(1) Green OA today is largely about self-archiving the peer-reviewed final draft of journal articles in the author’s OAI-compliant Institutional Repository (see the Registry of Open Access Repositories: ROAR) rather than just in a central repository like Arxiv or the author’s home page.

(2) The important thing in last week’s joint posting was that it recognizes the fact that there are in fact two forms of OA: (online) access free of cost barriers and access free of permission barriers.

The current discussion is only about choosing the right descriptive term for the two forms of OA, because the long description above (“free of X barriers”) is too long and awkward, whereas “weak OA” for price OA, though correct as a description of the its logical condition (a necessary condition) has negative connotations that might make it harder for institutions to arrive at a consensus on adopting Green OA self-archiving mandates (see ROARMAP) that are so crucial for the growth of OA.

Problems have also been pointed out with “full OA” for permission OA, because permission OA is a matter of degree (depending on how strong a CC license one chooses).

The latest proposal is “gratis OA” for price OA and “libre OA” for permission OA.

Suggested names posted to the American Scientist Open Access Forum are being tallied and will be posted in a batch, rather than as they come.

Stevan Harnad