Fred Friend on Finch/Willetts: Spoiled But Readily Fixed

Bravo to Fred Friend Friend for his trenchant account of the UK/OA saga: "How did the UK government manage to spoil something as good as open access?". Whether or not BIS and the UK goverrnment have the good sense to follow the wise and timely advice of their own 2013 BIS Select Committee on how to repair the RCUK OA Mandate, nothing prevents HEFCE and RCUK from following that advice (just as they followed the advice of the 2004 Select Committee and mandated OA even though the government rejected the advice). And irrespective of any of this, nothing prevents UK researchers from publishing in their journal of choice and depositing their final drafts in their institutional repositories immediately upon acceptance for publication, as Fred suggests, releasing them either immediately as OA, or after an embargo of 6 or 12 months. RCUK has already stated that it will not be enforcing the Green OA embargoes for at least the five years.