<br>Hi Heather,<div><br></div><div>I'd like to expand on this point you made here:<br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
Comment: this policy provides journals an incentive to offer an open access option via article processing fees which authors are forced to choose if the journal's embargo period is longer than what is acceptable to RCUK. The UK only produces about 6% of the world's scholarly literature, so OA to this literature will not enable UK libraries to cancel subscriptions. To maximize revenue, a journal can provide an OA via APF option at the price of their choosing and extend the embargo period to avoid having authors choose the self-archiving option. </blockquote>
<div><br></div><div>I see the increase in journal embargo periods as an unavoidable consequence of *all* OA mandates/policies, not just RCUK's. It seems to me to be one of the in-built fatal flaws of the 'green' route to self-archiving.</div>
<div><br></div><div>All mandates for self-archiving (and there are many around the world <a href="http://roarmap.eprints.org/">http://roarmap.eprints.org/</a>) usually rely on the publisher graciously 'allowing' this to happen.</div>
<div><br>At the moment, the publishers are completely unthreatened by this because current rates of self-archiving are very poor and even if documents are self-archived few readers a) look for them in IRs b) are able to find them c) get the final version of record & re-use rights the reader actually wants/needs.</div>
<div><br></div><div>But as per discipline, or to put it more obviously per journal, the rates of self-archiving get higher e.g. 50% or greater, this could in theory jeopardize the subscriptions of subscription-access journals. So as soon as they feel threatened - a journal &/or publishing company can just increase the length of the embargo they 'allow'. In fact what's stopping a journal from having a 20 year embargo length? (extreme & absurd I know, but really is there anything preventing them from doing this?)<br>
<br>Extending journal embargo periods therefore would seem to me to be a natural consequence of *any* push for expanded access, not just RCUK's. At least by supporting a gold-route during the transition there will be good-quality, acceptable journals for authors to choose in the future once the available compliant green-routes 'dry-up' from embargo lengthening.</div>
<div><br></div><div>I do wish 'hybrid' gold options were disallowed though, here I think we would hopefully agree. These options tend to be the most expensive and help maintain the traditional subscription access journals. They take articles away from the pure, immediate OA journals (i.e. the future mode of publishing) which isn't particularly helpful for the transition to OA. But that's another matter.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Any thoughts or comments on ways in which embargo lengthening can be prevented? </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>Ross</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div>
</div>-- <br>-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-<br>Ross Mounce<br>PhD Student & Open Knowledge Foundation Panton Fellow<br>Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group<br>University of Bath, 4 South Building, Lab 1.07<br>
<a href="http://about.me/rossmounce" target="_blank">http://about.me/rossmounce</a><br>-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
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