University of Bristol

Mike Taylor

Open-access journalist Richard Poynder posted [a really good interview
today](https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/02/the-oa-interviews-ashley-farley-of.html)
with the Gates Foundation's Associate Officer of Knowledge & Research
Services, Ashley Farley. I feel bad about picking on one fragment of it,
but I really can't let this bit pass:

> ***RP:** As you said, Gates-funded research publications must now have
> a CC BY licence attached. They must also be made OA immediately. Does
> this imply that the Gates foundation sees no role for green OA? If it
> does see a role for green OA what is that role?*
>
> **AF:** I wouldn't say that the foundation doesn't see value or a role
> for green open access. However, the policy requires immediate access,
> reuse and copyright arrangements that green open access does not
> necessarily provide.

Before I get into this, let me say again that I have enormous admiration
for what Ashley Farley and the Gates Foundation are doing for open
access, and for open scholarship more widely. But:

The (excellent) Gates policy requires immediate access, reuse and
copyright arrangements that *gold* open access does not necessarily
provide, either. It provides them only because the Gates Foundation has
quite rightly twisted publishers' arms, and said you can only have our
APCs if you meet our requirements.

And if green open access doesn't provide immediate access and reuse,
then that is because funders have *not* twisted publishers' arms to
allow this.

It's perfectly possible to have a Green OA repository in which all the
deposited papers are available immediately and licenced using CC By.
It's perfectly possible for a funder, university or other body to have a
green OA policy that mandates this.

But it's true that no-one seems to have a green OA policy that does
this.

Why not?


Open-access journalist Richard Poynder posted a really good interview today with the Gates Foundation’s Associate Officer of Knowledge &amp; Research Services, Ashley Farley.

Green open-access does NOT mean delayed or non-commercial

You know what's wrong with scholarly publishing?

Wait, scrub that question. We'll be here all day. Let me jump straight
to the chase and tell you the *specific* problem with scholarly
publishing that I'm thinking of.

There's nowhere to go to find all open-access papers, to download their
metadata, to access it via an open API, to find out what's new, to act
as a platform for the development of new tools. Yes, there's [PubMed
Central](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/), but that's only for work
funded by the NIH. Yes, there's Google Scholar, but that has no API, and
at any moment could go the way of Google Wave and Google Reader when
Google loses interest.

Instead, we have something like [4000
repositories](http://roar.eprints.org/) out there, balkanised by
institution, by geographical region, and by subject area. They have
different UIs, different underlying data models, different APIs (if
any). They're built on different software platforms. It's a jungle out
there!

[![81zeSfGzaUL.\_SL1500\_](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/81zesfgzaul-_sl1500_.jpg?w=480&h=339){.aligncenter
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As researchers, we don't need 4000 repos. You know what we need? *One*
Repo.

Hey! That would be a good name for a project!

I've [mentioned
before](http://svpow.com/2013/11/21/mikes-talks-at-the-berlin-11-conference/) how
awesome and pro-open my employers, [Index Data](http://indexdata.com/),
are. (For those who are not regular readers, I'm a palaeontologist only
in my spare time. By day, I'm a software engineer.) Now we're working
on an index of green/gold OA publishing. Metadata of every article
across every repository and publisher. We want it to be complete, in the
sense that we will be going aggressively for the long tail as opposed to
focusing on some region or speciality, or things that are easily
harvestable by OAI-PMH or other standards. We want it to be of a high,
consistent quality in terms of metadata. We want it to be up to date.
And most importantly, we want it to be fully open for all and any kind
of re-use, by any other actor. This will include downloadable data
files, OAI-PMH access, search-retrieve web services, embeddable widgets
and more. We also envisage a [Linked
Data](http://www.w3.org/DesignIssues/LinkedData.html) representation
with a CRUD interface that allows third parties to contribute
supplemental information, entity reconciliation, tagging, etc.

Instead of 4000 fragments, one big, meaty chunk of data.

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Because we at Index Data have spent the last ten years helping
aggregators and publishers and others getting access to
difficult-to-access information through all kinds of crazy mechanisms,
we have a unique combination of the skills, the tools, and the desire to
pursue this venture.

