The UK's 6% Factor and the "Gold Trumps Green" Principle: Perverse Effects - Open Access Archivangelism

“If the Finch/RCUK OA Policy is not revised, worldwide publishers' subscription revenues stand to increase by c. 6% (the approximate UK percentage of all annual peer-reviewed research published) over and above current global subscription revenues, at the expense of the UK taxpayer and UK research, in exchange for Gold OA to UK research output.  (This essentially amounts to the author's buying back a copyright license from a hybrid subscription/Gold publisher, in exchange for c. $1000 per article for c.60,000* articles per year, while letting the publisher continue to sell the article as part of the journal's subscription content. The c. $1000 per article hybrid Gold OA fee is approximately 1/Nth of total worldwide subscription revenue for journals publishing N articles per year.)  I don't know how much the UK as a whole is paying currently for subscriptions. If the UK publishes 6% of worldwide research, perhaps we can assume it pays 6% of publishers' worldwide subscription revenues (if the UK consumes about the same amount as it produces), hence another 60 million dollars.   If so, that means that paying pre-emptively for Gold OA for all UK research output approximately doubles what the UK is paying for publication. (And even if publishers make good on their promise to translate their double-dipping hybrid Gold revenues into proportionate reductions in their worldwide subscription rates, for the UK that only means a 6% rebate on the 100% surcharge that the UK alone pays to make its own output Gold OA -- i.e., $36 million back on a total UK expenditure of $60 million for subscriptions + $60 million for pre-emptive Gold OA license buy-backs.) And it gets worse: The UK can't cancel its subscriptions, because UK researchers still need access to the other 94% of annual research worldwide.  Nor is that all: By (1) giving subscription publishers the incentive to offer a hybrid Gold OA option (in exchange for 6% more revenue at virtually no added cost to the publisher, since CC-BY is simply a license!) as well as (2) giving subscription publishers the incentive to increase the embargo length on the Green option (cost-free for authors), Finch/RCUK's "Gold trumps Green" policy also denies UK (and worldwide) researchers access to what could have been Green OA research from the rest of the world (94%) for those institutions and individuals in the UK and worldwide who cannot afford subscription access to the journal in which articles they may need are published.  And the perverse effects of RCUK's "Gold trumps Green" policy also make it harder for institutions and funders worldwide to adopt Green OA mandates, thereby reducing the potential for worldwide Green OA (which is to say, worldwide OA) still further.  And that suits subscription publishers just fine! It's win/win for them, just so long as funders and institutions don't mandate Green.  That's why subscription publishers lobbied so hard for the Finch/RCUK outcome -- and applauded it as a step in the right direction when it was announced... But all these perverse effects can be eliminated by simply striking 9 words from the RCUK policy, making the Gold and Green options equally permissible ways of complying.  Apart from that, what is needed is to shore up the RCUK mandate's compliance verification mechanism. See: ‘United Kingdom's Open Access Policy Urgently Needs a Tweak’ (appears inD-Lib tomorrow, Friday, September 14). ”