Summary: There are two forms of OA: free access online, and free access plus re-use licenses of various kinds. The first is provisionally called "OA1" and the second "OA2". These are place-holders pending better terms to be proposed shortly. Green OA self-archiving can in principle provide either OA1 or OA2. All authors [of peer-reviewed journal articles] want OA1 (i.e., all authors want their published articles freely accessible online). Nevertheless, most authors still think it is not possible to make their articles freely accessible online (for at least 34 reasons, each of them leading to Zeno's Paralysis, all of them groundless, the most frequent ones being that authors think it would violate copyright, bypass peer review, or entail a lot of work on their part). So although all peer-reviewed journal article authors (and definitely not not true of all book authors, software authors, music authors, video authors) do want their work to be freely accessible to all would-be users, not just those who can afford the access tolls, most (85%) of them still don't make their articles freely accessible online (by self-archiving them). That is why Green OA self-archiving mandates by researchers' universities and funders are needed: To cure refereed journal article authors of the 34 unfounded phobias of Zeno's Paralysis.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/08/2008 06:43:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
