Budapest-Bethesda-Berlin Open Access is the only true Open Access

Regarding the strong/weak OA discussion at

http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?m=200805

I am not convinced that the Harnad/Suber agreement is a great progress.

For Harnad/Suber are documents strong OA even when they don’t qualify for OA according the BBB definition. CC-NC or CC-ND are for me definitively not compatible with the BBB definition.

For Harnad weak OA has pejorative connotations. For me “strong” has too positive connotations.

Embargoed and partial Open Access (Washington Principles for Free Access) is better than Toll-Only-Access.

Immediate Access free of cost is better than embargoed and partial Open Access.

Open Access documents under CC-BY-NC, CC-BY-ND, CC-BY-NC-ND licenses are better than fair use only.

CC-BY is better than the not so free CC licenses.

Nobody would contradict. But that isn’t the problem. We need three neutral names instead of weak/strong.

(1) I would like to call CC-BY (attribution only) OA true or full OA because it is a necessary condition for OA according BBB.

If an institution doesn’t want accept the consequences of BBB regarding re-use it should not sign the Berlin declaration.

(2) Weaker CC-licenses are only partially removing permission barriers. There remain important barriers. Thus I cannot call this “strong”.

Harnad calls this “Permission-Barrier-Free” but this ignores that FREE has a clear meaning. For important research contexts CC-NC doesn’t remove a barrier. The documents are not “free” according the definition at
http://freedomdefined.org/Definition

(3) Cost-free Access is indeed “weak”.

We should not intimidate the other side. Calling CC-NC “strong” makes me angry. For Harnad (and Rentier) “weak” is too pejorative. For me Rentier’s suggestion “basic” for “weak” is too positive.

(1) CC-BY = BBB OA
(2) Re-use OA with remaining restrictions
(3) Cost-free Access.

We need incentives that funders, repository managers, and journal publishers are going in the direction of full OA id est CC-BY. The OA journal seal by SPARC is a great step in this direction. The strong/weak dichotomy isn’t.


Autor: Klaus Graf

Historiker und Archivar, Blogger

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