Thursday, August 23. 2012Questions for Mark Thorley, Convenor of RCUK Research Outputs NetworkMark Thorley, RCUK Research Outputs Network (RON):Mark Thorley's response is very disappointing:"I am very aware of the criticisms of the policy made by Stevan Harnad and others. However, the ‘corrections’ he proposes would dilute our policy so that it was no longer able to deliver the level of open access which the Research Councils require. We not only want research papers to be ‘free to read’ but also to be ‘free to exploit’ – not only for text and data mining to advance scholarship as we detail in this blog-post, but also to drive innovation in the scholarly communications market itself. And, we are very clear that those who read research papers come from a much wider base than the research community that Harnad considers will be satisfied through the use of repositories and green OA. Therefore, there are no plans to revise the RCUK policy, just to satisfy the interests of one particular sector of the OA community." MT: "the ‘corrections’ [Harnad] proposes would dilute our policy so that it was no longer able to deliver the level of open access which the Research Councils require."The proposed corrections very explicitly include a correction to "the level of open access the Research Councils require." To reply that this "level" is incorrigible and nonnegotiable is tantamount to saying our minds are made up, don't trouble us with further information. The points requiring correction are very specifically those concerning the "level of open access" (Gratis or Libre; immediate or embargoed) that is actually needed by UK researchers today, and at what price, both in terms of price paid, out of scarce research funds, and, far more important, in terms of Green OA lost, in the UK as well as in the rest of the world (to whose research, RCUK needs to remind itself, UK researchers require open access too). These matters are not resolved by asserting that Finch/RCUK has already made up its mind a-priori about the level of OA required. MT: "We not only want research papers to be ‘free to read’ but also to be ‘free to exploit’ – not only for text and data mining to advance scholarship… but also to drive innovation in the scholarly communications market itself."All OA advocates are in favour of text-minability, innovation/exploitation potential, and as much CC-BY as each author needs and wants for their research output, over and above free online access to all research output. But the benefits from those further re-use rights over and above free online access certainly do not come from providing re-use rights for some small fraction of research output. And they are certainly not worth having at the expense (in both senses) of free online access to all worldwide research output (of which the UK only produces 6%). Yet it is precisely for the token UK 6% today that Finch/RCUK are insisting, needlessly and counterproductively, upon restricting UK researchers' journal choice today, and redirecting scarce UK research funds to pay publishers even more, at the expense of the local UK tax-payer. Even more important, this costly and superfluous pre-emptive re-use right for the UK fraction of worldwide research output is also purchased at the expense of global Green OA (94%), which is needed far more urgently by UK users than "exploitation rights" for UK's 6% output: For the RCUK/Finch policy provides a huge incentive to subscription publishers worldwide to offer paid hybrid Gold while at the same time increasing their Green embargoes to make cost-free Green an impermissible option for UK authors. This not only deprives UK authors of the cost-free Green option, but it deprives the rest of the world as well, thereby depriving UK users of open access to the rest of the world's research output; by making it much harder for the rest of the world to mandate Green OA. (I don't doubt that some of the members of the Finch committee may even have thought of this as a good thing: a way to force the rest of the world to follow the UK model, whether or not they can afford it, or wish to. But is this not something that may require some further serious thought?) MT: "And, we are very clear that those who read research papers come from a much wider base than the research community that Harnad considers will be satisfied through the use of repositories and green OA. Therefore, there are no plans to revise the RCUK policy, just to satisfy the interests of one particular sector of the OA community."It seems to me Mark has it exactly backwards. The "wider base," in all scientific and scholarly research fields, worldwide, wants and needs free online access, now, and urgently, to all research, in all fields (not just UK research output). It is only in a few particular subfields that there is an immediate and urgent need for further re-use rights (and even there, not just for UK's 6% fraction of the world's total research output). How urgent is CC-BY and text-mining of the UK's 6% of world research output, compared to free online access to all of the world's research output? And what are these urgent text-mining and other Libre OA functions? All authors need and want their work to be accessible to all its intended users, but how many authors need, want or even know about Libre OA, or CC-BY? (Researchers are not only the producers of scholarly and scientific research, but they -- not industry -- are also its primary consumers, in the production of further research. Research applications are certainly crucial, but they only constitute a tiny fraction of the annual uptake of research -- and many research domains have no industrial applications at all. OA was conceived as the remedy for access-denial, and the "wide base" that is the victim of access-denial is researchers themselves, hence scholarly/scientific research progress, not the R&D industry.) And, Mark, can you elaborate rather specifically on the urgent "innovation/exploitation market potential" that will resonate with all or most researchers as a rationale for constraining their journal choice, diminishing their research funds, and possibly having to find other funds in order to publish at all, today, when they do not even have free online access to the research output of the 94% of the world not bound by the RCUK policy? Stevan Harnad Urgent Need to Revise the New RCUK Open Access Policy
Many thanks to Peter Suber for providing further information about the open access (OA) policy recommendations of the Finch Committee and of Research Councils UK (RCUK), and the close relationship between them, based on an interview with Mark Thorley, convenor of the RCUK Research Outputs Network (RON).
