21 December 2011

Green and gold

Since I’m making suggestions for open access advocates...

Labeling different open access types as “green” and “gold” is not helpful.

I like read about scientific publishing and the issues around it, but branding the different kinds of access by colours is so completely arbitrary and random, that even even I can’t remember what the difference between “green” open access and “gold” open access is. I have to look it up every time.

When people can’t remember the terminology, the message is not likely to be persuasive.


Photo by sebr on Flickr; used under a Creative Commons license.

1 comment:

SouthernFriedScientist said...

Green appears to actually be "what we do anyway", and might as well include e-mailing post-prints to people who ask for them.