[GOAL] Re: RCUK & EC Did Not Follow Finch/Willets, They Rejected It, Promptly and Prominently!

[Kiley, Robert]

My reading of the RCUK policy is somewhat different to Stevan's.  In short, I see clear parallels between what Finch recommended (disclosure - I sat on the Finch Working Group) and the RCUK policy.

Specifically:


·         Finch recommended gold OA and flexible funding arrangements to cover OA gold costs.  RCUK have released a policy that allows for gold publishing, and provides flexible funding (via block grants to HEI's) to support these aims.

·         Finch said when publishers didn't offer a mechanism to pay for OA gold, it was reasonable for funders to demand an embargo period of less than 12 months.  [See paragraph 9.10 of the Finch Report].  The RCUK have followed this.



·         Finch said that support of OA publications should be supported by policies to "minimise restrictions on the rights of use and re-use".  RCUK have followed this, and indeed pushed further to require than when an APC is levied the article must be published under a CC-BY licence.  This is identical to the policy change the Wellcome Trust announced at the end of June.

There were a long string of posts on this forum at the end of last week calling for an end to the counter-productive squabbling over the minutiae of differences between green and gold, the obsession with costing models, etc.  The RCUK policy is entirely compatible with the recommendations of the Finch Report, and continually rubbishing Finch seems counter-productive on many levels.

Regards
Robert

Robert Kiley
Head of Digital Services
Wellcome Library
183, Euston Road, London. NW1 2BE
Tel: 020 7611 8338; Fax: 020 7611 8703; mailto:r.kiley at wellcome.ac.uk
Library Web site: http://library.wellcome.ac.uk
The Wellcome Trust is a charity, registered in England, no. 210183. Its sole Trustee is the Wellcome Trust Limited, a company registered in England, no 2711000, whose registered office is 215 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE.



From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: 17 July 2012 21:33
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Cc: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum
Subject: [GOAL] RCUK & EC Did Not Follow Finch/Willets, They Rejected It, Promptly and Prominently!

**Cross-posted*

RCUK & EC DID NOT FOLLOW FINCH/WILLETS,
THEY REJECTED IT, PROMPTLY AND PROMINENTLY!

Irony of ironies, that it should now appear (to some who are not paying attention)
as if the the RCUK & EC were following the recommendations of Finch/Willets
when in point of fact they are pointedly rejecting them!

RCUK and EC were already leading the world in providing and mandating Green OA.

Finch/Willets, under the influence of the publisher lobby, have recommended
abandoning cost-free Green OA and instead spending scarce research money
on paying publishers extra for Gold OA.

Both RCUK<http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/media/news/2012news/Pages/120716.aspx> & EC<http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/recommendation-access-and-preservation-scientific-information_en.pdf> immediately announced that, no, they would stay the course
in which they were already leading -- mandatory Green OA. (They even shored it up,
shortening the maximum allowable embargo period, again directly contrary to Finch/Willets!)

What Finch/Willets have mandated is that £50,000,000.00 of the UK's scarce research
budget is taken away annually from UK research and redirected instead to paying
publishers for Gold OA.

The UK government is free to squander its public funds as it sees fit.

But as long as cost-free Green OA mandates remain in effect, that's just a waste of money,
not of progress in the global growth in OA.
(A lot of hard, unsung work had to be done to fend off the concerted efforts of
the publisher lobby, so brilliantly successful in duping Finch/Willets, to dupe the
RCUK and EC too. They failed. And they will fail with the US too. And the UK
will maintain its leadership in the worldwide OA movement, despite Finch/Willets,
not because of it.)

Stevan Harnad


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