Don't use the term "open access" like this. A paper published on arXiv is free to read, and was freely published. "Open access" is a scam by the big publishers, where they don't take money from the readers, but make the authors pay. Or, putting it another way, anyone can pay their way in those journals and publish (sometimes sub par) papers.
As I wrote on another comment, I wasn't aware that there are multiple forms of open access. Since it appears that arxiv (again, at least high energy physics) employs mostly either gratis or libre open access, and since the Wikipedia article explicitly calls it an open access archive, I see no harm in calling it that either.
"arXiv (pronounced "archive"—the X represents the Greek letter chi [χ])[1] is an open-access repository of electronic preprints and postprints[...] "
Not that I want to defend open access fees but the way you describe it is incorrect. Paying for open access fees with large publishers like Springer is an option that is separate from the review system, you can only choose it once your paper has been reviewed and accepted.
Publishers do misuse the concept though. They try to stay clear of using the term when they do. They use terms like Free Access or some of the more dubious colour variants of OA that doesn't provide all the freedoms that the Berlin Declaration of OA defines.
Interestingly articles uploaded to arXiv with the arXiv.org perpetual non-exclusive license are not OA as the reader is not allowed to redistribute the paper.
I wasn't aware that there were different distinct forms of "open access", so I had to read it up on Wikipedia. From what I understand, publications on arxiv are either gratis or libre open access.
Either way, we don't pay anyone any fee to publish on arxiv.
Yeah, I think people are mostly confused here. Open access is a thing when we're talking about peer-reviewed journals. arXiv hosts preprints, meaning they are available before the peer-review process has proceeded. So calling arXiv papers "open access" is misleading, because that label carries the assumption of peer review. And I've never heard of "gold open access" either. Researchers paying to have their papers published is standard, open access or not. That's just how it works. If someone is using the term "gold open access" I'm just going to assume they have no idea how science publishing operates.
I mean, these terms are defined and widely understood, so, um, no.
"gold open access" is where you publish to a peer-reviewed open-access journal, which may or may not involve the author paying for the privilege.
"green open access" is where you publish to any peer-reviewed journal, and then the author self-archives the paper somewhere, like an institutional website, arXiv (as a "post-print", not a pre-print), or even Sci-Hub.
There are discussions involved about copyright and license and so on, but that's the gist of it.
> anyone can pay their way in those journals and publish (sometimes sub par) papers.
This is not true and comments like this are damaging to science.
Open Access papers are still peer-reviewed and by far not all of them make it into the journal. You can't pay your way into those journals.
Of course there are shady pseudo-journals which just cash in on the fee, do not carry out peer review and just dump the paper on the internet. But any scientist should be able to tell such scam journals from serious ones.
True, some journals, like many of the Frontiers series or PLOS One, make it very hard to be rejected in peer review. As long as your paper is reasonably well written and doesn't contain falsehoods it will almost certainly make it to publication. Still, you don't "pay your way into those journals".
Granted, many of papers in those journals report mere incremental progress. But these journals are still attractive for scientists to publish in, for obvious reasons. Publishers like PLOS use those journals as cash cows to fund their higher-tier offerings.
It is fair that the author pays for publication in those journals, since the most benefit is often for the author, not the reader. For the progress of science these offerings are not so useful, unfortunately.
Don't use the term "open access" like this. A paper published on arXiv is free to read, and was freely published. "Open access" is a scam by the big publishers, where they don't take money from the readers, but make the authors pay. Or, putting it another way, anyone can pay their way in those journals and publish (sometimes sub par) papers.