[GOAL] Urgent Need to Disambiguate RCUK's Open Access Policy Statement

[Stevan Harnad]

**Cross-Posted ***
**The Two Tweaks Needed
to Disambiguate RCUK OA Policy*
*The Research Councils will recognise a journal as being compliant with
their policy on Open Access if:*

*1. [GOLD] The journal provides via its own website immediate and
unrestricted access to the publisher’s final version of the paper (the
Version of Record), and allows immediate deposit of the Version of Record
in other repositories without restriction on re-use. This may involve
payment of an ‘Article Processing Charge’ (APC) to the publisher. The CC-BY
license should be used in this case.

Or

2. [GREEN] *REMOVE* Where a publisher does not offer option 1 above,*REMOVE*the
journal must allow deposit of Accepted Manuscripts that include all changes
resulting from peer review (but not necessarily incorporating the
publisher’s formatting) in other repositories, without restrictions on
non-commercial re-use and within a defined period. In this option no
‘Article Processing Charge’ will be payable to the publisher. Research
Councils will accept a delay of no more than six months between on-line
publication and a research paper becoming Open Access, except in the case
of research papers arising from research funded by the AHRC and the ESRC
where the maximum embargo period is 12 months.

ADD: "Where a journal offers both suitable green (2.) and suitable gold
(1.) options the PI may choose the option he or she thinks most
appropriate" *.

------------------------------

For those with patience for logic, here is how the ambiguity crept
into the RCUK
Open Access Policy<http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/documents/documents/RCUK%20_Policy_on_Access_to_Research_Outputs.pdf>,
where it resides, and why it is all the more important to set it right
promptly, before it takes root:

The RCUK fundee is actually faced with not one but *two* semi-independent
choices to make in order to comply with the RCUK OA mandate: the *
between-journals* choice of a suitable journal, and the *within-journal* choice
of a suitable option.

These two semi-independent choices have been (inadvertently) conflated in
the current RCUK policy draft, treating them, ambiguously, as if they were
one choice.

Both choices are nominally GREEN versus GOLD choices.

Let's quickly define "GREEN" and "GOLD," because they mean the same in both
cases. I will use a definition based on the current RCUK policy draft:

GOLD means the journal makes the article OA with CC-BY ("Libre OA"),
usually for a fee.

GREEN means the author makes the article OA ("Gratis OA") by depositing it
in a repository, and making it OA within 0-12 months of publication.

These two definitions are *not* what is in dispute here.

But now the GREEN versus GOLD choice applies to two different things:

(1) the author's choice of which journal is an RCUK-suitable journal to
publish in (this is the *between-journals* choice)

and then, if the journal offers both the GREEN and GOLD option:

(2) the author's choice of which option to pick (this is the *within-journal
* choice).

A perfectly clear and unambiguous way to state the *intended* policy would
be:

*An RCUK-suitable journal is one that offers (i) GREEN only or (ii) GOLD
only or (iii) BOTH (i.e., hybrid GREEN+GOLD).

An RCUK author may choose (i), (ii) or (iii).

If the choice is (iii), the RCUK author may choose GREEN or GOLD.*

That would dispel all ambiguity.

But what the current RCUK policy actually states instead is:

An RCUK-suitable journal is one that offers (i) GOLD, or, *if it does not
offer GOLD*, then an RCUK-suitable journal is one that offers (ii) GREEN OA.

The possibility that the journal offers (iii) both (i.e., hybrid
GREEN+GOLD) is not mentioned, and *the between-journals choice of journal
is hence left completely conflated with the within-journal choice of option*
.

So the conclusion the RCUK fundee draws is that GREEN can only be chosen if
GOLD is not offered: "GREEN IF AND ONLY IF NOT GOLD."

When a policy so fully conflates two distinct, independent choice factors,
it is extremely important to disambiguate it so as to undo the conflation.

Dropping the 9-word -- and completely unnecessary -- clause

"Where a publisher does not offer option 1 above" [i.e., does not offer
GOLD]

would remove the conflation and the ambiguity.

To make this even more transparent, the statement from Peter Suber's
interview with Mark Thorley could also be added:

"Where a journal offers both suitable green (2.) and suitable gold (1.)
options" [i.e., hybrid GREEN+GOLD] , "the PI may choose the option he or
she thinks most appropriate"

This would make it perfectly clear that if a hybrid GREEN+GOLD journal is
chosen, the author is free to choose either its GREEN or GOLD option.

It is not clear why the clause  "Where a publisher does not offer option 1
above" was ever inserted in the first place, as the logic of what is
intended is perfectly clear without it, and is only obscured by inserting
it.

(The only two conceivable reasons I can think of for that gratuitous and
misleading clause's having been inserted in the first are that either (a)
the drafters half-forgot about the hybrid GREEN+GOLD possibility, or (b)
they were indeed trying to push authors (and publishers!) toward the GOLD
option in both choices: the between-journal choice of GOLD versus GREEN
journal and the within-journal choice of the GOLD versus GREEN option --
possibly because of Gold Fever <http://bit.ly/goldfev> induced by BIS's Finch
Folly <http://bit.ly/FinchFolly>.)

The RCUK OA Policy can be fixed very easily (and without any fanfare) by
doing the two tweaks highlighted at the beginning of this posting -- the first
for disambiguation, the second for clarification.

Once that is done, we can all unite in support of the RCUK policy and do
everything we can to make it succeed. (There is still a lot of work to do
in the implementation
details<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html>,
to provide a reliable
fundee-compliance-assurance<http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september12/harnad/09harnad.html>
 mechanism.)

If these two essential tweaks are not made, the RCUK OA policy will not
only fail (because of author resistance to constraints on journal choice,
resentment at the diversion of scarce research funds to double-pay
publishers, and outrage at the prospect of having to use their own funds
when the RCUK subsidy is insufficient): It will also handicap OA policies
by funders and institutions all over the world, by giving publishers
worldwide the strong incentive to offer hybrid Gold OA (which, for
publishers, is merely a license change, for each individual double-paid
article) and -- to maximize the chances of increasing their total revenues
by a potential 6% (the UK share) at the expense of UK tax-payers and
research funds -- publishers can and will lengthen their Green OA embargoes
beyond RCUK limits to make sure UK authors *must* choose paid Gold.

The failed RCUK policy will not only mean that the UK fails to provide OA
to its own research output, but that it will make it harder for the rest of
the world to mandate and provide (Green) OA to the remaining 94% of
worldwide research output. The perverse effects of the UK's colossal false
start will hence be both local and global.

*Stevan Harnad*
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