Fred Friend has brought forward a very important and potentially a very illuminating hypothesis about one of the reasons the Finch Committee and RCUK opted so unilaterally for pre-emptive funding of Gold: <div><br></div><div>
It may not just have been because of the subscription publisher lobby, nor just the urging of Gold OA publishers, but because of the example (and perhaps the urging) of the Wellcome Trust, which, for an enormous number of reasons (to which Fred alludes) is not applicable to a country, a public funder, or a university.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The Wellcome Trust was one of the historic pioneers of OA mandates, but its policy soon became rigid and even dogmatic, and unresponsive to untoward consequences and recommendations for improvement.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Righteous zeal will do that, sometimes...<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">---------- Forwarded message ----------<br>From: <b class="gmail_sendername">FrederickFriend</b> <span dir="ltr">ucylfjf --- <a href="http://ucl.ac.uk">ucl.ac.uk</a> </span><br>
Date: Mon, Jul 30, 2012 at 7:38 AM<br>Subject: Re: Discussion of the new RCUK OA policy on Google+<br><br>
<div dir="ltr">
<div dir="ltr">
<div style="font-size:12pt;font-family:'Calibri'">
<div>This is an important debate, and I hope the UK Government are monitoring it
– and also realising that they have under-estimated the support for the
repository route to OA. I would just like to add one comment on Cameron Neylon’s
assertion on gold OA that “It’s working for Wellcome so I think it can be made
to work here as well”. The Wellcome Trust is starting from a different corporate
structure, a different funding basis, a different governance structure, and
different structures for the funding of research than taxpayer-funded research
councils or universities. The Trust has every right and obligation to determine
its own policies in relation to open access, but its decisions should not be
used to persuade the UK Government, RCUK or HEFCE to adopt one route to open
access over another. I hope that the Wellcome Trust’s policies on OA did not
unduly influence the Finch Group to support the payment of publication charges
over deposit in a repository for publicly-funded research outputs. The Wellcome
Trust makes a big contribution to UK research but the relationship between its
policy and public policy needs to be clear.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Fred Friend</div>
<div>Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL</div>
<div><a href="http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk" target="_blank">http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk</a>
</div>
<div> </div>
<div style="font-size:small;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;font-family:'Calibri';display:inline;font-weight:normal">
<div style="FONT:10pt tahoma">
<div> </div>
<div style="BACKGROUND:#f5f5f5">
<div><b>From:</b> <a title="amsciforum@GMAIL.COM" href="mailto:amsciforum@GMAIL.COM" target="_blank">Stevan Harnad</a> </div>
<div><b>Sent:</b> Sunday, July 29, 2012 1:44 PM</div>
<div><b>To:</b> <a title="JISC-REPOSITORIES@JISCMAIL.AC.UK" href="mailto:JISC-REPOSITORIES@JISCMAIL.AC.UK" target="_blank">JISC-REPOSITORIES@JISCMAIL.AC.UK</a>
</div>
<div><b>Subject:</b> Re: Discussion of the new RCUK OA policy on
Google+</div></div></div>
<div> </div></div>
<div style="font-size:small;font-style:normal;text-decoration:none;font-family:'Calibri';display:inline;font-weight:normal">
<div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica">On 2012-07-29, at 3:48 AM, Richard
Poynder wrote:</p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;MIN-HEIGHT:14px;FONT:12px helvetica"> </p>
<blockquote style="BORDER-LEFT:rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;PADDING-LEFT:1ex;FONT-FAMILY:helvetica;FONT-SIZE:medium" class="gmail_quote">List members may be interested in a discussion on Google+ of
the new OA policy announced by Research Councils UK. The discussion includes
contributions from (amongst others) Stevan Harnad, Peter Suber and Cameron
Neylon.<br>
<blockquote><br>The discussion can be read here: <a href="http://t.co/h6p1Lb6F" target="_blank"><span style="COLOR:#1738f5;TEXT-DECORATION:underline">http://t.co/h6p1Lb6F<br></span></a><span style="COLOR:#144fae">Long URL: <a href="https://plus.google.com/app/plus/mp/130/#~loop:aid=z12cfnlocquuv3ojq04chnsrcsanjl2xr4w&view=activity" target="_blank"><span style="COLOR:#1738f5;TEXT-DECORATION:underline">https://plus.google.com/app/plus/mp/130/#~loop:aid=z12cfnlocquuv3ojq04chnsrcsanjl2xr4w&view=activity<br>
</span></a></span> <br><span style="COLOR:#144fae">The interview with Stevan that triggered the
discussion is available here: <a href="http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/oa-advocate-stevan-harnad-withdraws_26.html" target="_blank"><span style="COLOR:#1738f5;TEXT-DECORATION:underline">http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/oa-advocate-stevan-harnad-withdraws_26.html</span></a></span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica">I was not consulted by -- nor do I
have direct access to -- either the Finch or the RCUK committee, so I have no
choice but to try to persuade policy makers to see reason via open skywriting.
