Using "Public Access" for "Gratis Access" is bad open access advocacy - Ewout ter Haar

"Recently John Wilbanks, an influential Open Access advocate, has started using the frase 'Public Access' to mean gratis access in the sense of the 2008 Peter Suber gratis/libre Open Access definition. There is evidence that people are starting to adopt this (to me) new meaning of 'public' in the context of OA. Here's why this is bad advocacy. "Public" already has a meaning in political and economical debates, as in public vs private or government vs private sector. The use of 'public' as a modifier to 'access' in the context of OA debates will evoke in the listener the ideia of OA provided by non-private sector actors like governments or non-profits. Conflating 'public access' with 'gratis access' will have two bad effects: More unnecessary terminological confusion. It makes the discussion of public vs private provision of OA infrastructure as a separate, orthogonal dimension of the OA debate more dificult. As to the second point, a much larger discussion is warranted. Briefly, for some OA advocates gratis OA is a transition phase to libre OA. Other OA advocates don't have the same faith in the power of OA 'rights' alone in creating a healthy environment for science comunication. These OA advocates see the public provision of science comunication infrastructure as an essential part of the discussion, above and beyond licence and copyright considerations. Whatever your opinion about the aspirations of the OA movement or what its ultimate shared goal should be, using 'public access' to mean 'gratis access' muddles the debate."