I'm a bit uncomfortable with some of the approaches suggested - they seem to be oriented to the philosophy of OA rather than the functional results.
From a reader's perspective, they really only care about one thing:
"can I read this, right now, without paying or signing anything". Any other information is wasted on almost everyone, and the more information we try and provide in our signalling system, the less useful it becomes. We can convey one or two things clearly ("YES, NO"), but if we try and convey subtle details, everyone gets confused.
I agree it's sometimes useful to know about licenses etc... but most people, most of the time, don't care, and those of us who do care can follow the link and find out. Is it really important for us to maintain this information in Wikipedia citations? Has anyone ever said "maybe I won't follow that link, it's CC-BY-NC"? I'm not seeing the real benefit here.
I would suggest we need to identify two things:
a) This article (or this copy of this article) is "open access", gold or green - you, yes you, can follow this link right now and read it. It might be gold in PLoS One, it might be a repository copy with an expired embargo, it might be a postprint on arXiv, but you can read it, and maybe you thought you couldn't.
b) This article is locked\paywalled and you cannot read it without special access. This symbol works for both the Elsevier Journal of Expensive Research and for an article in the New York Times.
Open padlock, closed padlock. Maybe differently-styled padlocks (the curvy OA one versus a squared-off closed one?). Nice and simple and widely understood.
Anything else is more useful to us, as people who care about open access and debate definitions, than it is to the general public.
Andrew.
[disclaimer: I am on my lunch break. this does not necessarily represent the OA position of my employer]
On 9 September 2013 13:08, Stuart Lawson stuart.a.lawson@gmail.com wrote:
I know that many people may interpret open access as 'free to read', but I'm not sure that building that into a signalling system in Wikipedia is the best idea. I've not totally thought this through yet, and I realise that it's quite a complex set of degrees of openness which you've managed to condense into three symbols well. But how about just using the PLOS signals in their 'how open is it' guide, i.e. the orange 'lock' logo for open access and the orange lock but with a cross through it for closed access?
- orange padlock for "open access" ("CC-BY", "CC-BY-SA", and perhaps also
more restrictive CC licenses)
- crossed-out orange padlock for "closed access"
This wouldn't signal free to read content that has no re-use rights, but then I don't think this type of content has anything to do with true open access according to the standard definitions (Budapest etc.).
I also think we maybe don't need to take embargos into account. At the end of an embargo date, a majority of articles are still not open access. The process of an article becoming open access at the end of an embargo is not usually automatic but relies on them actually being deposited in a repository. For this reason I think it would be misleading to mark up articles in Wikipedia with a symbol that makes reference to embargo dates, because there is no way of knowing whether the *potential* for open access is achieved on this date.
Just some thoughts.
Thanks, Stuart User:Lawsonstu
On 9 September 2013 12:09, Andrea Zanni zanni.andrea84@gmail.com wrote:
Dear all, I forward in this list a simple proposal I made for and icon system for the Signalling OAness project on Wikipedia. Some of you have just read it, but I think it's important to restart the conversation on this new OA ml.
We have a lot of things to decide for this project - one of this is a sort of icon system.
TL;DR: My proposal for icons is:
- 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:
http://www.plos.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/hoii_guide_rev2_web_jpegs2.jp...
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
- Reader Rights
- Reuse Rights
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
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