</p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"> </p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica">I do not wish to point a finger at
anyone in particular. I have no idea who the individuals or the interests were
that actually led to these two disastrous outcomes, but I have no doubt that
unless quickly fixed, their consequences will indeed be disastrous for OA. </p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"> </p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica">I am only one individual, but I'll
warrant I've spent more time thinking about and fighting for OA than any of the
individuals involved in these decisions, so unless I am to regard 20 years of
struggle as an idle whiling of my lifetime, I must speak up now.</p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;MIN-HEIGHT:14px;FONT:12px helvetica"> </p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica">Here are some pertinent excerpts
from the discussion for which Richard has provided the link above:</p>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;MIN-HEIGHT:14px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><strong>Peter Suber:</strong><br></span></p>
<blockquote>...In general I'm with Stevan on this. The RCUK policy and the
Finch recommendations fail to take good advantage of green OA. Like Stevan, I
initially overestimated the role of green in the RCUK policy, but in
conversation with the RCUK have come to a better understanding. In various
blog posts since the two documents were released, I've criticized the
under-reliance on green. I'm doing so again, more formally, in a forthcoming
editorial in a major journal. I'm also writing up my views at greater length
for the September issue of my newsletter (SPARC Open Access
Newsletter).<br><br>For more background, I've argued for years that green and
gold are complementary; I have a whole chapter on this in my new book . So we
want both. But there are better and worse ways to combine them. Basically the
RCUK and Finch Group give green a secondary or minimal role, and fail to take
advantage of its ability to assure a fast and inexpensive transition to
OA.</blockquote>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;MIN-HEIGHT:14px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><strong><br></strong></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;MIN-HEIGHT:14px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><strong>Richard Poynder:</strong><br></span></p>
<blockquote><em>+Cameron Neylon</em> wrote: "Stevan has generally argued from
a public good perspective - more research available for researchers to read is
a public good - rather than a technological or industrial policy perspective.
RCUK and Finch are coming from a much more innovation and industry focussed
perspective." <br><br>I am not sure what industry Cameron is referring to
here. Certainly, if Stevan is correct then the publishing industry has a great
deal to gain from RCUK and Finch. However, I suspect he means that CC-BY can
turn research papers into raw material that new businesses can use (by, for
instance, mining their content). That's fine, but at what
price?<br><br></blockquote>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"> </p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><strong>Cameron Neylon:</strong><br></span></p>
<blockquote><em>+Richard Poynder</em> You ask about costs. Realistically the
transitional costs should be somewhere between nothing and maybe £15M pa for a
few years. The £50M is in many ways a rather silly figure. But the real answer
is that the worst case scenario is we do 1.5% less research for a few
years - and frankly that is in the noise. It's such a small figure in the
overall research budget that it seems silly to worry about that when we know
that there are much bigger inefficiencies that can be addressed by
OA.<br><br>But even if it did cost £50M to deliver OA to all RCUK funded
outputs from April next year, wouldn't that be a bargain? We can start to save
several hundred million on subscriptions, start to address the nearly £1B of
lost economic activity due to SMEs not having access, we can get efficiencies
in the research process of maybe 10%, maybe 50%, maybe 100%. Even if that
costs £200M over four years and if its restricted to the UK I'd say its still
a bargain.<br><br>And that's what the RCUK policy, even in its current form
delivers. Authors have precisely two choices. Go to a journal that offers a
gold option and take it. Or go to a journal that offers a green option with no
more than 6 month embargoes. It reduces author choice but so does any
effective mandate. It's working for Wellcome so I think it can be made to work
here as well. But bottom line the policy delivers OA to the UK's RC funded