So The One Repo is born. At the noment, we have:

- Harvesting set up for an initial set of 20 repositories.
- [A demonstrator](http://onerepo.net/) of one possible UI.
- [A whitepaper](http://onerepo.net/onerepo-whitepaper.pdf) describing
  the motivation and some of the technical aspects.
- [A blog](http://blog.onerepo.net/) about the project's progress.
- [An advisory board](http://blog.onerepo.net/advisory-board/) of some
  of the brightest, most experienced and wisest people in the world of
  open access.

We've been flying under the radar for the last month and a bit. Now
we're ready for the world to know what we're up to.

The One Repo is go!


You know what’s wrong with scholarly publishing? Wait, scrub that question. We’ll be here all day. Let me jump straight to the chase and tell you the
<em>
 specific
</em>
problem with scholarly publishing that I’m thinking of.  There’s nowhere to go to find all open-access papers, to download their metadata, to access it via an open API, to find out what’s new, to act as a platform for the development of new tools.

Introducing The One Repo

Provoked by Mike Eisen's post today, [The inevitable failure of
parasitic green open access](http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1710),
I want to briefly lay out the possible futures of scholarly publishing
as I see them. There are two: one based on what we now think of as Gold
OA, and one on what we think of as Green OA.

Eisen is of course quite right that the legacy publishers only ever gave
their blessing to Green OA (self-archiving) so long as they didn't see
it as a threat, so the end of that blessing isn't a surprise. (I think
it's this observation that [Richard Poynder
misread](https://twitter.com/RickyPo/status/603214034238836737) as "an
OA advocate legitimising Elsevier's action"!) It was inevitable
that this blessing would be withdrawn as Green started to become more
mainstream --- and that's exactly what we've seen, with Elsevier
responding to the global growth in Green OA mandates with a [regressive
new
policy](https://www.elsevier.com/connect/elsevier-updates-its-policies-perspectives-and-services-on-article-sharing)
that has rightly [attracted the
ire](https://www.coar-repositories.org/activities/advocacy-leadership/petition-against-elseviers-sharing-policy/)
of everyone who's looked closely at it.

So I agree with him that what he terms "parasitic Green OA" ---
self-archiving alongside the established journal system --- is
ultimately doomed. The bottom line is that while we as a community
continue to give control of our work to the legacy publishers --- follow
closely here --- legacy publishers will control our work. We know that
these corporations' interests are directly opposed to those of
[authors](http://svpow.com/2011/09/30/authors-versus-publishers/ "Authors versus publishers"),
[science](http://svpow.com/2012/01/16/new-in-the-guardian-academic-publishers-have-become-the-enemies-of-science/ "New in the Guardian: Academic publishers have become the enemies of science"),
[customers](http://svpow.com/2012/01/27/publishers-invent-a-whole-new-form-of-evil-suing-their-customers/ "Publishers invent a whole new form of evil: suing their customers"),
[libraries](http://svpow.com/2013/02/16/publishers-versus-libraries/ "Publishers versus libraries"),
and indeed [everyone but
themselves](http://svpow.com/2012/05/18/publishers-versus-everyone/). So
leaving them in control of the scholarly record is unacceptable.

What are our possible futures?

[![Gold
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We may find that in ten years' time, all subscriptions journals are gone
(perhaps except from a handful of boutique journals that a few people
like, just as a few people prefer the sound of vinyl over CDs or MP3s).

We may find that essentially all new scholarship is published in
open-access journals such as those of BioMed Central, PLOS, Frontiers
and PeerJ. That is a financially sustainable path, in that publishers
will be paid for the services they provide through APCs. (No doubt,
volunteer-run and subsidised zero-APC journals will continue to thrive
alongside them, as they do today.)

We may even find that some of the Gold OA journals of the future are run
by organisations that are presently barrier-based publishers. I don't
think it's impossible that some rump of Elsevier, Springer et al. will
survive the coming subscription-journals crash, and go on to compete on
the level playing-field of Gold OA publishing. (I think they will
struggle to compete, and certainly won't be able to make anything like
the kind of money they do now, but that's OK.)

