Gold Fever: Read and Weep

Those who still harbor any doubt that the mixing of talk about Gold OA publishing or funding with plans for Green OA self-archiving mandates causes anything but confusion, distraction, delay and failure to make progress toward universal OA: please read Peter Suber's comments on this latest fiasco at the University of Maryland -- and weep.

And then please trust some sound advice from a weary and wizened but world-wise archivangelist:

Disentangle completely all talk and policy concerning the requirement to self-archive refereed journal articles (the Green OA mandate) from any advice concerning whether or not to publish in Gold OA journals, and from any plans to help authors pay for Gold OA journal publishing charges, should they elect to publish in a fee-based Gold OA journal.

Otherwise this mindless and thoughtless Gold Fever will just usher in yet another half-decade of failure to grasp what is already fully within the global research community's reach: universal Green OA through universal Green OA self-archiving mandates adopted by universities and research funders worldwide.

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Below is the text of the defeated University of Maryland Resolution, highlighting:

   relevant green clauses
    relevant neutral clauses
    irrelevant and distracting gold clauses
    irrelevant and misleading neutral clauses

(In order to make the UMd policy a mandate, like the 77 Green OA mandates adopted to date, the word "encourages" should be replaced by "requires," otherwise the policy is destined to recapitulate the fate of the first NIH policy, which failed until it was upgraded from an encouragement to a requirement):

(1) The University Senate urges the President to work collectively with other universities, research institutions, and other appropriate entities to establish and advocate for nationwide open access policies, such as those recently adopted by the National Institutes of Health, that would apply to all disciplines.

(2) The University Senate urges the Libraries to continue to inform the faculty about the pricing and open access policies of the journals in its collection and, where possible, to assist faculty in negotiating reasonable copyright and open access arrangements.

(3) The University Senate encourages faculty, students, and other researchers, where practical and not detrimental to their careers, to (a) publish in open access journals or journals that make their contents openly accessible shortly after publication, (b) negotiate with the journals in which they publish for the right to deposit articles in an open access repository, and (c) consider the price of the journal as one factor in the decision on where to publish.

(4) The University Senate encourages faculty, students, and other researchers to deposit all preprints and reprints of articles, when permitted, in an open access repository such as the DRUM archive or, where appropriate, in discipline-specific repositories such as PubMed Central.

Stevan Harnad
American Scientist Open Access Forum