My concern is that we are still providing a service to our readers,
who want to know what they can do with a source?  Do they have to pay
to see it, or can they just click through and read it?  That's their
primary concern:  can they read it.  The second issue is whether the
source is free for reuse in the libre sense.  We want to signal that
because we do want to highlight those sources, I think.  I'm not sure
I see how green and gold fit into this, as they don't necessarily
impact the pay-read-reuse structure.  Green articles may not be free
to reuse, and same with Gold while a Gold article may be free to reuse
while a green may not.  So I think that's a side issue that we're
actually not wading into with the pay-read-reuse structure.  And I
agree we shouldn't weigh into that broader debate as it's very much
still up in the air.

On 9/10/13, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk> wrote:
> On 10 September 2013 17:15, Stuart Lawson <stuart.a.lawson@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Okay. That might work. I can see that it's best for the orange lock to be
>> associated only with 'true' open access with re-use rights.
>>
>> Andrew and I have been talking about whether these symbols might be more
>> broadly used than for journal articles/scholarly content. For example, a
>> paywalled newpaper article might be marked up with the closed symbol and a
>> free-to-read newspaper article with a book icon (if we were to go with the
>> proposed three symbols). Is this something we need to think about?
>
> I did a bit more thinking about this today. It's a fun question, but
> probably a distraction for now ;-)
>
> Some - hopefully more structured - thoughts on the icons
>
> Firstly, there is clearly some kind of fuzzy difference between a
> newspaper article which is free-to-read and a self-archived journal
> article which is free-to-read - one is business as usual, one is open
> access. My questioning suggests people find it hard to draw the line,
> but we can all agree on roughly where to draw it. Let's assume for the
> moment that we're going to talk about explicitly "academic" material
> and leave everything else unmarked. ;-)
>
> Secondly, there is certainly a valid distinction to be made between
> gold OA and green OA, or OA tied to specific forms of licensing versus
> purely "free to read". However, I think saying that one is _defined_
> as "open access" and the other is not, and using WP as a position from
> which to do this labelling, is a problematic move. We would be taking
> a clear position in an active and ongoing debate about the nature and
> meaning of OA, and - personally - I'm not even sure we'd be taking the
> right side.
>
> Thirdly, I still think that visually distinguishing between "free
> content" and "free to read" in links is ultimately not a productive
> activity. It's negative because takes up our time; it increases the
> cognitive burden on readers who now have to juggle a third symbol; and
> it makes an (admittedly inoffensive) gesture towards "rewarding"
> content we like by highlighting it. By comparison, the positive
> benefits seem very limited - a small number of readers who understand
> and care about free content get a piece of information that should,
> hopefully, be clear if they follow the link anyway.
>
> --
> - Andrew Gray
>   andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
>
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