On Thu, 8 Apr 2004, Bill Hubbard wrote:
> I would like to move on from discussing different colours!
> Many different colour-schemes could be proposed, with different benefits
> and drawbacks.
Yes, but it would be useful if we tried to choose the optimal one,
for the kinds of function the Romeo list is designed to perform.
> The colours from the original RoMEO list proved to be
> a popular and convenient conversational short-hand;
The colours from the original Romeo list were improvised as we went
along. It was the Romeo list itself that proved popular and convenient.
It has also become popular to speak about whether or not a publisher is
green -- i.e., has given the green light to some form of self-archiving.
As far as I know, however, it has not become popular to speak of a
publisher as "blue."
> SHERPA/RoMEO uses an extension of the original.
What the original needed was not en extension, but a reduction! There
was already no need for blue publishers. Now there are also yellow
publishers. And there are publishers with red X's. We don't need all
those colours! They merely confuse, and arbitrarily codify distinctions
and combinations that there is no need to colour-code.
Green makes intuitive sense: a publisher that gives its official green light
to self-archiving. Distinguishing two shades of green also makes sense:
Bright-green is the green light for self-archiving the all-important
postprint, the unrefereed, published journal article, the one the
whole open-access movement is about!
Pale-green is the green light for self-archiving the unrefereed
preprint.
And a gray publisher is one that has not yet given the green
light to either postprint self-archiving or preprint self-archiving.
That's all that's needed; those 2 colours and 2 shades tell it all. The
full, specific details -- as to whether a bright-green publisher gives the
green light *only* to self-archiving the postprint, or to self-archiving
both the postprint *and* the preprint -- are all there in each individual
journal's entry. There is no need whatsoever for a colour-code for each
of the possible combinations! And it is intuitively obvious that (and
why) the (bright) green light to self-archive the postprint (or both) is
"dominant" over the (pale) green light to self-archive only the preprint.
These simple, easy-to-grasp properties are the ones that should be
clearly reflected in the colour codes, not an arbitrary, exhaustive,
chromatic nomenclature!
> When we took over the list, we retained a colour coding because of this
> convenience and for continuity, but decided to draw out in words some
> of the conditions more explicitly. Colours are a convenient summary,
> but in any simplistic four-part classification of a complex area, there
> are bound to be some uncomfortable fits.
SHERPA was quite right to clearly spell out in words all four possible
combinations in each publisher's individual entry -- post-/pre-, post-/pre+,
post+/pre-, post+/post+ -- but each of these +/- combinations did not
then also require a colour code of its own! Some of these distinctions
are not worth immortalizing with a colour, not worth having a mnemonic for.
Coding them in colour makes it *less* clear what they mean, and what the
bigger picture is, not *more* clear.
> This is why the SHERPA/RoMEO list gives greater prominence to the
> conditions and restrictions imposed by publishers and separates out
> pre-print and post-print rights, to try to more clearly reflect sometimes
> complex rights issues.
The separation is good, but the colour-proliferation is not!
> David Goodman wrote:
>> > I thus agree with Stevan that people will want to know it (1) not just
> > on a publisher basis, but on a *journal* basis:
>> I agree. This would be very useful. Analysis by journal title was not
> part of the original RoMEO list and by extension, beyond the scope of
> the SHERPA/RoMEO list.
I am afraid this is not quite correct: Analysis by *journal* (and not
just by publisher) *was* a part of the original Romeo list. See:
http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/ls/disresearch/romeo/Romeo%20Publisher%20Policies.htm
What was missing from the original Romeo list was the individual journal
listings. But they are easily enough provided: The exact same +/-
information for each individual publisher need only be cloned for each
of its journals. The result is a far more useful list for users, who
will often be thinking in terms of journals in their specific look-ups,
not in terms of publishers; they may not even know who a journal's
publisher might be; and would benefit from scanning journal lists,
not publisher lists.
The original Romeo list was excellent, but it was not etched in stone;
it was improvised along the way, and was itself constantly making
changes and improvements. There is no need to perpetuate (and expand)
an already dysfunctional colour-scheme; nor is there any need to declare
individual journals to be beyond the new Romeo's scope because they had
not yet been fully integrated into the old Romeo. The idea is to try to
improve functionality as much as possible. Rationalizing the colour code
(and the wording of the entries) and adding journal titles gives
a huge improvement in functionality for very little effort:
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/Romeo/romeo.html
It is to be regretted that there must now be two Romeo sites. (All I
had wanted to do was to integrate Romeo, DOAJ and OAIster in tracking
and comparing *total growth,* not to provide a rival version of Romeo
itself. But if SHERPA/Romeo declines to optimise, preferring to
cite precedent instead of considering functionality, I do feel that having
this functionality at another site is preferable to not having it at all.)
> We understand that this is what Stevan Harnad and his group is now
> going to do as a separate project. We have now given the underlying
> SHERPA/RoMEO data to Stevan Harnad's group at their request for this
> purpose and we look forward to the valuable contribution that this new
> journal based interface will provide.
We are very grateful, but as noted, our intention had only been to
provide the integrated summary growth charts for the three
complementary projects, not to provide the basic services of any one of
them. I spent the time doing the re-formatting in order to demonstrate
visually what my words were unable to do: That that is a a more
functional way of coding it!
(My error about the Wiley listing, by the way: It was a confusion
induced by the colour codes!)
Stevan Harnad
