UK Science Minister responds to Finch Report

“David Willetts, the UK Minister for Science and Universities, has accepted the recommendations of the Finch Report. From the full response, : ‘The Government has listened carefully to what publishers, learned societies and the Finch Group collectively have had to say [about green/gold and the length of embargoes]. We prefer the ‘gold’ over the ‘green’ model, especially where the research is taxpayer funded so the Government agrees with the sentiment expressed in the Finch Report. Embargo periods allowed by funding bodies for publishers should be short where publishers have chosen not to take up the preferred option of their receiving an Article Processing Charge (which provides payment in full for immediate publication by the ‘gold OA’ route). Where APC funds are not available to the publisher or learned society, for the publication of publicly-funded research, then publishers could reasonably insist on a longer more equitable embargo period. This could be up to 12 months for science, technology and engineering publications and longer for publications in those disciplines which require more time to secure payback. Even so, publications with embargo periods longer than two years may find it difficult to argue that they are also serving the public interest...." Comment: The Research Councils UK (RCUK) released its own new OA policy earlier today, and it differs in several important ways from the Finch recommendations. My blog post on the new RCUK policy tries to list the main points of difference . The Research Councils are independent of the Science Minister, and I believe they may follow their own lights.”