Multigrain Discussion: The Finch Report: “Gold” versus “Green” open access

“As many of you know the Finch Committee Report and its support of  “gold” open access has gotten a lot of press both pro and con.   The battle lines continue to be drawn.  InfoDOCKET reports an article in the Guardianthat notes the UK government “is to unveil controversial plans to make publicly funded scientific research immediately available for anyone to read for free by 2014, in the most radical shakeup of academic publishing since the invention of the internet... This is an obvious government endorsement of the recent Finch Committee report favoring ‘gold’ open access over the ‘green’ model.However, according to critics like Stevan Harnad, professor of electronics and computer science at Southampton University, ‘the government was facing an expensive bill in supporting gold open access over the green open access model…  ‘The Finch committee’s recommendations look superficially as if they are supporting open access, but in reality they are strongly biased in favour of the interests of the publishing industry over the interests of UK research…’ Professor Harnad also notes in a post to liblicense that there has been support for ‘green’ open access as  ‘the UK research funding councils, RCUK, have re-confirmed their policy of mandating Green OA...’ Where do you stand on the issue?  Is ‘gold’ open access necessary to provide the financial resources to make open access a reality?  Are taxpayers who have paid for the research entitled to the free access that ‘green’ open access promises?  Is there a hybrid model that preserves the positive elements of both ‘gold’ and ‘green’ models?  Where does peer review and quality assurance fit in to all of this?”