Describing Open Access (OA) to a friend or colleague for the first time.

Open Access (OA) = Scholarly work(s) allowed to be perpetually accessed by anyone under a rainbow of permissions.

 

What makes OA green or gold? How about gratis or libre?

I choose not to define OA as simply gold/green or gratis/libre, as I have seen many variations other than two.  In fact, Sherpa/Romeo defines journal publisher policies as green, blue, yellow, and white:

ROMEO colour	Archiving policy
green	can archive pre-print and post-print or publisher’s version/PDF
blue	can archive post-print (ie final draft post-refereeing) or publisher’s version/PDF
yellow	can archive pre-print (ie pre-refereeing)
white	archiving not formally supported

But why stop there.  I would say there are even more “colors” out there.  Comment below and lets begin the discussion to define this rainbow of permissions.  What colors would you add and how would you describe them?

Red, Orange, Yellow, White, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, Pink, Grey, Brown, Black.

 

Reference

2013. University of Nottingham.  RoMEO colours.  http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/definitions.php?la=en&fIDnum=|&mode=simple&version=#colours

Related articles

• Academic Senate approves open access policy (universityofcalifornia.edu)
• OA Now Interview with Peter Binfield of PeerJ (oanow.org)
• Open Access – Access to What? (historywomble.wordpress.com)
• Is Access to the Research Paper the Same Thing as Access to the Research “Results”? (scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org)