Imperial College London

Henry Rzepa

The title of this post refers to the site <http://howopenisit.org/> 
which is in effect a license scraper for journal articles. In the past
2-3 years in the UK, we have been able to make use of grants to our
university to pay publishers to convert our publications into Open
Access (also called GOLD). I thought I might check out a few of my
recent publications to see what <http://howopenisit.org/> makes of them.

This was catalysed by
an[ article](https://www.researchprofessional.com/0/rr/news/uk/open-access/2015/2/22-universities-spent--9m-on-open-access-in-2014--reveals-Jisc-data.html){target="_blank"} which
revealed that UK universities spent £9M in 2014 on the purchase of such
openness. One of the "challenges" identified is the difficulty in
converting such payment into an article that actually is open.
Apparently, publishers make not a few mistakes in their quality controls
in ensuring it is so, relying on irate authors informing them of such
mistakes. This can be quite tedious to do, and so a tool that largely
automates this checking is most useful. So here we go.

1.  doi: 10.1039/C3SC53416B\[cite\]10.1039/C3SC53416B\[/cite\] This is a
    good start. The output looks like thus. Green is GOLD so to speak.
    Well done the Royal Society of Chemistry.  
    [![10.1039:C3SC53416B](http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1039C3SC53416B.jpg){.aligncenter
    .size-full .wp-image-13388 decoding="async" width="440"
    srcset="https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1039C3SC53416B.jpg 1228w, https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1039C3SC53416B-300x83.jpg 300w, https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1039C3SC53416B-1024x284.jpg 1024w, https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1039C3SC53416B-900x249.jpg 900w"
    sizes="(max-width: 1228px) 100vw, 1228px"}](http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1039C3SC53416B.jpg)
2.  doi: 10.1021/ci500302p\[cite\]10.1021/ci500302p\[/cite\] from the
    ACS this time. Pink, but at least *free to read*. Quite what that
    means is less certain. There is an adage, "[the right to read means
    the right to min](http://www.contentmine.org){target="_blank"}e"
    presumably means this article is OK to mine, but then why does it
    not say
    so?[![10.1021:ci500302p](http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1021ci500302p.jpg){.aligncenter
    .size-full .wp-image-13389 decoding="async" width="440"
    srcset="https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1021ci500302p.jpg 1133w, https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1021ci500302p-300x65.jpg 300w, https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1021ci500302p-1024x222.jpg 1024w, https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1021ci500302p-900x195.jpg 900w"
    sizes="(max-width: 1133px) 100vw, 1133px"}](http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1021ci500302p.jpg)
3.  doi: 10.1002/anie.201405238\[cite\]10.1002/anie.201405238\[/cite\].
    Pink again, but the colour now simply means no information about the
    license could be obtained from the publisher (Wiley).
    [![10.1002:anie.201405238](http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1002anie.201405238.jpg){.aligncenter
    .size-full .wp-image-13390 decoding="async" width="440"
    srcset="https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1002anie.201405238.jpg 1149w, https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1002anie.201405238-300x39.jpg 300w, https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1002anie.201405238-1024x133.jpg 1024w, https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1002anie.201405238-900x117.jpg 900w"
    sizes="(max-width: 1149px) 100vw, 1149px"}](http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/10.1002anie.201405238.jpg)

I ran a few more and sadly the third of the above, "no information" was
the most common response. And the legal response is invariably that if
no information can be obtained, the answer is NO, it is not free to
read. In other words, not providing a license is just as bad as saying
it's not free to read.

Article aggregators such as Symplectic do not yet perform the service
above (which to be fair is still in beta), and so I cannot yet check how
many GOLD articles there are to my name. I think it should be about 8,
and I might add that the time I have to spend in arranging for this to
happen is not negligible. Hell, I could probably have found a few more
reactions mechanism in the time I have spent on achieving GOLD. This is
one of those topics which would be interesting to revisit say in five
years time to see how the world has changed. So I leave this little time
capsule and will update it then!

::: {.wp_orcid_field}
[https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8635-8390](https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8635-8390){target="_blank"
rel="author"}
:::


The title of this post refers to the site http://howopenisit.org/  which is in effect a license scraper for journal articles. In the past 2-3 years in the UK, we have been able to make use of grants to our university to pay publishers to convert our publications into Open Access (also called GOLD). I thought I might check out a few of my recent publications to see what http://howopenisit.org/ makes of them.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

How-open-is-it?