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

[Stevan Harnad]

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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