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

[Stevan Harnad]

Dear Professor Beall,

You are perfectly right that I both (1) strongly advocate Green OA
self-archiving mandates by funders and institutions and (2) strongly oppose
constraining author choice of journal by any other criterion than journal
quality standards.

It is for this reason that I strongly advocate the strongest and most
effective Green OA mandate <http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/344687/>, the ID/OA
(Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access) mandate model (as I described in *a-j*,
in my posting):

*a.* funders and institutions mandate immediate-deposit
...
*d.* immediately upon acceptance for publication
...
*f.* whether access to the deposit is immedate-OA or embargoed


What is *required* is immediate-deposit, not immediate-OA.

Over 60% of journals <http://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/statistics.php> endorse
immediate-OA. For the remaining 40%, the Button (h) can tide over user
needs until, as I went on to say at the end, universal ID/OA mandates
induce the inevitable and well-deserved death of all remaining OA
embargoes, under the growing pressure of global OA:


*h.* institutions implement repository's facilitated email eprint request
Button <https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/RequestCopy>;


until, as I went on to say at the end, universal ID/OA mandates induce the
inevitable and well-deserved death of all remaining OA embargoes, under the
growing pressure of global OA.

The other crucial component of the optimal Green OA mandate is the link to
research assessment:

*i.* institutions designate immediate-deposit the mechanism for submitting
publictions for research performance assessment;
*j.* institutions monitor and ensure immediate-deposit mandate compliance

So you see there is no constraint whatsoever on journal choice with the
ID/OA mandate (although I don't think any harm is done by imposing a
6-12-month limit on embargo length; authors can ignore it, but it helps
stress that embargoes are not welcome -- and will not be tolerated by
authors for long, once ID/OA prevails).

At the end of my posting I also described, step by step, how mandating
Green OA will lead to a transition from today's subscriptions and
double-paid "Fool's Gold" to Fair Gold at an affordable, sustainable price.

I am criticized for posting variants of the same message so many times. Yet
as you see, although the message is simple, and short, it keeps being
missed on 1st reading, just as you missed it.

But I hope it is clearer now.

(Ceterum censeo <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ceterum_censeo>: There is no
such thing as "platinum
OA<http://scholarlyoa.com/2012/05/08/defining-platinum-open-access/>"!
There's just author-provided OA, which is Green. And publisher provided OA,
which is Gold. The publication charges for Green OA continue to be covered
via institutional subscriptions. The publication charges for Gold OA can be
covered in three different ways: (1) *subscriptions*, as in Green OA; the
publisher simply makes the online version free for all; (2) *subsidies
and/or pro bono;* (3) *author-fees*.)

Stevan Harnad

PS It's not the Gold OA *model* that abrogates author freedom, it's a Gold
OA *mandate*, requiring the author to publish in a Gold OA journal.
Fortunately, there is no such mandate anywhere today, among the 288 OA
mandates registered in ROARMAP <http://roarmap.eprints.org>. The Finch/RCUK
mandate <http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september12/harnad/09harnad.html> set out
to be a Gold OA mandate, but has since subsequently detoxified, under
pressure from authors, institutions and OA advocates. It's still a flawed
mandate though, but if the HEFCE/REF mandate
proposal<http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/991-.html>is
adopted, the remaining flaws will be remedied. The HEFCE/REF proposed
mandate is ID/OA, linked to research assessment...

On Mon, May 27, 2013 at 1:14 PM, Beall, Jeffrey
<Jeffrey.Beall at ucdenver.edu>wrote:

> 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****
>
> ** **
>
> [image: Description:
> http://www.ucdenver.edu/about/departments/oiuc/brand/downloads/branddownloads/branddocuments/Logos-E-mail%20Signatures/emailSig_2campus.png]
> ****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> *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> 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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>
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