any CC licence is irrevocable)
and how permanently something is hosted.  In practice, anything CC'd
is free forever because it gets mirrored across the world.

> It is unclear whether a publisher who makes material GRATIS after a period
> makes that material "Green". Some Green publishing requires that
> publications are only available on certain sites and not on others

Again this is nothing to do with green vs. gold.  It's about the licence.

> We agree that Green-CC-BY is possible (e.g. nature Precedings). Green does
> not imply any requirement to announce or register the site(s)..

Yes.  Gold-CC-BY-SA is also possible, e.g. Elsevier sponsored
articles.  (BTW., I have a blog post about there coming out this
evening.  Anyone who doesn't follow my blog
http://svpow.wordpress.com/ probably should at the moment -- it's
almost entirely about open issues.)

> Please hack any of this. We can then start to put it on the wiki

That will be helpful.

-- Mike.