Do ‘green’ access strategies actually achieve public access? - Ross Mounce

"I note with interest that article publication charge data from the University of Edinburgh has been released on Figshare today. There are some fascinating numbers in there and I applaud the transparency. One particular article that took my eye is this one: Paradoxical effects of heme arginate on survival of myocutaneous flaps ... Page charges were paid for this article amounting to £1330.45, and that’s just for page charges – the journal did not make the article open access, nor was it asked to. This was for ‘page charges’ alone.  I also noted the research was paid for by the MRC – a top-class UK government-funded agency. As I am a full UK taxpayer, I feel especially entitled to read this research!  The MRC has a very clear policy on open access – the article must either: 1.) be made immediately open access by the publisher upon publication; ‘journal-mediated OA’ (sometimes called ‘gold’) OR 2.) via the route of ‘repository-mediated access’ some kind of copy of the work must be made publicly accessible no more than 6 months after publication (sometimes called ‘green’)  Since the article clearly wasn’t open access at the publisher, I assume the authors have elected to choose the repository-access method. The article was formally published on 1st January 2014, so between then and now, clearly at least 6 months have elapsed. 7 months and 20 days to be precise. So where is the full text of this article?  It’s not in PubMed (abstract-only)  Nor EuropePubMed (abstract-only)  Nor the University of Edinburgh institutional repository (abstract-only)  So it would appear to me that the rules of the funding body (MRC) may have been broken here (sincere apologies if I am wrong about this), something all too easy to do if the repository route is chosen."