Why "free access" isn't the same as "Open Access" (Warum "freier Zugang" und "Open Access" nicht dasselbe sind) | TIB-Blog

During this period of the Covid 19 pandemic, many publishers have relaxed access restrictions on scientific literature. Initially for research relevant to SARS-CoV-2 to speed up the fight against the virus, since the closure of universities and libraries for all disciplines to facilitate access to literature for researchers and students sitting at home. This is gratifying and helpful, but one should be aware that this is generally not Open Access in the true sense of the word. Open Access means that scientific information is permanently accessible without financial, technical or legal barriers and can be disseminated and reused. Three essential points distinguish many Covid-19-related offerings from genuine Open Access offerings:

• They are not freely accessible: Often the offers are only available to university members and can therefore only be accessed with obstacles, e.g. via VPN or with access data and password. As someone expressed it in a mailing list (freely translated): There is now "the well-intentioned license thicket that has been put over the normally usual restrictive license thicket.
• They are only temporarily accessible: if the offers are not provided with a concrete expiry date anyway (which will probably be mercifully extended depending on how the situation develops), experience with Ebola, Zika and other epidemics shows that once the crisis has subsided, the literature disappears again without a sound behind paywalls. An "Open COVID License" has even been created - valid until one year after the WHO declared the Covid 19 pandemic to be over.
• They are not reusable: Thanks to free licenses, Open Access documents can be reused under clearly defined conditions, and often also modified. They can therefore be used in one's own teaching without any problems, which can be very helpful especially in these times of often improvised online teaching. In the case of temporarily freely accessible literature, the narrow limits of copyright law usually apply.

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German original, translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator