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Here we go again with a ruinous outlook on OA where Gold and Green roads are seen as competing with each other in some crazy, absolute, way. Interest for Gold is not "pre-emptive" of Green. The obvious point, it looks to me, is that all these steps are useful to move forward toward OA. That universities should seek to have mandates is fine, of course; that they should seek ways to help their researchers to publish in OA is equally fine. In some universities, the people in place do not see their way through a mandate but see their way to helping authors publishing in OA; in other universities, other people find their way to a mandate. The politics of a mandate may appear far more difficult in one place, and less so in another. Are we going to stay immobile wherever mandates are very hard to secure, or cramped in a monotonous cry for the mandate despite the local immobilism? Is it not possible, in the meanwhile, to seek other ways to help OA? And is this not a bit more realistic than claim in a strident voice that "universities should on no account... etc." Jean-Claude Guédon Le samedi 28 mars 2009 à 18:13 -0400, Stevan Harnad a écrit : Pre-emptive Gold Fever seems to be spreading. Following hard on the heels of University of California's Gilded New Deal with Springer -- UC subscribes to the Springer fleet of journals for an undisclosed fee, but, as part of the Deal, UC authors get to publish their articles as Gold OA for free in those same Springer journals -- now Universities UK (UUK) and the Research Information Network (RIN) are jointly dispensing advice on the payment of Gold OA fees (which is fine) but without first giving the most important piece of advice: Universities should on no account spend a single penny on Gold OA fees until and unless they have adopted a Green OA mandate for all of their refereed journal article output. There is still time for UUK and RIN to remedy this, by prominently setting the priorities and contingencies straight. I fervently hope they will do so! (Peter Suber is expressing the very same hope, but in his characteristically gentler and less curmudgeonly way.) Stevan Harnad American Scientist Open Access Forum Jean-Claude Guédon Université de Montréal