[BOAI] Re: Clarification of the new OA policy from the RCUK

[Prof. T.D. Wilson]

As others have said, the Finch/RCUK position on OA is, to say the least,
disappointing - however, it is understandable in the context of the
lobbying done by commercial publishers and through their membership of
Finch's working party.

The simple fact is that no government will support an OA policy that
threatens the profits of the publishers.  The publishers know that the
emergence of the Web, together with repository management software and open
journal management software, means that their role in scholarly publishing
in not simply under threat, it is made completely irrelevant.
 Consequently, they will use all their economic and political power to stay
in business.

Don't expect any significant change any time soon, because neither true
open publishing (no subscriptions, no author charges) nor repositories will
have any impact on the culture of academe, and the development of research
assessment practices that limit academics' publishing to a select list of
so-called "high impact" journals simply maintains the status quo.



On 23 August 2012 16:24, Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com> wrote:

> Mark Thorley's response is very disappointing:
>
> -- MT: "the ‘corrections’ [Harnad] proposes would dilute our policy so
> that it was no longer able to deliver the level of open access which the
> Research Councils require."
> http://blogs.rcuk.ac.uk/2012/08/10/the-benefits-of-open-access/#comment-81
>
> The proposed corrections very explicitly *include* a correction to "the
> level of open access the Research Councils require."
>
> To reply that this "level" is incorrigible and nonnegotiable is tantamount
> to saying our minds are made up, don't trouble us with further information.
>
> The points requiring correction are very specifically those concerning the
> "level of open access" (Gratis or Libre; immediate or embargoed) that is
> actually needed by UK researchers today, and at what price, both in terms
> of price paid, out of scarce research funds, and, far more important, in
> terms of Green OA lost, in the UK as well as in the rest of the world (to
> whose research, RCUK needs to remind itself, UK researchers require open
> access too).
>
> These matters are not resolved by asserting that Finch/RCUK has already
> made up its mind a-priori about the level of OA required.
>
> -- MT: "We not only want research papers to be ‘free to read’ but also to
> be ‘free to exploit’ – not only for text and data mining to advance
> scholarship… but also to drive innovation in the scholarly communications
> market itself."
>
> All OA advocates are in favour of text-minability, innovation potential,
> and as much CC-BY as each author needs and wants for their research output,
> over and above free online access to all research output -- but certainly
> not just for *some* research output, and certainly not at the expense (in
> both senses) of free online access to *all* research output (of which the
> UK only produces 6%). Yet it is precisely for the latter that Finch/RCUK
> are insisting upon restrictions and pre-emptive payment -- for UK research
> output, both at the local UK tax-payer's expense, and at the expense of
> global Green OA.
>
> The RCUK/Finch policy provides a huge incentive to subscription publishers
> to offer paid hybrid Gold while at the same time increasing their Green
> embargoes to make cost-free Green an impermissible option for UK authors.
> This not only deprives UK authors of the cost-free Green option, but it
> deprives the rest of the world as well.
>
> (I don't doubt that some of the members of the Finch committee may even
> have thought of this as a good thing: a way to induce the rest of the world
> to follow the UK model, whether or not they can afford it, or wish to. But
> is this not something that may require some further thought?)
>
> -- MT: "And, we are very clear that those who read research papers come
> from a much wider base than the research community that Harnad considers
> will be satisfied through the use of repositories and green OA. Therefore,
> there are no plans to revise the RCUK policy, just to satisfy the interests
> of one particular sector of the OA community."
>
> It seems to me Mark has it exactly backwards. The "wider base," in all
> scientific and scholarly research fields, worldwide, wants and needs free
> online access, now, and urgently, to all research, in all fields (not just
> UK research output). It is only in a few particular subfields that there is
> an immediate and urgent need for further re-use rights (and even there, not
> just for UK's 6%).
>
> How urgent is text-mining of the UK's 6% of world research output and
> CC-BY, compared to free online access to all of the world's research
> output?
>
> And what are these urgent text-mining and other Libre OA functions? All
> authors need and want their work to be accessible to all its intended
> users, but how many authors need, want or even know about Libre OA, or
> CC-BY?
>
> And, Mark, can you elaborate rather specifically on the urgent "innovation
> market potential" that will resonate with all or most researchers as a
> rationale for constraining their journal choice, diminishing their research
> funds, and possibly having to find other funds in order to publish at all,
> today, when they do not even have free online access to the research output
> of the 94% of the world not bound by the RCUK policy?
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
>
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Professor T.D. Wilson, PhD, PhD (h.c.)
Publisher and Editor in Chief: Information Research
http://informationr.net/ir/
E-mail: wilsontd at gmail.com
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