[GOAL] Re: Where now for OA in the UK?

Fri Nov 29 08:24:57 GMT 2013

Green OA currently may be a desirable byway, but there is evidence showing that ID/OA is a placebo and Green OA is not only highly complementary to SB publishing but may reinforce it.

Consider the following:
- Author choice means not only freedom to chose any SB journal but also not to pay the so-called hybrid fees, and the data says that OA publishing in SB publishing is marginal at best;
- Green OA mandates always result in political negotiations and embargo compromises, delivering some form of OA at some later date;
- ID/OA has been touted as solution, and while it does provide reading access, the evidence says that usage of embargoed press-the-button content is very low - cf. Bernard Rentier on ORBi now: A wider reach? Showing 20-34 times more use for OA versus embargoed content: http://orbi.ulg.ac.be/bitstream/2268/158972/1/Berlin%20Nov%2019%202013.pdf (towards the end of the PPT).
- Remember the PEER Project: the most interesting results was that Green OA drove traffic to the publishers SB websites. CIBER saw this as a key finding, statistically highly significant and particularly visible in the life and physical science: http://www.peerproject.eu/fileadmin/media/reports/20120618_D5_3_PEER_Usage_Study_RCT.pdf
- In other words: In disciplines with a strong tradition of self-archiving and/or funder mandates, Green OA is an excellent marketing tool for SB publishers, significantly increasing traffic to SB content.

Not to be misunderstood: Green OA has merits and ULg and Bernard Rentier have clearly demonstrated how a Green OA policy can be made to work.
However, I don’t see any evidence that the ULg policy is being emulated on any scale. Moreover, the evidence we have says that ID/OA embargoed content isn’t used much, and free Green OA content drives usage at SB publishers websites.

Now for that ‚killer‘ argument that once we have reached nearly 100% of Green OA, journals can be cancelled….
- Green OA mandates aren’t spreading like a wildfire;
- To get anywhere near the 100%, all mandates should be ID/OA, and that does not seem likely;
- Even in the unlikely event, you are left with an infrastructure that is politically dependent on SB publishing and reinforces it (see above).

Chris

Am 28.11.2013 um 12:40 schrieb Stevan Harnad <amsciforum at gmail.com<mailto:amsciforum at gmail.com>>:

On Thu, Nov 28, 2013 at 3:18 AM, Armbruster, Chris <Chris.Armbruster at eui.eu<mailto:Chris.Armbruster at eui.eu>> wrote:

If OA publishing is cheaper than SB publishing, every OA publication reduces cost. Moreover, if most of the above assumptions hold, then a transition road can be described easily.

 Chris, give it some more thought:

(1) Most journals are subscription journals today, including the highest quality must-have journals that most researchers want to publish in and access.

(2) These journals cannot be cancelled until there is another way to access their articles.

(3) Green OA is that other way.

(4) Until Green OA is at or near 100%, no matter what is paid for Gold OA, it is over and above what has to be paid for subscriptions, so it is not saving (whether or not it is double-dipped hybrid Gold).

(5) That is why pre-emptive pre-Green Gold OA is Fool's Gold.

(6) When Green OA has been universally mandated, and is at or near 100%, journals can be cancelled, and subscriptions will become unsustainable.

(7) The cancellation pressure will force journals to cut obsolete costs (offloading all access-provision and archiving onto the global network of mandated Green OA institutional repositories) and convert to just providing the service of peer review.

(8) The cost of peer review alone is a fraction of what is being paid per article today, pre-Green (whether via subscriptions or via premature, pre-emptive pre-Green Fool's Gold).

(9) And the price of peer review will be single-paid out of a fraction of institutions' annual windfall savings from having cancelled subscriptions.

(10) That is why the price of post-Green Gold is Fair Gold rather than Fool's Gold.

CC-BY certainly does not justify paying for Fool's Gold today.

Stevan Harnad

Am 27.11.2013 um 19:45 schrieb Stevan Harnad <harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk<mailto:harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk>>:

On 2013-11-27, at 12:47 PM, "Armbruster, Chris" <Chris.Armbruster at EUI.eu<mailto:Chris.Armbruster at EUI.eu>> wrote:

What puzzles me is that quite a number of OA veterans and advocates keep moaning about the UK OA policy. In your case, Fred, I am intrigued by the assertion that
"The Finch saga has done nothing to change the IPR regime through which publishers control the infrastructure, nor is the process leading to true competition whereby there would be a choice for users between two suppliers of the same research paper."
CC-BY changes the IPR Regime and leads to an open infrastructure, also enabling institutions hold the VoR in their repositories. Also, APCs vary widely; new and innovative OA models keep emerging; and APCs enable a comparison of quality and price: helping researchers when choosing the venue of publication.

