On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 2:23 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm...@cam.ac.uk> wrote:
* is there any *contractual* relationship between a Green-publisher and any
> legal body? Or is Green simply a permission granted unilaterally by
> publishers when they feel like it, and withdrawable when they don't.
>
Green publishers state in their copyright agreements that the author
retains the right to make the refereed draft OA immediately upon
publication (no embargo) by self-archiving it in an OA repository (usually
the author's own institutional repository).
Copyright agreements can always be rewritten with the next generation of
authors (they are binding on both parties of the prior generation once
signed) -- but with every passing month in the growth of the momentum
toward OA it becomes harder, not easier, for Green publishers to back-slide
(and for non-Green publishers to keep sitting on the fence).
> * if Green starts impacting on publishers' revenues (and I understand this
> is part of the Green strategy - when we have 100% Green then publishers
> will have to change) what stops them simply withdrawing the permission? Or
> rationing it? Or any other anti-Green measure
>
See above.
But Green has not had an effect on publishers' revenues yet, and it will
not, until worldwide Green OA approaches 100%. (Institutions can't cancel
must-have journals if their users can only access a percentage of their
contents.)
If and when Green OA makes subscriptions unsustainable, publishers will
downsize to peer-review management alone, and charge for the service on the
Gold OA model, paid for out of institutions' annual subscription
cancelation savings.
Publishers know this (and also know it's optimal for research, hence
inevitable), so they lobby against it with FUD about Green OA destroying
publishing and peer review.
It's fiddlesticks, of course, and the Finch Committee should have had the
sense to see through it. But there's no accounting for human folly...
* Do publishers receive any funding from anywhere for allowing Green? Green
> is extra work for them - why should they increase the amount they do?
>
What extra work is Green for publishers? It's just a few extra keystrokes
for authors.
> * Is there any body which regularly "negotiates" with publishers such as
> ACS, who categorically forbid Green for now and for ever.
>
Just let funder and institutional mandates grow (and allowable embargoes
shrink). Nature will take care of the rest. (Yes, the American Chemical
Society is likely to be the very last one to adapt to the optimal and
inevitable -- but they will, because the adaptation of the rest will
already have debunked their FUD about where Green OA leads.)
Various publishers seem to indicate that they will allow Green as long as
> it's a relatively small percentage. But, as Stevan has noted, if your
> institution mandates Green, then Elsevier forbids it. So I cannot see why,
> if Green were to reach - say - 50%, the publishers wouldn't simply ration
> it and prevent 100%.
>
I also said that Elsevier's "free-will clause" is incoherent ("you retain
the right to self-archive, but you may not exercise it if you must") and
should be ignored by every author still in command of his senses.
(Your pre-emptive worries, Peter, are simply encouraging Zeno's Paralysis,
of whose 38 symptoms you seem to be repeatedly visited by #32 "Poisoned
Apple.")
http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#32.Poisoned
Just let funder and institutional mandates grow (and allowable embargoes
shrink). Nature will take care of the rest.
Stevan Harnad
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