OA and the Man from Del Monte…

abernard102@gmail.com 2012-12-16

Summary:

"Older readers may recall a series of advertisements on UK TV in the 1980s, featuring the Man from Del Monte. The international corporation’s representative arrived in a Latin American village where the peasants were waiting anxiously for his verdict on their fruit crop. When he declared that it was good enough for the company to purchase, they were thrown into transports of delight, instant fiestas, etc. http://tinyurl.com/d6rqhw4 The Man from HEFCE brought less welcome news to the AcSS conference on Open Access, held on 29 and 30 November 2012. See http://tinyurl.com/c4hheq3 Rather like a Samuel Beckett play, there had been a good deal of speculation about what the exact message from the government agents in RCUK and HEFCE might be. What precisely would count as ‘publicly-funded’ research? How specifically would publication charges be funded under the preferred Gold OA model? The Man from HEFCE swatted aside these niceties. Anyone receiving any kind of income from the public purse or using the facilities of a public university would be covered by this policy... If there was insufficient APC funding, UK academics would just have to publish fewer papers: in HEFCE’s view, they published too much anyway. At one level, this was reassuring – in a previous blog http://tinyurl.com/dxs3g2v I had questioned whether universities would fund publication rates beyond REF requirements and some readers suggested that this was not a credible outcome. Now we had it from the oracle. Nor was he particularly concerned about the implications that universities would have to set up internal processes to determine who got supported to publish where. This was what HEFCE central planners expected responsible managements to do. If HEFCE were micro-managing institutions, then institutions should micro-manage their staff. Is there room to discuss, reflect or consult on this policy? The Man from HEFCE says No…  The conference had a great deal of sympathy for the goal of improving access to the scholarly or scientific record. However, it is clear that the authoritarian approach being adopted in the UK is not the only way to achieve this. Felice Levine, from the USA, noted that the Federal Government seemed likely to encourage the principle while acknowledging the value of much fuller consultation http://tinyurl.com/cycp6hq. Whatever NIH are doing, no-one else in the US seems likely to be bounced into OA. This will leave space for learned societies, and their publisher partners, to find viable means to a desired end...  In the absence of genuine consultation, some kind of stand-off seems inevitable. The declaration by the major UK history journals, http://tinyurl.com/bx2ovpx that they will offer a Gold OA option but will not accept a Green OA period of less than 36 months or a Creative Commons licence that does not protect authors’ rights, is a potential rallying point..."

Link:

http://www.socialsciencespace.com/2012/12/oa-and-the-man-from-del-monte%E2%80%A6/

From feeds:

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

Tags:

oa.usa oa.new oa.gold oa.licensing oa.comment oa.government oa.mandates oa.nih oa.green oa.copyright oa.events oa.uk oa.presentations oa.fees oa.embargoes oa.rcuk oa.recommendations oa.funds oa.finch_report oa.hefce oa.ref ia.usa oa.repositories oa.libre oa.policies oa.journals

Date tagged:

12/16/2012, 16:51

Date published:

12/16/2012, 11:51