15.1 Open access journal literature is an open educational resource

In addition to FOSS and OERs, there is another phenomenon which is having a marked impact on education – in particular, on higher education. This movement shares a similar philosophy, focuses on making content available online gratis, uses open copyright licenses, and most of the noteworthy software used by the movement is FOSS. I’m writing about the movement for open access to peer-reviewed scholarly journal literature.

Advocates of OERs should seek to understand the open access movement – not only out of curiosity over the linkages or similarities between the two movements (and there are many) but because, as I will argue, free education needs free scholarship.

(Readers already familiar with OA may wish to skip ahead to the section entitled “ Why free education needs free scholarship ”.)

Open access: low-hanging fruit of free culture

The OA movement deals with (in the words of the Budapest Open Access Initiative ), “that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment” – namely, peer-reviewed scholarly journal articles.

To borrow the words of Peter Suber , open access is a response both to problems and to opportunities. OA tries to solve real problems: readers have limited access to knowledge, authors have limited impact for their scholarship, libraries have limited budgets for journal subscriptions. On the other hand, OA also aims to capitalize on opportunities: the potential for non-rivalrous, low cost distribution on the Internet, along with the information processing capacity of computers.

There is not complete consensus on the precise definition of an open access work (I understand this is a similar situation with OERs). However, two influential statements provide definitions: the Budapest Open Access Initiative and the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing . ¹

Generally speaking, according to these definitions, open access literature is:

• Made available gratis , or “free as in ‘free beer’”, on the public Internet. There is no cost to access the content, aside from any costs incidental to access the Internet itself. Stated differently, access barriers to the content are removed.
• Libre , or “free as in ‘free speech’”. Permission barriers to use of the content are removed. The definitions of Budapest and Bethesda differ slightly on the details here, but both require the freedom to use and redistribute, subject to attribution of authorship. The biggest discrepancies between the two definitions are on the subjects of derivative works and commercial use:
  • Bethesda includes the right to make and distribute derivative works, but is silent on the right to make commercial use.
  • Budapest states that authors should have “control over the integrity of their work”, which restricts the ability to make derivative works. The declaration further states that integrity of the work and attribution of authorship should be “the only constraint[s] on reproduction and distribution”, which implies the right to make commercial use.