[BOAI] Pre-Emptive Gold Fever Strikes Again

[Stevan Harnad]

*     [apologies for cross-posting]

Comments on:
Open Access to Research Outputs: Final Report to Research Councils
UK<http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/news/090422.htm>
* <http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/news/090422.htm>

Once they have mandated Green OA
self-archiving<http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/policysignup/>
 (as all 7 of the RCUK funding
councils<http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/outputs/access/default.htm>
have
now done), what funders do with their spare cash is entirely their own
business.

But it does seem as profligate as it is unnecessary to propose squandering
scarce research money today on paying Gold OA publishing fees pre-emptively
while Green OA mandates are still so few and subscription fees are still
paying for publication.

This RCUK report <http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/news/090422.htm> shows signs of
having been drafted under two palpable influences: (1) the publishers'
lobby, striving to ensure that, whatever the outcome, revenues for
publishers are maximized and immunized against risk -- and (2) the
publishing reform movement, striving to ensure that publishers convert to
Gold OA at all costs.

If good sense were to prevail, *funders and universities would just mandate
Green OA for now*, and then let supply and demand
decide<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/11160/>,
given universal Green OA, whether and when to convert from subscriptions to
Gold OA, and for what product, and at what price.

*Context:*

*With non-OA journals, subscriptions pay the costs of publication.

With fee-based OA journals, author publication fees pay the costs of
publication.

Green OA mandates require authors to deposit their published articles on the
web, free for all.

Gold OA means the journal makes the articles free for all on the web.*

The goal of the open access movement is open access to research, in
order to maximize
research uptake, impact and
progress<http://opcit.eprints.org/oacitation-biblio.html>.
Universal Green OA mandates from funders (like RCUK) and universities are
all that is needed to ensure universal OA.

Universal Green OA may or may
not<http://cogprints.org/1639/1/resolution.htm> eventually
lead to subscription cancellations and a
transition<http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/15753/> to
the Gold OA cost-recovery model. If and when it does, the windfall
subscription cancellation savings themselves will be more than enough to pay
for the much-reduced costs of providing peer-review alone (which will be the
only product that peer-reviewed journals will still need to provide), with
never the need to redirect a single penny from the dwindling pot that funds
research itself.

(That publication costs would only amount to 2% of research costs is a
specious calculation, when one fails to take into account that *publication
costs are still being fully covered by subscription payments today*, while
many research proposals recommended for funding by reviewers are going
unfunded because there is not enough money in the research pot to cover
them. Nor is there any need whatsoever for researchers to publish in
fee-based Gold OA journals if their objective is to provide OA for their
work: Green OA self-archiving already provides that.)

<http://blogsearch.google.ca/blogsearch?hl=en&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active&ie=UTF-8&q=%22gold+fever%22+OR+%22gold+rush%22+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&filter=0&sa=N>The
effects of pre-emptive Gold
fever<http://blogsearch.google.ca/blogsearch?hl=en&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active&ie=UTF-8&q=%22gold+fever%22+OR+%22gold+rush%22+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&filter=0&sa=N>
today
are (i) to distract from the urgent need for universal Green OA mandates,
(ii) to encourage a needless waste of scarce research funds, and (iii) to
facilitate the locking-in of today's asking-prices for goods and services
(print edition, publisher's PDF, storage, dissemination) that will almost
certainly be obsolete by the time Gold OA's day really comes, once universal
Green OA has become the access-provider (and archiver).

The publishers are just doing what any business will do to try to sustain
and maximize its habitual revenues; it is the pre-emptive publishing
reformers who are being foolish and short-sighted, needlessly conflating the
urgent and important research accessibility problem with the journal
affordability problem, not realizing that if they solve the former, the
latter loses all its apparent urgency and importance.

*Stevan Harnad <http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/>*
American Scientist Open Access
Forum<http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html>
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