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Gold Open Access is literature that has an explicit open license, like CC-BY.\nIt optionally has an article processing charge (APC). It optionally charges APC to make profit or to fund other activities, like\nsome societies do.\nGreen Open Access is literature that has been made available by\nrepositories. It optionally has an open license. It optionally has a standardized license, like CC-BY. But it can also\nbe that no clear license is given or the “license” refers to some (local) law.
\n\nMany universities have green Open Access repositories, like Maastricht University\nand Radboud University. These repositories are scattered and contrary to FAIR principles,\nmetadata is not shared widely.\nOf course, prominently, scholarly publishers could provide that information. Any paywalled journal article could have a link to\na legal green open access version. It could. It would make total sense if spreading scientific knowledge is your goal.\nBut we live in an alternate universe.
\n\nWe are relying on third-party indexes. I here briefly describe two options, but love to read blog posts about other\nalternatives! I am not looking for routes like PubMed Central or\nEurope PMC that come with huge collections of open-licensed content, including\nin the FAIR JATS format
\n\nIt’s really the non-OA-licensed green Open Access that we need to get indexed better.
\n\nOh, and, of course, all Dutch literature must become green Open Access.
\n\nUnpaywall (see also this post)\nhas been collecting open access versions but is now including in OpenAlex.\nThe annotation is quite rich and here the question is more,\nhow can the open science community enrich this OpenAlex content.
\n\nWikidata and WikiCite are projects aligned with\nWikipedia, and [citation needed] is an\nessential part of that. We have used it in our research\nin multiple occassions. The curation process is transparent, providing the essential provenance\nneeded for scientific research.
\n\nIt provides the work available at URL property and it\nhas been used to link to green Open Access versions. The extend, however, is less clear (to me). But another\nproblem is that Wikidata does not have the ambition to be a generic solution. That said, all extra links\nhelp.
\n\nThat leaves me, for now, with the role of generic web searching. Doesn’t that help? I can just search for\nthe article title, right? Well, yes. But the process of how to get your green open access article indexed\nis not clear. There are many metadata standards that your repository needs to support (e.g.\nOpenAlex lists 8 and that does not include schema.org)\nand that does not guarantee you get indexed. Worse, commercial companies are know to remove content in a opague\nprocess, like with this video about the Meta gluurbril.\nWe cannot trust that green open access metadata gets preserved.
\n\nMaybe open web indexes\nwill make a difference, but then we still need a simple API to integrate into our tools that just\nreturns the information. I had a go at this last weekend. It would look\nsomething like this:
\n\n
But things go slowly, and FAIR metadata most certainly. But if we consistently take steps, things do change.\nFor example, after 20+ years, CrossRef now supports blog as research output type.
\n\nI like to stress, metadata is being shared by repositories, but we should support this a bit more. We should\nreuse that data, support that, curate that, etc. Let’s support our fellow open science community members!\nAnd that starts by sharing our knowledge on how all this works, does not work, could work, and\nwhat small steps we can take today and tomorrow. Looking foward to your ideas!
", "summary": "Gold Open Access is literature that has an explicit open license, like CC-BY. It optionally has an article processing charge (APC). It optionally charges APC to make profit or to fund other activities, like some societies do. Green Open Access is literature that has been made available by repositories. It optionally has an open license. It optionally has a standardized license, like CC-BY. But it can also be that no clear license is given or the “license” refers to some (local) law.", "image": "https://chem-bla-ics.linkedchemistry.info/assets/images/greenOA_URLs.png", "date_published": "2026-09-24T00:00:00+00:00", "date_modified": "2026-09-24T00:00:00+00:00", "tags": ["publishing","openaccess"], "authors": [ { "name": "Egon Willighagen", "url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7542-0286" } ] } ] }