output from April 2013 with at worst a six month embargo. The only real risk
is that publishers form a cartel to agree to charge high prices. And that
cartel is already broken by a range of OA publishers who charge much less than
the average.<br><br>What I find frustrating is that I actually agree that it
would be a more effective policy would be to offer the option to go green if
Gold is too expensive - at least in the short term. I'm arguing for this - the
PLOS position supports this because I argued for it internally - and I'm
talking to folks about the details of implementation and arguing for it with
the relevant people. But the firebombing of comment threads, the shouting at
people who should be our allies is making my job harder and strengthening the
hand of the publishers to ask for more money, on weaker terms, because they
can represent the OA movement as being unreasonable, shouty, and
fragmented.<br><br>What would be helpful is clear rational argument that
supports the principle direction of both Finch and RCUK towards OA as fast as
possible, but offers advice on the implementation - rather than outright
rejection or acceptance. Making the economic case for green based on real
numbers and offer it as advice, not as a shouting match, to the people who are
on our side. Telling those in government and RCUK who are expending
significant political capital to drive the OA agenda that they are idiots is
not helpful. Claiming that green is free is not helpful. Showing how it is a
cost effective as a strategy, engaging with those people and giving them the
detailed modelling of how costs would pan out, is. Offering to help game out
the different ways policy might have an impact, is. But doing it
constructively, not combatively, and NOT IN ALL CAPS!<br><br>And finally there
needs to be more listening and understanding of other's positions and
perspectives. Stevan says above he speaks for the interests of researchers but
he doesn't represent mine. Access to the literature isn't a problem for me, I
can get any paper I want if I put my mind to it, albeit (possibly) illegally.
Discovery of the right literature is a problem, aggregation of data is a
problem. Similarly you dismiss the potential for enhancing innovation in your
reply to me, but that is the government perspective. If you don't engage with
that then they will give up and move on, and we will probably get some half
baked licensing or public library scheme. <br><br>We need to stop claiming we
talk for people and starting talking with people. There are many different
interests served by OA, some served perfectly well by Green or Gratis and some
that are not. For those of us with needs not served, Green could be a
dangerous distraction, just as Gold looks this way for those who believe Green
is the fastest route to universal access.<br><br>But it doesn't have to be
this way - we can use the strengths of both approaches and each in our own way
push on both routes as far and as fast as we can. There's no need for this to
be competitive. Paying for Libre in no way diminishes the value of Gratis and
nor does having Gratis diminish the value in continuing to push for Libre. And
both Green and Gold approaches can be complementary in keeping transitional
costs under control. We can have both, arguably we need both, so lets get on
with enabling both and let the market and communities decide which route works
for them.<br><br>I wrote a long comment originally and lost it in an
inadvertent click. Then thought this was good because I should write something
shorter...then wrote something longer</blockquote>
<div> </div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"> </p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"></p>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN:center;FONT-FAMILY:helvetica;FONT-SIZE:medium"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><strong>PRIORITIES, AGAIN</strong></span></div>
<div style="TEXT-ALIGN:center;FONT-FAMILY:helvetica;FONT-SIZE:medium"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px">Reply to <em>@Cameron Neylon</em></span></div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><strong><br></strong></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><strong>"Transitional Costs":</strong> It is not at all
clear to me what Cameron's speculations about transitional costs of <i>"between
nothing and maybe £15M pa for a few years"</i> are based on. <br><br>(I'm also
not sure how <i>"the worst case scenario is we do 1.5% less research for a few
years - and frankly that is in the noise"</i> would wash with researchers, even
if it were right on the money.) <br><br>Does anyone seriously imagine that if
the UK, with its 6% of world research output, mandates Gold OA then all journals
will obligingly convert to pure-Gold OA to accommodate the RCUK mandate?
