OA to refereed journal articles can be provided in two ways: by publishing in an OA journal that provides OA (OA publishing, "Gold" OA) or by publishing in a non-OA journals and self-archiving the article ("Green" OA). Hence Green OA, which is full-blooded OA, is OA, but it is not OA publishing -- just as apples are fruit, but fruit are not apples.
Hence the many OA mandates that are being adopted by universities and research funders worldwide are not Gold OA publishing mandates, they are Green OA self-archiving mandates.
It is not doing the OA cause, or progress towards universal OA one bit of good to keep portraying it as a publishing reform movement, with Gold OA publishing as its sole and true goal.
The OA movement's sole and true goal is OA itself, universal OA....
(I post this out of daily frustration at continuing to see OA spoken of as synonymous with OA publishing, and of even hearing Green OA self-archiving mandates misdescribed as "OA publishing mandates" [e.g., 1, 2].) ...
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/11/2008 02:16:00 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.