This is the Gold-OA future that Mike Eisen is pinning his hopes on ---
and which he has done as much as anyone alive to bring into existence. I
would be very happy with that outcome.

[![Kcngb8jBi](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/kcngb8jbi.jpeg?w=480&h=278){.aligncenter
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While I agree with Eisen that what he terms "parasitic Green" can't last
--- legacy publishers will stamp down on it as soon as it starts to be
truly useful --- I do think there is a possible Green-based future. It
just doesn't involve traditional journals.

One of the striking things about the Royal Society's recent [Future of
Scholarly Scientific Communication
meetings](http://svpow.com/2015/04/20/live-blog-the-future-of-scholarly-scientific-communication/ "Live-blog: the Future of Scholarly Scientific Communication")
was that during the day-two breakout session, so many of the groups
independently came up with more or less the same proposal. The
system that [Dorothy Bishop expounded in the
Guardian](http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2015/may/12/will-traditional-science-journals-disappear)
after the second meeting is also pretty similar --- and since she wasn't
at the first meeting, I have to conclude that she also came up with it
independently, further corroborating the sense that it's an approach
whose time has come.

(In fact, I started drafting an SV-POW! myself at that meeting
describing the system that our break-out group came up with. But that
was before all the other groups revealed their proposals, and it became
apparent that ours was part of a blizzard, rather than a unique
snowflake.)

Here are the features characterising the various systems that people
came up with. (Not all of these features were in all versions of the
system, but they all cropped up more than once.)

- It's based around a preprint archive: as with arXiv, authors can
  publish manuscripts there after only basic editorial checks: is this a
  legitimate attempt at scholarship, rather than spam or a political
  opinion?
- Authors solicit reviews, [as we did for for *Barosaurus*
  preprint](http://svpow.com/2013/09/23/our-new-barosaurus-paper-is-up-as-a-preprint-at-peerj/ "Our new Barosaurus paper is up as a preprint at PeerJ"),
  and interested others can offer unsolicited reviews.
- Reviewers assign numeric scores to manuscripts as well as giving
  opinions in prose.
- The weight given to review scores is affected by the reputation
  of reviewers.
- The reputation of reviewers is affected by other users' judgements
  about their comments, and also by their reputation as authors.
- A stable user reputation emerges using a pagerank-like feedback
  algorithm.
- Users can acquire reputation by authoring, reviewing or both.
- Manuscripts have a reputation based on their score.
- There is no single moment of certification, when a manuscript is
  awarded a "this is now peer-reviewed" bit.

I think it's very possible that, instead of the all-Gold future outlined
above, we'll land up with something like this. Not every detail will
work out the way I suggested here, of course, but we may well get
something along these lines, where the emphasis is on very rapid initial
publication and continuously acquired reputation, and not on [a mythical
and misleading "this paper is peer-reviewed"
stamp](http://svpow.com/2013/05/03/peer-review-does-not-mean-we-can-trust-a-published-paper/ "Peer review does not mean we can trust a published paper").

(There are a hundred questions to be asked and answered about such
systems: do we want one big system, or a network of many? If the latter,
how will they share reputation data? How will the page-rank-like
reputation algorithm work? Will it need to be different in different
fields of scholarship? I don't want to get sidetracked by such issues at
this point, but I do want to acknowledge that they exist.)

Is this "Green open access"? It's not what we usually mean by the term;
but in as much as it's about scholars depositing their own work in
archives, yes, it's Green OA in a broader sense.

(I think some confusion arises because we've got into the habit of
calling deposited manuscripts "preprints". That's a misnomer on two
counts: they're not printed, and they needn't be pre-anything.
Manuscripts in arXiv *may* go onto be published in journals, but that's
not necessary for them to be useful in advancing scholarship.)

