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

[Beall, Jeffrey]

Dear Prof. Harnad:

I am delighted that gave a positive mention to authors' choice, as indicated by your referring to number six below as a "predictable perverse effect" of the RCUK policy. I agree -- No one should take away an author's freedom of journal choice.

6. abrogating authors' freedom of journal-choice [economic model/CC-BY instead of quality]

However, you've been a big advocate of mandates, and these mandates effectively remove freedom of journal-choice in many instances. I read your recent article, "Worldwide open access: UK leadership?" and saw that you advocate various mandates, some of which effectively abrogate the authors' freedom of journal-choice. For example, if a journal does not allow green OA archiving, then the author would be mandated not to publish in it, effectively removing his "freedom of journal-choice."

I'd be interested to hear how you reconcile these contradictory views. Why is it a flaw for the gold OA model to abrogate authors' freedom of journal-choice but not a flaw when the green OA model does the same thing?

Thanks,

Jeffrey Beall, MA, MSLS, Associate Professor
Scholarly Initiatives Librarian
Auraria Library
University of Colorado Denver
1100 Lawrence St.
Denver, Colo.  80204 USA
(303) 556-5936
jeffrey.beall at ucdenver.edu

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From: goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad
Sent: Sunday, May 26, 2013 5:51 PM
To: LibLicense-L Discussion Forum
Cc: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Re: The UK's Open Access Policy: Controversy Continues

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<mailto:liblicense at gmail.com>> wrote:
From: Richard Poynder <richard.poynder at gmail.com<mailto: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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