On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 7:21 AM, Kiley, Robert [Wellcome Trust] wrote: My reading of the RCUK policy is somewhat different to Stevan’s. In short, > I see clear parallels between what Finch recommended (disclosure – I sat on > the Finch Working Group) and the RCUK policy. > > **· **Finch recommended gold OA and flexible funding arrangements > to cover OA gold costs. RCUK have released a policy that allows for gold > publishing, and provides flexible funding (via block grants to HEI’s) to > support these aims. **** > > **** > > **· **Finch said when publishers didn't offer a mechanism to pay > for OA gold, it was reasonable for funders to demand an embargo period of > less than 12 months. [See paragraph 9.10 of the Finch Report]. The RCUK > have followed this. > > **· **Finch said that support of OA publications should be > supported by policies to “minimise restrictions on the rights of use and > re-use”. RCUK have followed this, and indeed pushed further to require > than when an APC is levied the article must be published under a CC-BY > licence. This is identical to the policy change the Wellcome Trust > announced at the end of June. > > There were a long string of posts on this forum at the end of last week > calling for an end to the counter-productive squabbling over the minutiae > of differences between green and gold, the obsession with costing models, > etc. The RCUK policy is entirely compatible with the recommendations of > the Finch Report, and continually rubbishing Finch seems counter-productive > on many levels. >
In response to Robert, let's keep it simple and go straight to the heart of the matter: 1. Ever since the historic 2004 Report of the UK Parliamentary Select Committee which made the revolutionary recommendation to mandate (what has since come to be called) Green OA self-archiving as well as to fund (what has since come to be called) Gold OA journal fees, RCUK (and later EC and other funding councils worldwide) have been mandating Green and funding Gold. 2. The Finch report recommended phasing out Green and only funding Gold. 3. RCUK and EC declined to follow the Finch recommendation and reaffirmed (and strengthened) their Green OA mandates. That's the substance of the "squabbling over the minutiae of differences between green and gold". The Finch Report is "compatible with the recommendations of the Finch Report" only in the sense that A & B is more "compatible" with -A & B than with -A & -B. (RCUK could, I suppose, have suspended *both* its Green mandate and its Gold funding, contradicting its own prior policy, but it did not…) The Wellcome Trust's pioneering historic lead in OA has since 2004 alas hardened into rigid dogma, at the cost of much lost growth potential for OA (as well as of much potential research funding). The 2004 Select Committee's prescient recommendation eight years ago had been this: “This Report recommends that all UK higher education institutions establish institutional repositories on which their published output can be stored and from which it can be read, free of charge, online. It also recommends that Research Councils and other Government funders mandate their funded researchers to deposit a copy of all of their articles in this way... [T]o encourage… experimentation… the Report [also] recommends that the Research Councils each establish [an experimental] fund to which their funded researchers can apply should they wish to pay to publish...” http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/39903.htm CC-BY is not nearly as urgent and important as "Gratis" OA (free online access): not all authors want it, most users don't need it, and it would immediately make endorsing un-embargoed Green ruinous to subscription publishers: so demanding it today, pre-emptively leads to less OA and longer embargoes (just as demand for pre-emptive Gold does). *See:* Overselling the Importance and Urgency of CC-BY/CC-BY-NC for Peer-Reviewed Scholarly and Scientific Research http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/909-.html (Lest it sound as if I am lauding the pre-emptive funding of Gold today: I am not. It was historically important to demonstrate that fee-based Gold OA is conceivable and viable, in order to fend off the publishing lobby's doomsday contention that OA would destroy publishing. So the early Gold OA proof-of-principle, especially by PLOS-Biology and PLOS-Medicine, was very timely and useful. But the subsequent mindless Gold Rush, at the expense of neglecting the enormous power of cost-free Green OA mandates to accelerate the growth of OA, not to mention the needless waste of money diverted from research to fund Gold pre-emptively, have been exceedingly detrimental to overall OA growth. The simplest way to summarize the underlying logic and pragmatics is that *pre-Green-OA pre-emptive Gold OA*, at today's inflated asking prices and while subscriptions still prevail, is extremely bad for OA progress: wasteful, unscalable, and unsustainable, it generates very little global OA, very slowly. In contrast, *post-Green-OA, downsized Gold OA*, once Green OA has prevailed globally, making subscriptions unsustainable and forcing journals to downsize and convert to Gold OA for peer review service alone, at a far lower cost, paid out of subscription cancelation savings instead of scarce research funds, will be affordable, scalable and sustainable) Stevan Harnad *From:* Stevan Harnad > *Sent:* 17 July 2012 21:33 > *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)* > Subject:* [GOAL] RCUK & EC Did Not Follow Finch/Willets, They Rejected > It, Promptly and Prominently!**** > > ** ** > > **Cross-posted***** > > * * > > *RCUK & EC DID NOT FOLLOW FINCH/WILLETS, ***** > > *THEY REJECTED IT, PROMPTLY AND PROMINENTLY!***** > > ** ** > > Irony of ironies, that it should now appear (to some who are not paying > attention) **** > > as if the the RCUK & EC were following the recommendations of > Finch/Willets **** > > when in point of fact *they are pointedly rejecting them*! > > RCUK and EC were already leading the world in providing and mandating > Green OA. > > Finch/Willets, under the influence of the publisher lobby, have > recommended **** > > abandoning cost-free Green OA and instead spending scarce research money * > *** > > on paying publishers extra for Gold OA. > > Both RCUK <http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/media/news/2012news/Pages/120716.aspx> & > EC<http://ec.europa.eu/research/science-society/document_library/pdf_06/recommendation-access-and-preservation-scientific-information_en.pdf>immediately > announced that, > *no, they would stay the course ***** > > *in which they were already leading -- mandatory Green OA*. (They even > shored it up, **** > > shortening the maximum allowable embargo period, again directly contrary > to Finch/Willets!) > > What Finch/Willets have mandated is that £50,000,000.00 of the UK's scarce > research **** > > budget is taken away annually from UK research and redirected instead to > paying **** > > publishers for Gold OA. > > The UK government is free to squander its public funds as it sees fit. > > But as long as cost-free Green OA mandates remain in effect, that's just a > waste of money, **** > > not of progress in the global growth in OA.**** > > (A lot of hard, unsung work had to be done to fend off the concerted > efforts of**** > > the publisher lobby, so brilliantly successful in duping Finch/Willets, to > dupe the**** > > RCUK and EC too. They failed. And they will fail with the US too. And the > UK**** > > will maintain its leadership in the worldwide OA movement, despite > Finch/Willets,**** > > not because of it.)**** > > ** ** > > Stevan Harnad**** > > > This message has been scanned for viruses by BlackSpider > MailControl<http://www.blackspider.com/> > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > >
_______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
