Peter Suber, "Tectonic movements toward OA in the UK and Europe," SPARC Open Access Newsletter, 9/2/12
peter.suber's bookmarks 2012-09-02
Summary:
"It's as if the [Finch] Group's mission were not to identify the public interest in distributing the peer-reviewed results of publicly-funded research, but instead to identify a compromise acceptable to publishers.... "It's as if the government saw its responsibility not as public leadership but as private mediation.... "[P]ublisher fears of green OA have been overstated for years. Many successful non-OA publishers have repudiated these fears. People who consult the evidence can answer these fears. And when policy-makers ignore these fears, publishers adapt.... "I'm not recommending a green-only policy. I support gold OA and I support paying for it. I acknowledge that (today) gold makes it easier than green to eliminate embargoes and ensure libre OA, and I strongly want to eliminate embargoes and ensure libre. More, I supporting demanding immediate libre OA in exchange for paying any part of the cost of publication. Green and gold are complementary, and I support a dual or mixed policy in order to get the advantages of each. My summary objection to the Finch recommendations and current RCUK policy is that they don't take sufficient advantage of green and, in the case of the Finch report, do not even acknowledge the advantages of green. As a result, the current RCUK/Finch policy will likely pay more than necessary, make the transition slower than necessary, leave a regrettable percentage of publicly-funded research non-OA, and put the business interests of publishers ahead of the access interests of researchers. "There are ways to encourage gold while requiring green, and even to prefer gold while requiring green. But that's not what the [RCUK/Finch] policy does. I want funders to pay for gold OA when they can afford to do so, provided they already require green OA and require the rights to make it permissible. The largest problems I see with the RCUK policy could be solved it it added (or restored) a green OA mandate at the bottom layer of the policy, and laid its gold funding and incentives on top of that...."