More generally: Can anybody point to a policy other than the UK one that comes closer to realizing BBB?
And no, the Liege ID/OA mandate does not come closer. Authors’ manuscripts are not the VoR, submitted within the old IPR infrastructure, subject to an embargo and so on.

Simple answer:

CC-BY is not worth all that extra UK money, over and above
uncancellable subscriptions.

Nor are the perverse effects of the UK Gold mandate on
Green embargoes worldwide.

Global Green (free online access) needs to come first.

That (and not throwing more money at Fool's Gold) will
bring Fair Gold and CC-BY, at an affordable, sustainable price.

But as long as Finch Folly and the push for pre-emptive
Fool's Gold persist, that outcome is embargoed.

Fortunately, the HEFCE/Liege immediate-deposit model
plus the automated request-a-copy-Button will work almost
as well, despite Finch's Fool's Gold preference.

If I sound weary of this folly, then I have successfully
conveyed my sentiments…

;>)

Stevan

Am 27.11.2013 um 17:20 schrieb Friend, Fred <f.friend at ucl.ac.uk<mailto:f.friend at ucl.ac.uk>>:

Three recent official documents have presented marginally different views of the future of OA in the UK: the Review of the 2012 Finch Report, the Government Response to the criticisms from Parliament's BIS Committee, and the RCUK's Response to the same Committee. Although all three documents (links below) maintain the previous position that the future model for OA in the UK will be APC-paid "gold", there are now subtle but potentially significant differences between the new policy statements.

It is now clear that the UK Government has listened to criticisms of its policy and is no longer willing to support the Finch Group recommendations in the unthinking way it did in July 2012. One example of this modified approach comes in the warm way the Government now writes of the value of OA repositories and their long-term role. Both the recent Finch Group Review and the UK Government Response point to the reality of a "mixed economy" of green and gold OA. While the Finch Group have also been listening to criticism of their side-lining of repositories, their acceptance of a "mixed economy" appears to be limited to the length of the transition period to full APC-paid gold OA. The Government now concedes that "what the final destination looks like is not yet clear" and is likely to be the "mixed economy" of green and gold that the Finch Group see as a transition. On this issue (surprisingly in view of their policies of several years ago) RCUK now come across as the hardest supporters of the APC-paid future, as "RCUK expects to be providing sufficient funding to cover the publication costs of the majority of research papers arising from Research Council funding".

>From the Government Response also comes across a greater willingness to listen to university institutions and to authorities in other countries. In 2012 the Government rushed out its support for the Finch Report without consulting UK universities and without any substantial knowledge of the way OA had been developing in other countries. The new Government statement recognises the important role of the JISC (a recognition missing from the 2012 documents) and of HEFCE. The listening over the past year has not changed the Government's policy fundamentally but it has led to a more consensual approach to the issues raised by the policy. There is now more of an emphasis on the future being determined by the publishing decisions of researchers rather than by a policy laid down from Whitehall. Again the RCUK Response comes across as the most "dirigiste", pointing to RCUK's "duty" to ensure that high-quality papers are made available to the public, a duty they see fulfilled through APC-paid gold OA.

All three recent documents perpetuate the myth that high-quality research can only be made available through the existing publishing infrastructure. All three bodies - the Finch Group, the UK Government and the RCUK - have accepted the view of research communication presented to them in the lobbying by publishing vested interests. The Government may be correct in its belief that new OA publishers will force the more long-standing publishers to offer lower APCs and also to be more flexible on embargo periods (a big contentious issue for the future), but as a result of more than a year's discussion of the Finch Report and two Parliamentary enquiries the control over the dissemination of UK publicly-funded research remains firmly in the hands of publishers rather than in the hands of researchers or universities. The Finch saga has done nothing to change the IPR regime through which publishers control the infrastructure, nor is the process leading to true competition whereby there would be a choice for users between two suppliers of the same research paper.

In summary OA developments in the UK will change as a result of these three new documents, which can be found at http://www.researchinfonet.org/implementing-the-recommendations-of-the-finch-report/ and athttp://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmbis/833/83302.htm . The changes are subtle, and some may see them as cosmetic, but they do represent an opportunity for OA supporters in the UK to work within a structure than is a little less rigid than was set out for us in 2012.

Fred Friend
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL

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