Hi Megan,

 

My understanding of “public access” versus “open access” is similar to Rick’s, and I agree it’s probably best to use “open access” or at least to avoid “public access,” unless you are talking specifically about the new policies being established by U.S. federal funding agencies as a result of the 2022 OSTP Nelson memo. I like Glenn’s suggestion of perhaps avoiding prominent use of “open access” if you think it won’t be well received on your campus, and instead using things like “open sharing of your research,” “open science,” “openly published articles,” etc.

 

So, the above is essentially a “me too” of what’s already been said. My new contribution is to make sure you know about SPARC COAPI – the Coalition of Open Access Policy Institutions. Your institution can become an affiliate member of COAPI and gain access to community resources and conversations that may be helpful to you in crafting messaging for your campus. If you’d like to explore which COAPI resources are available before joining, you can do so on this page: Toolkit of Open Access Policy Resources.

 

Good luck!

 

Jody

 

 

 

As typically used, I understand the difference between “public access” and “open access” to be the difference between making a work free to read and making the work free both to read and to reuse as the reader sees fit. So if an author makes her work freely available but retains her exclusive right to create derivatives and/or to make commercial reuse of the work, we would say that her work is “public access” rather than “open access.” For it to be called “open access” she would need to not only make it freely available to read, but also allow the public to reuse the work in any way they want (as long as she is credited as the author of the original version).

 

There are no hard and fast rules about this, but I think if you adopt a policy that uses the term “public access,” most in the scholcomm community will understand it to be a policy that – like the OSTP directive – provides for free public access to the content, but not for unrestricted reuse of it.

 

All of that being said: if your campus is like every other American college/university campus I’m aware of, the most important thing will not be the distinction between “public” and “open.” It will be existence of an ironclad opt-out clause in the policy. Your faculty will almost certainly not accept a policy that actually requires them to publish everything on either a “public access” or “open access” basis – they won’t sign off unless the policy leaves the choice ultimately up to them.

 

Rick

 

 

 

Hi Megan,

 

Just as the term “open access” is used a wide variety of ways (even by researchers), you’re certain to get a wide variety of opinions to your question. But in my experience anyway, you’re either better off sticking with “open access” (because it’s interpreted in a variety of ways), or calling your repositories “open” or some such (e.g., “in accord with our university’s new open policy, AAM’s can now be deposited here…”). Using “open research” or “open science” might also okay because again, the landscape for these terms is pretty wide open.

 

But “public access” has a pretty specific definition, describing the US federal government’s specific approach to open (in accord with the Holdren memo and other directives). So personally, I think “public access” would be an inaccurate description of what you’re trying to do, and potentially more confusing/misleading than just sticking with some variation of “open.”

 

Curious what Rick, Lisa and other library gurus might suggest though.

 

Good luck!

 

Glenn

 

Glenn Hampson
Executive Director
Science Communication Institute (SCI)

 

 

 

 

 

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