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

Thu Aug 23 01:53:00 BST 2012

Many thanks to Peter Suber for this further information about Finch, RCUK,
and the close relationship between them.

Peter makes no value judgments in conveying this information, so it is
unclear what he agrees or disagrees with.

I will be much more explicit. I think this is a *terrible* policy which
will have extremely bad effects, both in the UK and globally, if Finch/RCUK
are inflexible about taking critical feedback into account and are
unwilling to revise the policy in response.

I will summarize the essence of the extra information provided. It confirms
my worst worries:

(1) Finch and RCUK are in agreement; there are no nontrivial differences.

(2) Finch/RCUK are prepared to require UK authors to publish only in a
journal that offers either Gold OA (Gratis or Libre, hybrid or "pure") OA
or Green OA within a maximal 6-month embargo.

(3) If the journal offers both paid Gratis hybrid Gold and 6-month Green,
the author may choose either option.

(4) If the journal offers both paid Libre hybrid Gold and 6-month Green,
the author must choose paid Libre hybrid Gold (or not publish in that
journal).

(5) If the journal offers paid Gratis hybrid Gold or Green with a longer
embargo than 6 months, the author must choose paid Gratis hybrid Gold (or
not publish in that journal).

(6) Finch/RCUK are aware that this policy may provide an incentive for
journals that currently offer a 6-month Green option to increase their
Green embargo to an unallowable length and offer Gratis hybrid Gold
instead, knowing that RCUK authors must take that option if they wish to
publish in the journal at all.

(7) In other words, Finch/RCUK have decided, a priori, that Libre hybrid
Gold OA is worth UK's paying for, come what may, and that Gratis hybrid
Gold OA is worth requiring UK authors to choose and to pay for, even if it
makes the journal impose an impermissible embargo length on Green OA.

(8) In addition, it is not clear that even UK researchers will be given
enough of a top-sliced subsidy ("block grants") to allow them to pay for
Gold OA without having to reach into their research funds or their pockets
in order to comply with Finch/RCUK.

(9) All these a priori value judgments have been made by Finch/RCUK without
taking into account researchers' views on placing constraints on their
journal choice, their need or desire for Libre OA, and the diversion of
already scarce funds from research to paying publishers extra for Gold OA
(Libre or Gratis).

(10) Nor have Finch/RCUK taken into account the consequences this policy
may have for the rest of the world, which may not be able to afford -- and
may not wish -- to pay extra for Gold OA (Libre or Gratis, hybrid or
"pure"), and may now see embargoes on cost-free Green OA lengthened by
publishers in order to gain the extra hybrid Gold revenue the UK promises.

This would be an extremely bad outcome.

I will continue to do my best to persuade Finch/RCUK to revise this
terrible policy --
http://digital-research.oerc.ox.ac.uk/programme/tues-am-keynote  -- and I
hope others who understand its implications will do so too.

If the RCUK policy is not changed, I predict that UK researchers will not
comply, and many years of confusion and indecision will ensue, during which
the UK will lose a lot of potential (Green) OA, a lot of money, and its
historic worldwide leadership role in OA.

I am not so pessimistic about the rest of the world. There is a much more
realistic and effective option, and that is to strengthen and extend Green
OA mandates. Even if the unfortunate Finch/RCUK policy has the perverse
effect of inducing publishers to increase the lengths of their Green OA
embargoes, the ID/OA<http://digital-research.oerc.ox.ac.uk/programme/tues-am-keynote>(Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access)
mandate coupled with the automated
"email-eprint-request" Button is immune to embargoes and was designed
specifically with this contingency in mind.

The UK only publishes 6% of the world's research output. The other 94% can
still mandate ID/OA and move forward toward universal Green OA while the UK
learns from sad experience what a short-sighted, ill-informed, profligate
-- and, if no one listens to the critical feedback, pig-headed -- decision
the UK has made in 2012, eight short years after the historic Parliamentary
Select Committee recommendation that has until now made the UK the vanguard
of the global OA movement:
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/39903.htm

I will now quote/comment Peter's account of his discussion with RCUK's Mark
Thorley, but those who do not wish to enter into the details now have the
gist of what is so wrong with Finch/RCUK's proposed policy:

On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 5:50 PM, Peter Suber <peter.suber at gmail.com> wrote:

On July 25, 2012, I had a long, helpful phone conversation with Mark
> Thorley, convenor of the RCUK Research Outputs Network (RON), the group
> responsible for developing and implementing the RCUK Open Access policy...
>
> On the role of green, Mark said that the RCUK had the same preference for
> gold as the Finch Group. The reason is that they want libre OA under CC-BY
> licenses, for example to support text-mining and to enable immediate OA
> without any publisher imposed embargo.
>

How urgent is text-mining of the UK's 6% of world research output, compared
to Gratis Green OA for 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 users, but how
many need, want or even know about Libre OA?

...the Finch Group may expect that the primary role for repositories will
> be for theses, grey literature, and data. But the Finch Group would
> definitely accept green OA for research articles when a journal offered no
> gold option.
>

In other words, having ruled out Green OA as an option for UK authors if a
journal has the sense to offer Gratis hybrid Gold and to crank its Green
embargo up to infinity, Finch is not *forbidding* whatever Green might
still be able to slip through a barrier as massive as that...

> According to Mark, the RCUK and Finch Group share this position: When
> publicly-funded researchers publish in a journal with a suitable gold
> option (where suitability is about its willingness to use a certain open
> license), then those authors should pursue that gold option.
>

 I take this to mean that if the journal offers paid Libre hybrid Gold, the
author must choose that, even if the journal also offers 6-month Green.

