* grey padlock for "closed access"

* yellow-ish or grey-ish padlock for "embargoed" or "CC-BY-NC and CC-BY-ND" articles.

* golden padlock for "CC-BY" and "CC-BY-SA"

There are many approaches that we could take: 

for example, we can intend "open access" literally, and give the golden padlock (or another icon) to any "gratis" article, 

or we can intend "Open Access", be more strict and give it to "libre" ones. 

Leslie, in the skype call, mentioned the "how open is it" leaflet:

We have somehow 6 dimensions:

1 Reader Rights 

2 Reuse Rights 

3 Copyrights 

4 Author Posting Rights 

5 Automatic Posting 

6 Machine Readability

The situation is similar in the Linked Open Data world, and they solved that with a star classification system: http://5stardata.info/

We can go in that direction, and develop our own star/color/whatever system...

But for the purpose of the signalling OA in Wikipedia I would stick with "user rights", namely

Remembering that we need to analyze at the article-level, and we don't care about journals (not for now), things get simpler.

So, this is my break down. 

Articles could either be:

* gratis or

* non gratis  --> closed access, grey padlack

And if they are gratis, are they immediate accessible?

* yes

* no -> embargo. We could have an explicit date for that, retrivable by bot, or we can simply have an icon.

If they are gratis and immediately accessible, we can then break down the reuse rights with CC licenses. 

So, following along these arguments, my personal system would involve use of padlock with appropriate colors:

* grey padlock for closed access

* yellow-ish or grey-ish padlock for embargoed or CC-BY-NC and CC-BY-ND articles.

* golden padlock for CC-BY and CC-BY-SA

Note that I've compressed in 3 icons a much complex situation, but it's a start, maybe.

I'd invite you to give me feedback about this, and propose different systems if mine is not amendable.

Aubrey