Open Science: Definitions and Description
Open Science has generated its own specialist vocabulary.  This document gives the main 
definitions and describes some of the operation of Open Science.
Open Science 
 Knowledge is open if anyone is free to access, use, modify, and share it — subject, at 
most, to measures that preserve provenance and openness. (Open Knowledge 
Foundation: http://opendefinition.org/od/);
 Open Science is the conduct of science in such a way that others can collaborate and 
contribute, where research data, laboratory notes and other research processes are 
freely available, with licence terms that allow re-use, redistribution and reproduction of 
the research (FOSTER: https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/foster-taxonomy/open-
science-definition);
 Open Science is commonly held to encompass: Open Source Software, Open Data, Open 
Access, Open Notebooks. 
Open Research Data 
 Research data can be defined simply as whatever is either produced in the research 
process or evidences research outputs such as articles;
 The European Commission’s definition is: “information, in particular facts or numbers, 
collected to be examined and considered and as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or 
calculation” (Guidelines on Open Access to Scientific Publications and Research Data in 
Horizon 2020 - 
http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/grants_manual/hi/oa_pilot/
h2020-hi-oa-pilot-guide_en.pdf);
 Examples include: statistics, results of experiments, measurements, observations 
resulting from fieldwork, survey results, interview recordings, images;
 Open data are deposited in institutional or specialist repositories and licensed 
appropriately so that prospective users know clearly any limitations on re-use.
Open Access (OA)
Open Access generally refers to the outputs of research, such as journal articles, as distinct from 
research data.
Toll Access (TA) 
 Toll Access is the traditional method of access to research outputs such as journal 
articles;
 This access can be by means of institutional or personal subscription to journals, or to 
aggregations of content, or by means of paying publishers for access to individual 
articles.
Open Access: Long Definition: Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI) 2002
The BOAI definition is seminal; it was agreed in 2002 and reaffirmed in 2012:
By "open access" to … literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, 
permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full 
texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use 
them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other 
than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on 
reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be 
to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly 
acknowledged and cited. (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/boai-10-
recommendations)
Open Access: Peter Suber’s Short Definition 
Open Access literature is “digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and 
licensing restrictions”.1
Gratis and Libre OA 
 Context: intellectual property laws generally offer limited “fair dealing” or “fair use” 
exemptions;
 Gratis OA is free of charge to access but subject to the limits of fair dealing; it removes 
toll barriers but not permission barriers;
 Libre OA is both free of charge and free of at least some legal and licensing restrictions; it
removes toll barriers and at least some permission barriers;
 The BOAI definition is libre.
Green and Gold OA 
There are two routes to Open Access, Green and Gold.
Green OA
 Green OA is delivered through self-archiving: authors deposit manuscripts in institutional
or disciplinary repositories;
 Relies on a recent but well established infrastructure of repositories;
 Is easy and cheap: each article only incurs a very small portion of the overhead costs of 
setting up and running repositories; 
 Does not incur the overheads of peer-review; 
 However, deposited articles may be, most often have been, peer-reviewed for 
publication in traditional Toll Access journals;
 Is compatible with subscription journal publishing: scholars can publish in TA journals 
and, through self-archiving, still make their articles OA;
 Embargo period is typically imposed by publishers, generally of between 6 and 12 
months;
 Depends on authors’ obtaining rights from publishers to deposit and make articles 
available;
 Is hospitable to many other types of document, notably pre-prints, theses, and research 
datasets.
Gold OA 
 Offers articles that are paid for by the authors or their institutions or funders;
1 Suber, P. Open access. MIT Press, 2012.  Available at: 
https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/9780262517638_Open_Access_PDF_Version.pdf)
 These may be in either completely OA journals or in hybrid journals, containing both OA 
and TA articles;
 Articles are peer-reviewed for publication;
 Incurs much the same costs for the editorial and peer review process as TA journal 
publishing;
 Is always immediate, while Green OA is often subject to time embargoes imposed by 
subscription journal publishers;
 Provides access to the published version of an article, while Green OA generally provides 
access only to the author’s final peer-reviewed manuscript, without the formatting or 
pagination of the published version;
 By its nature is confined to post-prints;
 Generally obtains rights and permissions direct from the rights-holder (usually the 
author);
 Gold OA is delivered through journals: these may be completely OA or hybrid, where 
some articles are OA and others toll access;
 Both Green and Gold OA are gratis. Green OA generally is only gratis; Gold OA may be 
libre.
David Ball
January 2016