[GOAL] Re: The UK's Open Access Policy: Controversy Continues

[Stevan Harnad]

Yes, the Finch/RCUK
policy<http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/oa-advocate-stevan-harnad-withdraws_26.html>
has
had its predictable perverse effects:

*1.* sustaining arbitrary, bloated Gold OA fees
*2.* wasting scarce research funds
*3.* double-paying publishers [subscriptions plus Gold]
*4.* handing subscription publishers a hybrid-gold-mine
*5.* enabling hybrid publishers to double-dip
*6.* abrogating authors' freedom of journal-choice [economic model/CC-BY
instead of quality]
*7.* imposing re-mix licenses that many authors don't want and most users
and fields don't need
*8.* inspiring subscription publishers to adopt and lengthen Green OA
embargoes [to maxmize hybrid-gold revenues]
*9.* handicapping Green OA mandates worldwide (by incentivizing embargoes)
*10.* allowing journal-fleet publishers to confuse and exploit institutions
and authors even more

But the solution is also there (as already adopted in Francophone
Belgium<http://roarmap.eprints.org/850/> and
proposed by HEFCE for
REF<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/991-.html>
):

*a.* funders and institutions mandate immediate-deposit
*b.* of the peer-reviewed final draft
*c.* in the author's institutional repository
*d.* immediately upon acceptance for publication
*e.* whether journal is subscription orGold
*f.* whether access to the deposit is immedate-OA or embargoed
*g.* whether license is transfered, retained or CC-BY;
*h.* institutions implement repository's facilitated email eprint request
Button <https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/RequestCopy>;
*i.* institutions designate immediate-deposit the mechanism for submitting
publictions for research performance assessment;
*j.* institutions monitor and ensure immediate-deposit mandate compliance

This policy restores author choice, moots publisher embargoes, makes Gold
and CC-BY completely optional, provides the incentive for author compliance
and the natural institutional mechanism for verifying it, consolidates
funder and institutional mandates, hsstens the natural death of OA
embargoes, the onset of universal Green OA, and the resultant institutional
subscription cancellations, journal downsizing and transition to Fair-Gold
OA at an affordable, sustainable price, paid out of institutional
subscription cancellation savings instead of over-priced, double-paid,
double-dipped Fool's-Gold. And of course Fair-Gold OA will license all the
re-use rights users need and authors want to allow.

On Sun, May 26, 2013 at 6:59 PM, LIBLICENSE <liblicense at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Richard Poynder <richard.poynder at gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 24 May 2013 16:11:17 +0100
>
> The new Open Access policy introduced this year by Research Councils
> UK — in response to last year’s Finch Report — has been very
> controversial, particularly its exhortation to researchers to “prefer”
> Gold over Green Open Access
>
> When it was first announced there was an outcry from UK universities
> over the cost implications of the new policy. In response, on 7th
> September last year the UK Minister for Universities and Science David
> Willetts made an additional £10 million available to 30 research
> intensive universities to help pay OA transition costs.
>
> But the controversy has continued regardless, and in January this year
> the House of Lords Science & Technology Committee launched an inquiry
> into the policy. The subsequent report roundly criticised RCUK for the
> way it had been implemented, and concluded that lack of clarity about
> the policy and the guidance offered was ‘unacceptable’. RCUK responded
> by making a number of “clarifications”, and extended the permissible
> embargo period before research papers could be made available under
> Green OA from 6 and 12 months, to 24 months — an extension that led
> many OA advocates to complain that a bad policy had been made worse.
>
> In the meantime, the House of Commons Business, Innovation and Skills
> Select Committee had announced its own inquiry, which at the time of
> writing remains ongoing. During this inquiry a number of new issues
> have emerged, including complaints that some publishers are exploiting
> RCUK’s new policy to pump up their profits (profits that many believe
> are already unacceptably high). There are concerns, for instance, that
> the £10m in additional funding that Willetts provided is being used
> inappropriately. At the centre of these new concerns is Elsevier, the
> world’s largest scholarly publisher.
>
> More here:
> http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/the-uks-open-access-policy-controversy.html
>
> Richard Poynder
>
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