The Parachute: Achieving True Open Access Ain’t Easy

" ... Since Open Access has become an ambiguous term, you cannot trust the label to mean what you think it does, and certainly not that it allows you to reuse the article. Only CC-BY does that (and CC-zero, which does away with attribution as well – suitable and appropriate for data). Where do we go from here? FFAR, I would hope. For data, the concept of FAIR is being proposed (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). For journal literature, ‘interoperable’ may not be a useful notion, so I’d like to modify the idea to Findable, Freely Accessible and Reusable. How? Well, ‘gold’ publication with CC-BY is a good way to achieve it, but there remains the hurdle of APCs. The International Council for Science, ICSU, has recently issued a report, in which they advocate the following goals for Open Access: free of financial barriers for any researcher to contribute to; free of financial barriers for any user to access immediately on publication;  made available without restriction on reuse for any purpose, subject to proper attribution; quality-assured and published in a timely manner; and archived and made available in perpetuity. 1 and 2 mean that the cost of 4 and 5 need to be carried by other parties than the user or author. For authors funded by agencies who support Open Access and are willing to bear the APC costs, there is no barrier, but of course, not every author is ..."