<div class="serendipity_entry_body" style="font-family:verdana,arial,helvetica,sans-serif;color:rgb(51,51,51);font-size:13px;background-color:rgb(255,255,255)">RCUK allowing hybrid Gold payment only if the publisher allows the Green option within the RCUK 6-12-24+ embargo limits is <a href="http://poynder.blogspot.ca/2013/02/open-access-tale-of-two-tables.html?showComment=1361531628468" style="color:rgb(0,51,102)">no solution</a> for the perverse effects of the new RCUK policy.<br>
<br>The only solution is for RCUK to <em>allow hybrid Gold payment only if the publisher allows an immediate un-embargoed Green option</em> -- and RCUK must <em>leave the choice between Green or Gold options completely up to the author</em> (no "preference," no "decision tree").<br>
<br>A subscription publisher that pits paid hybrid Gold against embargoed Green is practicing extortion, with or without the help of RCUK's perverse policy.<br><br>Embargoes are a complicated story that will soon have to be told forthrightly. <br>
<br>Publishers embargo green under the pretext that it's the only way to protect themselves from sure ruin.
<br><br>That is utter nonsense, of course.
<br><br>What embargoes really do is to delay -- i.e. embargo -- the <a href="http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/" style="color:rgb(0,51,102)">natural, inevitable evolution</a> from subscription publishing to Fair-Gold OA publishing, at a <a href="http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july10/harnad/07harnad.html" style="color:rgb(0,51,102)">fair, affordable, sustainable price</a> by "protecting" double-payment at today's grotesquely inflated Fool's-Gold price.<br>
<br>Embargoes embargo both OA and Fair Gold, in order to lock in current subscription revenues and Fool's Gold.<br><br>Think about it….<br><br>But the compromise of an <a href="http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/369-guid.html">immediate-deposit/optional-access (ID/OA)</a> mandate (in which deposit must be immediate but access to the deposit may be embargoed) will ensure that the publishers will be unable to embargo the optimal and inevitable outcome for researchers much longer.<br>
<br>Whatever else it does, RCUK should immediately and unambiguously adopt (and ensure compliance with) an ID/OA mandate.<br></div><div><br></div>