Open Access: cresce, ma quanto? Questione di metodo. E di principio

[From Google's English] "It is August 21, the publication of a major study on Open Access (OA). The search is called Proportion of Open Access peer-reviewed papers at the European and World Levels - 2004-2011 , and was produced by Science-Metrix for the European Commission. The study, which is doing a lot to talk about himself, says that more than 50% of articles published in 2011 is now open access, while the percentage drops to 40% for items peer reviewed paperspublished between 2004 and 2011.The research deals with the European Union countries, most other nations such as Brazil, Canada, Japan, United States. Were analyzed articles belonging to 22 different disciplines, and among the most encouraging results, there is the discovery that in some countries and disciplines more than 50% of the papers are open access.In other words, the research open access would reach its tipping point , the critical mass is considered by some a necessary condition for success.  The results, therefore, important, and controversial, since previous studies (such as the one conducted by the team of Harnad in 2012 , and from that of Björk in 2010 ) both claimed that the percentage of papers in OA was significantly lower.  The authors defend themselves from criticism emphasizing the different methodology of the studies: for example, the use of Scopus instead of the Web of Science database as a reference, along with a search engine to find more specific articles (compared toGoogle and Google Scholar , but also not free from errors or deficiencies).  Also, there is a fundamental difference 'principle': if Harnad and Björk was important to mention the Open Access articles for the team of Science-Metrix what really matters is the ability to access the same.  But what does it mean? The difference is subtle, but substantial: the movement that promotes Open Access has always been interested in important issues such as the license of the articles, the possibility for the author to retain the copyright, the platform on which they are made ​​available, the 'absence of embargo, the possibility of reuse of the content of the article. In short, a real spectrum of possibilities(ranging from the rights of readers to the rights of authors ) that makes very complex the concept of 'open access'.  This study thus provides statistics on articles of which, at a certain moment, the full text was available via the web. This obviously includes personal sites, blogs, project sites, social networks academics such as ResearchGate or Academia.edu . And, importantly, it does not matter if the item returned was found among the top results of Google, or the tenth page (thus practically invisible to the user).  The difference is quite important because, if it is true that the fact of being able to read an article is the first and most important form of access, aspects such as sustainability and preservation are not discounted ..."