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I agree with Fred's comments below. In effect, the Finch report tries to pit Gold vs. Green despite the fact that these two road to OA complement each other. It has turned out to be also a clever and destructive divisive move against the OA community.<BR>
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One element that has hampered the Green road has not been mentioned strongly enough in the past. It is that filling repositories through mandates is still not enough. The Liège model which links internal evaluation to the actual presence of documents in the repository is the gold (pun intended) standard here. But being visible and being accessible still does not ensure being used by researchers. Repositories must also become indispensable in any research heuristic strategy, and that, they have not yet achieved.<BR>
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To achieve this "must consult" status, it takes more than OAI-PMH and Google. It takes an ability for repositories to create value independently of the value created around journals by impact factors, and even competing with it. The trend toward article-level metrics pushed by PLoS and others is very good in this regard. Repositories could network to create forms of article-level metrics that would converge with other article-level metrics stemming from the Gold corner of OA. In this manner, the evaluation of scientific research could take a new and healthier turn.<BR>
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If we take a city's commercial centre as a metaphor, researchers go to the streets where the Gucci Gucci stores stand. That is where good company is supposed to be found. After all, they all wear Hermès scarves... And Hermès, we all know, has a high impact... Well, some exceedingly good places also exist elsewhere. They are not even stores; they are openly accessible counters, and the offering is for the taking, but they are not on the right street and they do not benefit from advertising in glossy-paper magazines. <BR>
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We have to move these open access counters to the main street, or, alternatively, make their street look like a main street. For this, you need symbolic value. The present standard for symbolic value is the impact factor. It is a sham, a horrendous sham (can anyone justify three decimals?). Building alternative metrics around depositories (and depository-like collections of gold OA journals) will contribute to achieving this goal. More still may be needed, but this is a first, clear, and precise objective, the goal being to place value-creation back in the hands of the research communities, and not in the hands of Thomson-Reuters (Web of Science) or Elsevier (Scopus). The OpenAire network sponsored by the European Union is a good place to start this kind of work and there are strong OA personalities in its midst.<BR>
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Meanwhile, working hard on other governments not to be tricked like the UK government is obviously another front to be opened; there again, I fully agree with Fred.<BR>
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Jean-Claude Guédon<BR>
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Le mardi 04 juin 2013 à 11:28 +0000, Friend, Fred a écrit :
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<FONT COLOR="#000000">The wide range of activities reported on the gold oa blog illustrate the priority now given to APC-funded gold OA by Government and other Establishment agencies in the UK, and the second-class status being given to repositories and other green OA developments by those same agencies. After many protests following the Finch Report, the role of repositories has been given greater recognition in the policies of RCUK and HEFCE, but this welcome recognition cannot disguise the fact that within the UK Establishment repositories are now not to be encouraged. Both gold and green OA are the twin sisters born of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, and across the globe they have been allowed to grow unhindered, indeed actively supported by many governments and official bodies. And so it was it in the UK until the summer of 2012, when powerful lobbying by vested interests achieved their aim of banishing the green sister to the back of the political house.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#000000">One result of the second-class status now granted to green OA is that there are now few UK projects to support the development of repositories. So much could be done to illustrate the sustainability of the repository route to OA, or to develop new services based upon repository content, but such developments no longer find favour with agencies committed to gold OA. Fortunately, while the UK Government and Government-funded agencies are content to leave repositories in their partially-developed state and pour taxpayer funds into APC-funded gold OA, many UK universities remain as committed to their institutional repositories as they were before the Finch Report. The problem they face is that while they are expected to prioritise funding for APCs, few universities can afford to fund the developments which would show the true value of repositories as the most cost-effective route to OA for publicly-funded research outputs. Fortunately the UK Government's misguided policy in prioritising APC-funded gold OA at the cost of supporting green OA is unlikely to be followed by other governments wishing to maintain balanced policies.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#000000">Fred Friend</FONT><BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#000000">Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL</FONT><BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#000000"><A HREF="http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk">http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk</A></FONT><BR>
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<B><FONT SIZE="2"><FONT COLOR="#000000">From:</FONT></FONT></B><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="2"> Neil Jacobs [n.jacobs@jisc.ac.uk]</FONT></FONT><BR>
<B><FONT SIZE="2"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Sent:</FONT></FONT></B><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="2"> 03 June 2013 15:49</FONT></FONT><BR>
<B><FONT SIZE="2"><FONT COLOR="#000000">To:</FONT></FONT></B><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="2"> SPARC-OAForum@arl.org</FONT></FONT><BR>
<B><FONT SIZE="2"><FONT COLOR="#000000">Subject:</FONT></FONT></B><FONT COLOR="#000000"><FONT SIZE="2"> [sparc-oaforum] Gold OA infrastructure</FONT></FONT><BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#000000">Colleagues</FONT><BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#000000">There is a series of insightful blog posts on Gold OA infrastructure here:</FONT><BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#000000"><A HREF="http://www.goldoa.org.uk">www.goldoa.org.uk</A></FONT><BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#000000">There will be a meeting of international experts on this topic tomorrow. We’d welcome any comments on these ideas via the blog, which will inform the direction taken by people like CrossRef, COUNTER, international publishers, NISO, etc.</FONT><BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#000000">Many thanks</FONT><BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#000000">Neil</FONT><BR>
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<FONT COLOR="#000000">-- </FONT>
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Jean-Claude Guédon
Professeur titulaire
Littérature comparée
Université de Montréal
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