<br><br>Assuming the answer is No (and that Cameron does not imagine that all UK
authors will therefore drop their existing journals and flock to the existing
Gold OA journals), the only remaining option is <a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/923-Hybrid-Gold-OA-and-the-Cheshire-Cats-Grin.html" target="_blank">hybrid
Gold</a>. <br><br>It is certainly conceivable (indeed virtually certain) that
under the irresistible incentive of the current RCUK mandate virtually all
journals will quickly come up with a Hybrid Gold option: What is also
conceivable is that some journals will offer a discounted hybrid Gold option
("<a href="http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&lr=&q=harnad%20OR%20Harnad%20OR%20archivangelism+blogurl:http://openaccess.eprints.org/&ie=UTF-8&tbm=blg&tbs=qdr:m&num=100&c2coff=1&safe=active#q=membership+OR+memberships+blogurl%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fopenaccess.eprints.org%2F&hl=en&lr=&c2coff=1&safe=active&tbm=blg&tbas=0&source=lnt&sa=X&ei=AiYVUN6mM8Xl0QHh-IGICw&ved=0CCIQpwUoAA&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.&fp=1b00a957fb790d18&biw=1258&bih=774" target="_blank">membership</a>")
to authors at universities that subscribe to that journal: Maybe even free
hybrid Gold for those authors, as long as their university subscribes again the
next year.<br><br>But that isn't a transition scenario, it's a local
subscription deal. It locks in current subscription rates and revenues and
provides Gold OA for authors from subscribing institutions. How many papers? And
what about authors from non-subscribing institutions? And how does this scale,
globally and across time? <br><br>Subscriptions are sold and sustained on the
demand by an institution for the <i>whole</i> of a journal's contents. But an
institution's published papers per journal vary from year to year and from
institution to institution. What is an institution's incentive to keep
subscribing at a fixed rate? Especially if -- <i>mirabile dictu</i> -- the
global proportion of Gold OA articles were to go up? (Reminder: You don't need a
subscription to access those Gold articles!)<br><br>Publishers can do this
simple reckoning too. So it is much more likely that the "quick" Hybrid Gold
offered by most journals under RCUK pressure will not be based on free Gold OA
for subscribers, but on charging extra for Gold OA. How much? It's up to the
journal, since the mandate is just that if Gold is offered, it must be picked
and paid for, if the journal is picked.<br><br>So the likelihood is that
journals will charge a lot. (They already charge a lot for Gold OA.) The price
per article is likely to be closer to 1/Nth of their gross revenues per article
for a journal that publishes N articles per year. If they get that much per RCUK
article, then that will bring in 6% more than their prior gross revenue
annually.<br><br>We can speculate on how much publishers might reduce this 1/N,
in order to hedge their bets, on the off-chance that it could also catch on in
some other countries whose pockets full of spare research funds are not quite as
deep as the UK's -- but why are we speculating like this? No one knows what will
happen if UK authors are forced to pay for Gold and journals happily offer them
hybrid Gold at an asking-price of the journal's choosing.<br><br>What's sure is
that this kind of "transition" doesn't scale -- because other countries don't
have the spare change to pay for OA this way -- and especially because it is
still evident for those who are still thinking straight that OA can be provided,
completely free of any extra cost whilst subscriptions are paying for
publication, by mandating Green OA rather than paying pre-emptively for a
"transition" to Gold OA.<br><br>And certainly not paying in order to enjoy the
legendary benefits of Libre OA -- for authors who can't even be bothered to
provide Gratis OA unless it is mandated! (At least every researcher today, both
as author and user, has a concrete sense of the frustration of gratis-access
denial as a non-subscriber: How many researchers have the faintest idea of what
they are missing for lack of getting or giving libre OA re-use rights?)<br><br>I
would also appreciate an explanation from Cameron of how, if the UK pays for
Gold OA for every one of the articles it publishes, it can <i>"save several
hundred million on subscriptions"</i>? Does Cameron imagine that UK institutions
only subscribe to journals in order to gain access to their <i>own</i> research
output? (Or has Cameron forgotten about hybrid Gold OA,
again?)<br><br></span></p></div>
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<div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><em>+Cameron Neylon:</em></span></p><i>"It's working
for Wellcome so I think it can be made to work here as
well."</i></div></blockquote>
<div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br>Is it? And if Wellcome pays to make all its funded
research Gold OA, does that take care of Wellcome authors' access to research
other than Wellcome-funded research?<br><br></span></p></div>
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<div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><i>+Cameron Neylon: </i></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><i>"The only real risk is that publishers form a cartel
to agree to charge high prices. And that cartel is already broken by a range
of OA publishers who charge much less than the average."
</i></span></p></div></blockquote>
<div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br>Is that so? Are you not forgetting Hybrid Gold again?