[![green_and_gold_by_n8iveattitude1-d40wtqv](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/green_and_gold_by_n8iveattitude1-d40wtqv.jpg?w=480&h=300){.aligncenter
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So where now? We have two possible open-access futures, one based on
open-access publishing and one based on open-access self-archiving. For
myself, I would be perfectly happy with either of these futures --- I'm
not particularly clear in my own mind which is best, but they're both
enormously better than what we have today.

A case can be made that the Green-based future is maybe a better place
to arrive, but that the Gold-based future makes for an
easier transition. It doesn't require researchers to do anything
fundamentally different from what they do today, only to do it in
open-access journals; whereas the workflow in the Green-based approach
outlined above would be a more radical departure. (Ironically, this is
the opposite of what has often been said in the past: that the advantage
of Green is that it offers a more painless upgrade path for researchers
not sold on the importance of OA. That's only true so long as Green is,
in Eisen's terms, "parasitic" --- that is, so long as the repositories
contain only second-class versions of papers that have been published
conventionally behind paywalls.)

In my own open-access advocacy, then, I'm always unsure whether to push
Gold or Green. In [my Richard Poynder
interview](http://poynder.blogspot.fi/2013/07/open-access-where-are-we-what-still.html),
when asked "What should be the respective roles of Green and Gold OA?" I
replied:

> This actually isn't an issue that I get very excited about: Open is so
> much more important than Green or Gold. I suppose I slightly prefer
> Gold in that it's better to have one single definitive version of each
> article; but then we could do that with Green as well if only we'd
> stop thinking of it as a stopgap solution while the "real" article
> remains behind paywalls.

Two and a half years on, I pretty much stand by that (and also by the
caveats regarding [the RCUK policy's handing of Gold and
Green](http://svpow.com/2013/02/22/the-progressive-erosion-of-the-rcuk-open-access-policy/ "The progressive erosion of the RCUK open access policy")
that followed this quote in the interview.)

But I'm increasingly persuaded that the variety of Green OA that we only
get by the grace and favour of the legacy publishers is not a viable
long-term strategy. Elsevier's new regressive policy was always going to
come along eventually, and it won't be the last shot fired in this war.
If Green is going to win the world, it will be by pulling away from
conventional journals and establishing itself as a valid mode of
publication in its own right. (Again, much as arXiv has done.)

[![1668053_3_201143_252973_4_024](https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2015/05/1668053_3_201143_252973_4_024.jpg?w=480&h=285){.aligncenter
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Here's my concern, though. [Paul Royser's
response](https://twitter.com/PaulRoyster/status/603204244485722112) to
Eisen's post was "Distressing to see the tone and rancor of OA advocates
in disagreement. My IR is a "parasite"? Really?" Now, I think that
comment was based on a misunderstanding of Eisen's post (and maybe only
on reading the title) but the very fact that such a misunderstanding was
possible should give us pause.

[Richard Poynder's
reading](https://twitter.com/RickyPo/status/603215571912626178) later in
the same thread was also cautionary: "Elsevier will hope that the push
back will get side-tracked by in-fighting ... I think it will take
comfort if the OA movement starts in-fighting instead of pushing back."

Folks, let's not fall for that.

We all know that Stevan Harned, among many others, is committed to
Green; and that Mike Eisen, among many others, has huge investment in
Gold. We can, and should, have rigorous discussions about the strengths
and weaknesses of both approaches. We should expect that OA advocates
who share the same goal but have different backgrounds will differ over
tactics, and sometimes differ robustly.

But there's a world of difference between differing robustly and
differing rancorously. Let's all (me included) be sure we stay on the
right side of that line. **Let's keep it clear in our minds who the
enemy is: not people who want to use a different strategy to free
scholarship, but those who want to keep it locked up.**

And here ends my uncharacteristic attempt to position myself as The
Nice, Reasonable One in this discussion --- a role much better suited to
Peter Suber or Stephen Curry, but it looks like I got mine written first
🙂


Provoked by Mike Eisen’s post today, The inevitable failure of parasitic green open access, I want to briefly lay out the possible futures of scholarly publishing as I see them.

Messaggi di Rogue Scholar

Green open-access does NOT mean delayed or non-commercial

Introducing The One Repo

Green and Gold: the possible futures of Open Access