[In all the talk about OA journals or the gold road] we have forgotten about green! The motivation for an author to publish in a gold journal rather than a non-gold one is that it will maximize access and impact. But self-archiving one's own article will have the same effect!...Moreover, the benefits of institutional self-archiving trump merely publishing in a gold journal, because the institutional archive also enhances the visibility and impact of the researcher's institution, it is a means of record-keeping for the institution's own assets, and it is a means of monitoring, evaluating and rewarding institutional research performance. So chances are that even articles published in golden journals will need to be self-archived in the author's institutional archive. An institutional policy of requiring researchers to self-archive all their journal article output - with which 81% of researchers worldwide have now said they would comply willingly, and which has been recommended for adoption by the UK Select Committee, the US Congress and the Berlin Declaration - looks as if it will soon be adopted by all the research funding councils in the UK (RCUK) and has already been adopted by the CERN megalab (improving on an earlier, weaker policy adopted by the Wellcome Trust, which allowed a 6-month delay, and a still weaker policy adopted by the National Institutes of Health, requesting instead of requiring, and allowing a 12-month delay). So whereas the golden road of OA publishing may prove to be the road of the future for journal publishing, the road to maximizing journal article access, usage and impact right now is the green road of OA self-archiving.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/25/2005 01:16:00 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.
