The Fool's Gold Rush Plods On...

"Fool’s Gold is pre-Green Gold (pay-to-publish Gold: I’m not, of course, referring to that tiny minority of journals that are Free Gold today because they are either (i) subsidized or (ii) their subscription publisher makes the online version free for all). The reasons it is Fool’s Gold are four: (1) its cost is vastly inflated with the cost of obsolete features with which it is co-bundled, such as the print edition and publisher PDF, (2) as long as most journals are still subscription journals, the author’s institution is paying for both subscriptions and for Fool’s Gold, (3) in the case of (the growing number of) hybrid subscription/Gold journals (accessible to subscribers only, but individual Fool’s Gold articles are free for all if they have been paid for by the author) the same publisher is being double-paid for Fool’s Gold articles (subscriptions from subscribing institutions plus Fool’s Gold from individual authors) and, most important: (4) OA can be provided at no extra cost to anyone via Green OA self-archiving of the author's peer-reviewed, accepted final draft (with immediate OA or immediate-deposit plus Button-mediated OA if the author chooses to comply with a publisher OA embargo) Fair Gold is post-green Gold: That is the greatly reduced price of Gold after Green OA has been globally mandated (along the lines of what the HEFCE REF policy is doing) ..."