Editorial When Is Open Access Not Open Access? Catriona J. MacCallum ince 2003, when PLoS Biology Box 1. The Bethesda Statement on Open-Access Publishing was launched, there has been This is taken from http:⁄⁄www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/bethesda.htm. a spectacular growth in “open- S 1 access” journals. The Directory of An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions: Open Access Journals (http:⁄⁄www. 1. The author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, doaj.org/), hosted by Lund University worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit Libraries, lists 2,816 open-access and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital journals as this article goes to press medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship2, as (and probably more by the time you well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use. read this). Authors also have various 2. A complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of “open-access” options within existing the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited subscription journals offered by immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported traditional publishers (e.g., Blackwell, by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well- Springer, Oxford University Press, and established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, many others). In return for a fee to interoperability, and long-term archiving (for the biomedical sciences, PubMed Central the publisher, an author’s individual is such a repository). article is made freely available and 1 (sometimes) deposited in PubMed Open access is a property of individual works, not necessarily journals or publishers. Central (PMC). But, as open access 2Community standards, rather than copyright law, will continue to provide the grows in prominence, so too has mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution and responsible use of the published confusion about what open access work, as they do now. means, particularly with regard to unrestricted use of content—which true open access allows. This confusion Council, the Department of Health, the biology4u.gr), use it for educational is being promulgated by journal British Heart Foundation, and Cancer purposes (e.g., [3]), or, most publishers at the expense of authors Research UK all now require their importantly, for purposes that we can’t and funding agencies wanting to grant holders to make their research yet envisage. This is because the open- support open access. articles available in UKPMC as soon as access license most commonly used— Research funding agencies have possible (and no later than six months) the Creative Commons Attribution been instrumental in driving the after publication. (Regular updates on license (http:⁄⁄creativecommons.org/ change toward open-access publishing. open-access mandates and policies are licenses/)—permits derivative reuse, Many agencies now require the available at http:⁄⁄www.eprints.org/ as long as the author is correctly cited researchers they fund to make their openaccess/policysignup/.) and attributed for the work. It is the articles freely available on publication, All these initiatives signal the most liberal of the available Creative or within 6 or 12 months of publication ongoing transition from subscription- Commons licenses (there are six), (the most up-to-date information about based to open-access publishing of which are now applied widely to books, such developments is available from the scholarly research. It seems we music, videos, etc., as well as scholarly the blog of Peter Suber, a leading are fi nally witnessing a sea change in works. It is important to note that of scholar in the open-access movement scientifi c communication. But with this the six different Creative Commons [1]). The Wellcome trust, which has welcome trend comes a more insidious licenses, only those that permit led the charge among funders, was one to obscure the true meaning unrestricted derivative use (which may also behind the recent launch of the of open access by confusing it with be limited to noncommercial use) truly European equivalent of PubMed free access. As the original Bethesda equate with open access. Central (UKPMC; http:⁄⁄ukpmc. defi nition makes clear [2] (Box 1), ac.uk/), a free digital archive of open access allows for unrestricted Citation: MacCallum CJ, (2007) When is open access biomedical and life sciences journal derivative use; free access does not. So not open access? PLoS Biol 5(10): e285. doi:10.1371/ literature, which aims to mirror that the beauty of open-access publishing journal.pbio.0050285 created and hosted by the National is not just that you can download and Copyright: © 2007 Catriona J. MacCallum. This is Institutes of Health in the United read an article for personal use. You an open-access article distributed under the terms States (http:⁄⁄www.pubmedcentral.nih. can also redistribute it, make derivative of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, gov/). European funding agencies are copies of it (such as reproducing it in and reproduction in any medium, provided the already responding to this resource. another language; several PLoS Biology original author and source are credited. For example, within the United articles have been reproduced, in whole Catriona J. MacCallum is Senior Editor at PLoS Biology. Kingdom, the Medical Research or in part, in Greek on http:⁄⁄www. E-mail: [email protected] PLoS Biology | www.plosbiology.org 2095 October 2007 | Volume 5 | Issue 10 | e285 New York Times science writer Carl Box 2. Examples of License Agreements and Open Access Zimmer demonstrated the distinction Four of the fi ve journals, whose license statements are listed below, use a Creative succinctly [4]. He discusses a recent Commons license (http:⁄⁄creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses). case where Wiley threatened legal Of these, PLoS Biology, BMC Biology, and Nucleic Acids Research conform to open action after a neuroscience graduate access, as defi ned by the Bethesda Statement (Box 1). PLoS Biology and BMC Biology posted some fi gures from one of their apply the Creative Commons “Attribution” (by) license to their articles, whereas journal articles on her blog (despite Nucleic Acids Research applies the Creative Commons “Attribution Non-commercial” the fact that this is already permitted (by-nc) license. under terms of “fair dealing” or “fair Molecular Systems Biology also applies a Creative Commons license to their articles, use”). His response was: but this journal provides free access rather than open access, because they do not “Compare Shelley’s experience allow any derivative works to be made without permission. The particular license they to what I’m about to do. I’m going use is the Creative Commons “Attribution Non-commercial No derivatives” (by-nc-nd) to—shudder—reprint a diagram from license. a journal. Just lift it straight out. ….And The journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) does not use a what do I now hear from PLOS? Do I Creative Commons license, but they do have a free access option. Their articles can be hear the grinding of lawyerly knives? used for a wide range of purposes without permission, but the creation of derivative No. I hear the blissful silence of Open works is still restricted so this option is also not open access. Access, a slowly-spreading trend in Open Access (Permits Unrestricted Derivative Use): the journal world. PLOS makes it very clear on their web site that “everything • PLoS Biology (http:⁄⁄plosbiology.org) we publish is freely available online Copyright: © 2007 Jetz et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the throughout the world, for you to read, terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted download, copy, distribute, and use use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author (with attribution) any way you wish.” and source are credited. No muss, no fuss. If I want to blog • BMC Biology (http:⁄⁄www.biomedcentral.com/bmcbiol/) about this paper right now, I can grab © 2007 Hoffman and Goodisman; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. a relevant image right now from it. In This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons fact, I just did.” [4] Attribution License (http:⁄⁄creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits Subsequent to an outcry within the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the blogoshpere (for a summary, see [5]), original work is properly cited. Wiley withdrew their threat of legal • Nucleic Acids Research (http:⁄⁄nar.oxfordjournals.org/) action. But the license that enabled © 2007 The Author(s) Zimmer to extract the information he This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons needed without worry is used by all Attribution Non-Commercial License (http:⁄⁄creativecommons.org/licenses/by- the established open-access publishers, nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and such as PLoS, BioMed Central, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Hindawi, as well as some traditional publishers, such as Oxford University Free Access (Does Not Permit Unrestricted Derivative Use): Press (OUP). Examples of the license • Molecular Systems Biology (http:⁄⁄www.nature.com/msb/index.html) from some journals are given in Box This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons 2, and each statement is explicit about Attribution License, which permits distribution, and reproduction in any medium, how the article may be used. In all provided the original author and source are credited.