5 Annoying Things About Open Access

To start, I should say that all at Europe PMC support Open Access. This is just a short list of some issues that can be frustrating…

1.    The often incorrect definition of green and gold routes to Open Access

I am a relative newcomer to Open Access having only been working in this area for a couple of years. Before that I was a research scientist, and the movement had largely passed me by, with the exception of noticing that I didn’t have to click through the university journal subscription pages to download some articles.

Having said that, I have now lost count of the number of meetings I’ve been to about Open Access where the introduction has included an incorrect definition of the distinction between green and gold open access. ‘Green’ often gets described as free, whereas ‘gold’ you have to pay for. I’ve already said that I’m a newbie in this area, so I will refer you to Peter Suber’s Open Access for a definitive explanation.

In brief, green is self-archiving in a repository and gold is open access delivered by journals. There may be associated costs, but that is not the defining difference.