On Paying Publishers Extra For Extra Usage Rights

Robert Kiley [Wellcome Trust] wrote:

"Conscious that this licence only extends to "gold" OA articles, the Trust is continuing to work with publishers to explore the possibility of developing a similar licence for author manuscripts."

It's important that everyone understand clearly what is at issue here:

(1) The Wellcome Trust, the world's first research funder to mandate OA, has not only mandated Green OA self-archiving, but has also made funds available to authors to pay their publishers to make their articles Gold OA, in order to make them not just price-barrier-free (Green OA) but also permissions-barrier-free.

(2) This means that non-OA publishers, while continuing to receive full subscription revenue, are paid extra fees by Wellcome in exchange for the extra usage rights.

(3) There is no question that these extra usage rights are welcome and useful.

(4) The question is whether they are worth the extra money at this time.

(5) The problem is not only that the extra money is being diverted from research funds (at a time when research funds are getting ever scarcer and harder to come by).

(6) The problem is also that paying the publishers extra money is not a solution that scales: Wellcome may be able to afford it, but what about all the rest of the world's research output, unfunded by Wellcome?

(7) Can all funders afford (and do they wish) to divert scarce research funds to pay for extra publisher costs?

(8) And what about unfunded research?

(9) Can universities afford (and do they wish) to adopt OA mandates that also entail paying publishers extra fees? Should they want to?

(10) Perhaps most important: Are these extra (welcome, useful) usage rights worth making a fuss about just now, when we do not yet even have universal Green OA, or universal Green OA mandates?

(11) Will fussing about "fair use is not enough" at this time increase or decrease the probability that the world's research institutions and funders converge on a scaleable strategy that will at least deliver universal Green OA (at long last)?

(12) To repeat: It is not that the extra usage rights are not useful, desirable and welcome, nor that a large private research funder like Wellcome is not to be commended for being willing to put both their efforts and their money behind securing them.

(13) It is that this is not the time to focus on what universal Green OA mandates will not deliver.

(14) It is the time to put our full collective weight behind the solution that will scale up to deliver universal Green OA.

(15) (It is virtually certain that universal Green OA itself will then go on to usher in the extra usage rights -- at no extra charge.)

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum