More on open access

Peter Suber's newsletter drew my attention to The Coming Change in Humanities Publishing (6): Open Access in Gideon Burton's Blog. Gideon draws attention to the toll access, open access distinction, but somewhat blurs the distinction, giving the impression that all OA journals charge author fees. Peter Suber picks up on this and quotes Harnad on the 'gratis'/'libre' distinction - which doesn't seem to have caught on, and which, in my opinion is unlikely to. The fact is that there is only one form of open access, that is, one that has neither subscription charges, nor author charges - and a significant number of OA journals are truly free. It is not OA that requires a distinction to be made, but Toll Access - of which there are now two types - Author Tolls, and Reader Tolls - neither of which results in truly Open Access.