[GOAL] Publishers Offering Hybrid Gold Without Allowing Immediate, Unembargoed Green Is Extortion

[Stevan Harnad]

RCUK allowing hybrid Gold payment only if the publisher allows the Green
option within the RCUK 6-12-24+ embargo limits is no
solution<http://poynder.blogspot.ca/2013/02/open-access-tale-of-two-tables.html?showComment=1361531628468>
for
the perverse effects of the new RCUK policy.

The only solution is for RCUK to *allow hybrid Gold payment only if the
publisher allows an immediate un-embargoed Green option* -- and RCUK
must *leave
the choice between Green or Gold options completely up to the author* (no
"preference," no "decision tree").

A subscription publisher that pits paid hybrid Gold against embargoed Green
is practicing extortion, with or without the help of RCUK's perverse policy.

Embargoes are a complicated story that will soon have to be told
forthrightly.

Publishers embargo green under the pretext that it's the only way to
protect themselves from sure ruin.

That is utter nonsense, of course.

What embargoes really do is to delay -- i.e. embargo -- the natural,
inevitable evolution <http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/> from
subscription publishing to Fair-Gold OA publishing, at a fair, affordable,
sustainable price <http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july10/harnad/07harnad.html> by
"protecting" double-payment at today's grotesquely inflated Fool's-Gold
price.

Embargoes embargo both OA and Fair Gold, in order to lock in current
subscription revenues and Fool's Gold.

Think about it….

But the compromise of an immediate-deposit/optional-access
(ID/OA)<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html>mandate
(in which deposit must be immediate but access to the deposit may
be embargoed) will ensure that the publishers will be unable to embargo the
optimal and inevitable outcome for researchers much longer.

Whatever else it does, RCUK should immediately and unambiguously adopt (and
ensure compliance with) an ID/OA mandate.
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