If the journal offers no suitable gold option but does offer a suitable
> green option (where suitability is about the maximum length of the embargo
> period), then grantees should pursue the green option instead.
>

If a journal has the option to offer paid hybrid Gold and crank up Green
embargoes to unallowable limits, but is foolish enough to offer 6-month
Green instead, then Finch/RCUK do not *forbid* the author to choose 6-month
green...

Don't count on many publishers turning down the more attractive option.

> If a given journal offers no suitable gold or green option, then those
> researchers must look for another journal, one which complies with the RCUK
> policy.
>

ID/OA mandates not only moot publisher embargoes but make it unnecessary to
dictate authors' journal choice.

> When a journal offers both suitable green and suitable gold options, the
> PI may choose the option he or she thinks most appropriate.
>

This is ambiguous, because it is unclear what is meant by "suitable gold
options". I take it to mean:

*(3) If the journal offers both paid Gratis hybrid Gold and 6-month Green,
the author may choose either option.*

though I am not sure of even that interpretation.

If a journal with a suitable gold OA option levies an Article Processing
> Charge (APC), then RCUK is willing to pay the APC. The RCUK will provide
> block grants to universities for paying APCs, which they will manage
> through the establishment of publication funds, and universities will
> decide how to spend the money to best deliver the RCUK policy.
>

And what happens to journal choice (and publication) when the "block
grants" have run out?

> Mark concedes that managing a publication fund and establishing rules on
> what papers will be funded, will be a big challenge for many institutions,
> and obtaining faculty APC funding could be a major change of working for
> many authors.
>

It may do a good deal more than that. Let us not forget that the only thing
Green OA mandates require of authors is keystrokes. Finch/RCUK is now (1)
constraining journal choice, (2) redirecting scarce research funds, and
perhaps eventually (3) leaving authors without the money to publish at all
(if they comply).

Great confusion and non-compliance are likely. (And I have to admit that I
find this policy so ruinously wrong-headed that I cannot even wish it well:
If the policy is not fixed in response to informed advance feedback, then
author confusion and non-compliance may be the only way to bring the
policy-makers to their senses that they have made a huge mistake.)

However, he added that journals offering a suitable gold OA option would
> probably not want to offer a compliant green option as well. Hence, as more
> journals start offering gold options to make themselves eligible for RCUK
> funding, many that permit green OA today may stop permitting green, or
> might only provide a green option with an embargo period to be too long to
> be compliant with the RCUK policy. Hence, authors turned down for APC
> funding may not have a green option to exercise at a given journal, even if
> those authors and their universities wanted to exercise it.
>

*This is the very core of Finch/RCUK's folly, and its perverse consequences
are here shrugged off matter-of-factly as if they were just some minor
contingency.*

I mentioned the rights-retention OA policies at funders like the Wellcome
> Trust and the NIH, and at universities like Harvard and MIT....he added
> that "this might well be something we would consider in the future...
>

The rights-retention policies have an opt-out clause: Finch/RCUK do not.

Moreover, the success of rights retention policies alone is not known. At
Harvard, they are coupled with a variant of ID/OA, with no opt-out on
deposit. This of course takes care of all opt-out or embargo problems.

4. If there are differences between the RCUK policy and the Finch
> recommendations, they are minor. The RCUK will go forward with its current
> policy, and has no plans to revise it to conform more closely to the Finch
> report.
>

But let's hope that RCUK may still revise it in response to critical
feedback like what I've tried to provide above.

I close with my recommendation on how to revise the RCUK policy:

*Revising RCUK. *There is still hope that RCUK will have the sense and
integrity to recognize its mistake, once the unintended negative
consequences are pointed out, and will promptly correct it. The current
RCUK policy can still be made workable with two simple patches, to prevent
publisher-imposed embargoes on Green OA from being used to force authors to
pay for hybrid Gold OA:

RCUK should:

*(1) Drop the implication that if a journal offers both Green and Gold,
then RCUK fundees **must pick Gold*

**

and

*(2) Urge but do not require that the Green option must fall within the
allowable embargo interval.*

(The deposit of the refereed final draft would still have to be done
immediately upon publication, but the repository’s “email-eprint-request”
Button <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/18511/> could be used to tide over
user needs by providing “Almost-OA” during the embargo.)

That way RCUK fundees (i) must all deposit immediately (no exceptions),
(ii) must make the deposit Green OA immediately or as soon as possible *
and (not or) (iii) **may* pay for Gold OA (if the money is available and
the author wishes):

*Green OA:*

**

*(a) Immediate repository deposit of (at least) the final draft is **
required*

*(b) Making access to deposit Gratis OA immediately is **urged*

*(c) Maximal Gratis OA embargo of 6 months (12 months for AHRC & ESRC) is **
allowed*

*(d) Libre OA license adoption wherever possible, and desired by author, is
**recommended*

**

OR

*Gold OA:*

**

*(e) Immediate repository deposit of (at least) version of record is **
required*

*(f) Making access to deposit OA immediately is **required*

*(g) Adoption of Libre OA License (if desired by author) is **urged*

**

This ensures that publishers (1) cannot use embargoes to force authors to
pay for hybrid Gold and that authors (2) retain their freedom to choose
whether or not to pay for Gold, (3) whether or not to adopt a license
allowing further re-use rights (where it is possible) and (4) which journal
to publish in.

Stevan Harnad
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