And authors' disinclination to give up their journal of choice in order to have
to pay scarce research money for a Gold OA that they had to be mandated to act
as if they wanted?<br><br>Being mandated to do a few extra keystrokes (to
provide Green OA) as a condition of receiving research funding is one thing (and
a familiar one), but having to give up your journal of choice and to shell out
scarce research money (or possibly even some of your own dosh) is quite
another.<br><br></span></p></div>
<blockquote style="BORDER-BOTTOM:medium none;BORDER-LEFT:medium none;PADDING-BOTTOM:0px;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 40px;PADDING-LEFT:0px;PADDING-RIGHT:0px;BORDER-TOP:medium none;BORDER-RIGHT:medium none;PADDING-TOP:0px">
<div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><i>+Cameron Neylon:</i></span></p><i>"a more effective
[RCUK] policy would be to offer the option to go green if Gold is too
expensive… I'm… arguing for it with the relevant
people"</i> </div></blockquote>
<div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br>Putting an arbitrary price-limit on the Gold fee is
no solution for the profound flaw in the current RCUK policy. How much more than
cost-free is "too expensive"? And why?<br><br></span></p></div>
<blockquote style="BORDER-BOTTOM:medium none;BORDER-LEFT:medium none;PADDING-BOTTOM:0px;MARGIN:0px 0px 0px 40px;PADDING-LEFT:0px;PADDING-RIGHT:0px;BORDER-TOP:medium none;BORDER-RIGHT:medium none;PADDING-TOP:0px">
<div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><i>+Cameron Neylon:</i></span></p><i>"the firebombing
of comment threads </i>[by Harnad]<i> … is making my job
harder"</i></div></blockquote>
<div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br>Thinking things through first might make it easier --
maybe even consulting those who might have thought them through already.
;>)<br><br></span></p></div>
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<div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><i>+Cameron Neylon:</i></span></p><i>"Claiming that
green is free is not helpful"</i> </div></blockquote>
<div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br>But while subscriptions are paying the cost of
publishing in full, and fulsomely, it is, whether helpful or not, <u>a
fact.</u><br><br></span></p></div>
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<div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><i>+Cameron Neylon:</i></span></p><i>"Showing how
[Green] is cost effective as a strategy, engaging with those people and giving
them the detailed modelling of how costs would pan out, is
[helpful].</i>"</div></blockquote>
<div>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br>I believe that's precisely what <a href="http://ie-repository.jisc.ac.uk/610/2/Modelling_Gold_Open_Access_for_institutions_-_final_draft3.pdf" target="_blank">Alma
Swan and John Houghton</a> did:</span></p>
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<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><b><i>"...for all the universities, the cost of
adopting Green OA is much lower than the cost of Gold OA, with Green OA
self-archiving in parallel with subscription publishing costing institutions
around one-tenth the amount that Gold OA might
cost."</i></b></span></p></div></blockquote></blockquote>
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<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px">and their modelling and recommendations were ignored in
the Finch and RCUK recommendations. Their recommendation was to mandate Green,
not to pay pre-emptively for Gold. And they showed that the benefit/cost ratio
was far higher for Green than Gold in the transition phase. </span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px">(Post-Green Gold is another story, but we have to get
there first; and the calculations confirm that mandating Green -- not paying
pre-emptively for Gold while still paying for subscriptions -- is the way to get
there from here.)</span></p>
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<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><i>+Cameron Neylon:</i></span></p><i>"Offering to help
game out the different ways policy might have an impact, is
[helpful].</i>"</div></blockquote>
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<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br><b><i>I offer to help.</i></b><br><br>Till now I have
not been consulted in advance, so I have had no choice but to give my assessment
after the policy (both Finch and RCUK) was announced as a <i>fait accompli</i>.
My assessment was extremely negative, because both policies are just dreadful,
and their defects are obvious.<br><br>But RCUK, at least, is easily reparable.
