Open Access Archivangelism

[Note: I am using very approximate estimates here, but, within an order of magnitude, they give a much-needed sense of the proportions, if not the exact amounts involved.]

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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.

What is more of a head-shaker is that "pure" Gold OA publishers lobbied for "Gold trumps Green" too, hoping it would drive more business their way (or, to be fairer, hoping it would force subscription publishers to convert to pure Gold).

But the only thing the promise of Finch/RCUK's Grand Gold Subsidy (6%) actually does is inspire subscription publishers to create a hybrid Gold option (cost-free to them) and to stretch embargoes beyond RCUK's allowable limits, to make sure RCUK authors who wish to keep publishing with them pick and pay for the Gold option (whether or not RCUK gives them enough of the funds BIS co-opted from the UK research budget to pay for it all), rather than the cost-free Green option (which Gold trumps).

Ceterum censeo...: 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 in D-Lib tomorrow, Friday, September 14).

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*The percentage of all peer-reviewed journals indexed by Ulrichs that are "pure" (not hybrid) Gold is about 13%, using the numbers in DOAJ. An analysis of the Thomson-Reuters-ISI subset of all articles published in 2007-2011 with a UK affiliation for the first author yielded 324,587 UK articles (65K/year) of which 13,260 articles (3K/year) (4%) were published in pure Gold OA journals -- i.e., not double-dipping hybrid subscription Gold journals.

Unless 9 words are removed from the new RCUK OA policy, it is in direct contradiction with the very first item of the new BOAI-10-Recommendations for institutions.

RCUK Draft OA Policy:

3. Research Council Expectations of Researchers

...Peer reviewed research papers which result from research that is wholly or partially funded by the Research Councils:

1. must be published in journals which are compliant with Research Council policy on Open Access (see section 4)....

4. Compliance of Journals

The Research Councils will continue to support a mixed approach to Open Access. The Research Councils will recognise a journal as being compliant with their policy on Open Access if:

1. The journal provides via its own website immediate and unrestricted access to the publisher’s final version of the paper (the Version of Record), and allows immediate deposit of the Version of Record in other repositories without restriction on re-use. This may involve payment of an ‘Article Processing Charge’ (APC) to the publisher. The CC-BY license should be used in this case.

Or

2. Where a publisher does not offer option 1 above, the journal must allow deposit of Accepted Manuscripts that include all changes resulting from peer review (but not necessarily incorporating the publisher’s formatting) in other repositories, without restrictions on non-commercial re-use and within a defined period. In this option no ‘Article Processing Charge’ will be payable to the publisher. Research Councils will accept a delay of no more than six months between on-line publication and a research paper becoming Open Access, except in the case of research papers arising from research funded by the AHRC and the ESRC where the maximum embargo period is 12 months.

BOAI-10 OA Policy Recommendations for Institutions and Funders:

1. On policy

1.1. Every institution of higher education should have a policy assuring that peer-reviewed versions of all future scholarly articles by faculty members are deposited in the institution’s designated repository...

Deposits should be made as early as possible, ideally at the time of acceptance, and no later than the date of formal publication.

University policies should respect faculty freedom to submit new work to the journals of their choice. [emphasis added]

University policies should encourage but not require publication in OA journals [emphasis added] ...

1.3. Every research funding agency, public or private, should have a policy assuring that peer-reviewed versions of all future scholarly articles reporting funded research are deposited in a suitable repository and made OA as soon as practicable.

Deposits should be made as early as possible, ideally at the time of acceptance, and no later than the date of formal publication...