Urgent Need to Revise the New RCUK Open Access Policy - Open Access Archivangelism

abernard102@gmail.com 2012-08-26

Summary:

Use the link to access the full text post from Stevan Harnad. “Many thanks to Peter Suber for providing further information about the open access (OA) policy recommendations of the Finch Committee and of Research Councils UK (RCUK), and the close relationship between them, based on an interview with Mark Thorley, convenor of the RCUK Research Outputs Network (RON)Peter makes no value judgments in conveying this information, so it is unclear what he agrees or disagrees with.  I will be much more explicit: I think this is a terrible policy, ill-informed and short-sighted, which will have extremely bad effects, both in the UK and globally -- if Finch/RCUK are inflexible about taking critical feedback into account and are unwilling to revise the policy in response.  I will summarize the essence of the extra information Peter has provided. It confirms my worst worries ...  Finch/RCUK have decided, a priori, that Libre hybrid Gold OA for the UK's research output is worth paying extra for pre-emptively, out of scarce research funds, over and above the UK's full continuing load of subscriptions to the rest of the world's research output, come what may, and that Gratis hybrid Gold OA is worth requiring UK authors to choose and to pay extra for, even if it induces journals to impose an impermissible embargo length on Green OA... In addition, it is not clear that even UK researchers will be given enough of a top-sliced subsidy from generic UK research funds ("block grants") to allow them to pay for all the Gold OA they need without having to reach into their research funds or their pockets in order to comply with Finch/RCUK...  All these a priori value judgments have been made by Finch/RCUK without taking into account researchers' views on (i) placing constraints on their journal choice, (ii) their need or desire for Libre OA, and (iii) the diversion of already scarce funds from supporting research to paying publishers extra for Gold OA (Libre or Gratis)...  Nor have Finch/RCUK taken into account the consequences this policy may have for the rest of the world, which may not be able to afford -- and may not wish -- to pay extra for Gold OA (Libre or Gratis, hybrid or "pure"), over and above subscriptions, and may now see embargoes on cost-free Green OA lengthened by publishers in order to gain the extra hybrid Gold revenue subsidy that the UK promises.This would be an extremely bad outcome.   I will continue to do my best to try to persuade Finch/RCUK to revise this terrible policy and I hope others who understand its implications will do so too...”

Link:

http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/927-Urgent-Need-to-Revise-the-New-RCUK-Open-Access-Policy.html

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.data oa.gold oa.policies oa.licensing oa.mining oa.comment oa.green oa.universities oa.copyright oa.south oa.cc oa.uk oa.hybrid oa.funders oa.fees oa.embargoes oa.rcuk oa.recommendations oa.funds oa.compliance oa.gratis oa.grey oa.finch_report oa.repositories oa.hei oa.libre oa.journals

Date tagged:

08/26/2012, 10:36

Date published:

08/26/2012, 06:36