I've described how. I'm happy to explain it to any policy-maker willing to
listen to me.<br><br>(And if RCUK is fixed, that will indirectly fix
Finch.)<br><br></span></p></div>
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<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><i>+Cameron Neylon:</i></span></p><i>"Stevan says above
</i>[DECLARATION OF INTERESTS]<i> he speaks for the interests of researchers
but he doesn't represent mine. Access to the literature isn't a problem for
me, I can get any paper I want if I put my mind to it, albeit (possibly)
illegally.</i>"</div></blockquote>
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<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br>Cameron, your response does not scale, nor is it
representative.<br><br></span></p></div>
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<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><i>+Cameron Neylon:</i></span></p><i>"Discovery of the
right literature is a problem</i>"</div></blockquote>
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<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br>The only reason discovery of the right literature is
a problem is that <u>most of it is not yet OA</u>! You can't "discover" what is
not there, or not accessible. That's why we need Green (Gratis) OA
mandates.<br><br></span></p></div>
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<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><i>+Cameron Neylon:</i></span></p><i>"you dismiss the
potential for enhancing innovation in your reply to me, but that is the
government perspective</i>"</div></blockquote>
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<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br>Cameron, you know as well as I do that "the
government" could not explain what the slogan "<i>potential for enhancing
innovation</i>" means to save its life! "The government" gets fed these slogans
and buzzwords and "perspectives" by its advisors and lobbyists and
spin-doctors.<br><br>Yes, it's near-miraculous that "the government" express any
interest in OA at all. But it's up to those who actually know what they are
talking about to go on to explain to them what it means, and what to do about
it. <br><br>And anyone who still has his feet on the ground (rather than
levitating on gold dust or rights rapture) knows that what is needed first and
foremost, and as a necessary precondition for anything further, is Gratis OA
(free online access), globally. </span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px">We're nowhere near having that yet. </span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px">And if RCUK persists in its present fatally flawed form,
we'll have (at the very best) UK Gold OA (raising worldwide OA by 6% from about
22% to about 28%) plus<i> a local, unscalable policy</i>. </span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px">(More likely, we will simply have a failed mandate,
non-compliant authors, a lot of money and time wasted, and the UK no longer
leading the worldwide OA movement, as it had been doing for the past 8
years.)<br><br></span></p></div>
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<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><i>+Cameron Neylon:</i></span></p><i>"There are many
different interests served by OA, some served perfectly well by Green or
Gratis and some that are not. For those of us with needs not served, Green
could be a dangerous distraction, just as Gold looks this way for those who
believe Green is the fastest route to universal access.</i>"</div></blockquote>
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<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br>You seem to be conflating Libre and Gold here
Cameron, but never mind: </span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px">Gratis is for those who need free online access.
</span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px">Libre is for those who need free online access plus
certain re-use rights. </span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px">Green is for those who don't want to wait for all
journals to go Gold and don't have the money to pay for Gold pre-emptively at
today's asking prices while subscriptions are still being paid for. </span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px">Gold is for those who are galled by subscription prices
(and have other sources of money).<br><br>Gratis and Libre come as either Green
or Gold, but Green has no extra cost (while subscriptions are being paid); and
Libre is much harder to get subscription publishers to agree to. </span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px">Moreover, all four include Gratis as a necessary
condition.<br><br>So without tying oneself up into speculative and ideological
knots (or a transport of gold fever or rights rapture), it looks as if Gratis OA
via cost-free Green OA mandates are the way to go for now (with <a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/891-How-to-Maximize-Compliance-With-Funder-OA-Mandates-Potentiate-Institutional-Mandates.html" target="_blank">ID/OA</a>
and the <a href="http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/268511/" target="_blank">Button</a> mooting
embargoes and minimizing embargo damage).<br><br>The rest (Libre, Gold) will
come after we've mandated and provided Gratis Green globally. </span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px">To insist instead on Libre Gold, locally, in the UK now,
by paying extra for it pre-emptively, is just a way of ensuring that the UK no
longer has a scalable global solution for OA at all. And without global Gratis
OA at least, the UK's dearly purchased Gold amounts to <a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/919-The-UK-Governments-Fools-Gold-Rush.html" target="_blank">Fool's
Gold</a>, insofar as UK access is concerned. (And remember way back, Cameron:
Open Access was about <u>access</u>!)<br><br></span></p></div>
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<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><i>+Cameron Neylon:</i></span></p></div></blockquote>
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<div><i>"There's no need for this to be competitive. Paying for Libre in no
way diminishes the value of Gratis and nor does having Gratis diminish the
value in continuing to push for Libre. And both Green and Gold approaches
can be complementary in keeping transitional costs under control. We can
have both, arguably we need both</i>"</div></blockquote></blockquote>
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<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br>I'm all for going for both -- as long as cost-free
Green Gratis OA is mandated and Libre Gold is a bonus option one can choose if
one wishes and has the money to pay for it. </span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px">But not, as RCUK currently has it, where <i>the author
may not choose Green if a journal offers Gold</i>. </span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px">That is just fatal foolishness, aka, Fool's
Gold.</span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><br></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN:0px;FONT:12px helvetica"><span style="FONT-FAMILY:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;COLOR:rgb(51,51,51);FONT-SIZE:13px"><b>Stevan Harnad</b></span></p>
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