Further Fell Fallout From Finch Folly: The Royal Society Relapse - Open Access Archivangelism

" ... The Royal Society thereby pledges that it will not 'double-dip' for hybrid Gold OA. The RS continues to collect subscription fees from institutions worldwide, but whatever additional revenue if gets from individual authors for hybrid Gold OA, it pledges to return as a subscription rebate to all subscribing institutions. But does this mean the RS is a "fair player" insofar as OA is concerned? Hardly. Yet this is not because the hybrid Gold OA rebate amounts to individual authors' full payments for Gold OA subsidizing the subscription costs of institutions worldwide. (The author's own institution only gets back a tiny fraction of its authors' Gold OA fee in its tiny portion of the worldwide subscription rebate.) No. Whether the RS is indeed a fair player depends on whether RS authors have the choice between providing Gold OA by paying the RS that additional cost -- over and above what the world's institutions are already paying the RS in subscriptions -- or providing Green OA at no additional cost, by self-archiving their own article free for all online. For if the RS does not give its authors this choice, then it is certainly not a 'fair player': It is holding RS authors who want to provide OA hostage to the payment of an additional hybrid Gold OA fee ..."