Anatomy of green open access

Abstract

Open Access (OA) is the free unrestricted access to electronic versions of scholarly publications. For peer reviewed journal articles there are two main routes to OA, publishing in OA journals (gold OA) or archiving of article copies or manuscripts at other web locations (green OA). This study focuses on summarizing and extending upon current knowledge about green OA. A synthesis of previous studies indicates that the green OA coverage of all published journal articles is approximately 12 %, with substantial disciplinary variation. Typically, green OA copies become available with considerable time delays, partly caused by publisher imposed embargo periods, and partly by author tendencies to archive manuscripts only periodically. Although green OA copies should ideally be archived in proper repositories, a large share is stored on home pages and similar locations, with no assurance of long-term preservation. Often such locations contain exact copies of published articles, which may infringe on the publisher's exclusive rights. The technical foundation for green OA uploading is becoming increasingly solid, which is largely due to the rapid increase in the number of institutional repositories. The number of articles within the scope of OA mandates, which strongly influence the selfarchival rate of articles, is nevertheless still low.3

The UK Scholarly Communication Licence: Attempting to Cut through the Gordian Knot of the Complexities of Funder Mandates, Publisher Embargoes and Researcher Caution in Achieving Open Access

“…Jubb et al, have recently produced a report highlighting the rapid rise of green and gold OA uptake in the UK-rises which can be reasonably attributed, at least in part, to strong OA policy mandates [8]. However, others argue that these mandates alone cannot transform the scholarly publishing environment [33,34], emphasising that major barriers remain in author behaviours and academic cultures.…”

Green on What Side of the Fence? Librarian Perceptions of Accepted Author Manuscripts

“…Harnad (2015), one of the earliest writers on green OA, provides a framework for instituting effective institutional and funder OA mandates that would support the growth and ultimate achievement of universal green OA. Björk, Laakso, Welling, and Paetau (2013) present a background on the history of green OA and related studies, including research on author attitudes and behaviors regarding self-archiving and preference for different article versions. Further, they suggest that green OA coverage of all published journals (as of 2013) hovers at 12%, with substantial disciplinary differences.…”

Automatically Determining Versions of Scholarly Articles

“…A study of self-archiving at Carnegie Mellon University found that, of the articles that faculty made publicly available online, only half were posted in accordance with the publishers' policies (Covey, 2009). Bo-Christer Björk, Mikael Laakso, Patrik Welling, and Patrik Paetau (2014) found that many authors upload publisher-typeset versions of their articles to the Web even though very few publishers allow authors to distribute this version. In order to comply with publisher policies on the distribution of articles, institutional repositories such as DASH need to reliably determine the version of articles submitted for distribution.…”