Peter makes no value judgments in conveying this information, so it is unclear what he agrees or disagrees with. I will be much more explicit: I think this is a terrible policy, ill-informed and short-sighted, which will have extremely bad effects, both in the UK and globally -- if Finch/RCUK are inflexible about taking critical feedback into account and are unwilling to revise the policy in response. I will summarize the essence of the extra information Peter has provided. It confirms my worst worries: (1) Finch and RCUK are in agreement; there are no nontrivial differences between the two.This would be an extremely bad outcome. I will continue to do my best to try to persuade Finch/RCUK to revise this terrible policy and I hope others who understand its implications will do so too. If the RCUK policy is not changed, I predict that UK researchers will not comply, and many years of confusion and indecision will ensue, during which the UK will lose (a) a lot of potential (Green) OA, (b) a lot of money, and (c) its historic worldwide leadership role in OA. I am not so pessimistic about the rest of the world. There is a much more realistic and effective option, and that is to strengthen and extend Green OA mandates. Even if the unfortunate Finch/RCUK policy has the perverse effect of inducing publishers to increase the lengths of their Green OA embargoes, the ID/OA (Immediate-Deposit/Optional-Access) mandate coupled with the automated "email-eprint-request" Button is immune to embargoes and was designed specifically with this contingency in mind. The UK only publishes 6% of the world's research output. The other 94% can still mandate ID/OA and move forward toward universal Green OA while the UK learns from sad experience what a short-sighted, ill-informed, profligate -- and, if no one listens to the critical feedback, pig-headed -- decision the UK has made in 2012, eight short years after the historic UK Parliamentary Select Committee recommendation that has until now made the UK the vanguard of the global OA movement: I will now quote/comment Peter's account of his discussion with RCUK's Mark Thorley, but those who do not wish to enter into the details now have the gist of what is so wrong with Finch/RCUK's proposed policy: On Wed, Aug 22, 2012 at 5:50 PM, Peter SuberHow urgent is text-mining of the UK's 6% of world research output and CC-BY, compared to free online access to all of the world's research output? And what are these urgent text-mining and other Libre OA functions? All authors need and want their work to be accessible to all its intended users, but how many authors need, want or even know about Libre OA, or CC-BY? (Make no mistake about it: All OA advocates are in favour of text-minability and as much CC-BY as each author needs and wants for their research output, over and above free online access to all research output -- but certainly not text-minability and CC-BY for some research output, at the expense (in both senses) of free online access to all research output. Yet it is precisely for the latter that Finch/RCUK are insisting upon restrictions and pre-emptive payment -- for UK research output, both at the local UK tax-payer's expense, and at the expense of global Green OA.) ...the Finch Group may expect that the primary role for repositories will be for theses, grey literature, and data. But the Finch Group would definitely accept green OA for research articles when a journal offered no gold option.In other words, having ruled out Green OA as an option for UK authors if a journal has the sense to offer Gratis hybrid Gold and to crank its Green embargo up to infinity, Finch/RCUK are not forbidding whatever residual Green might still be able to slip through a barrier as restrictive as the one it has erected... According to Mark, the RCUK and Finch Group share this position: When publicly-funded researchers publish in a journal with a suitable gold option (where suitability is about its willingness to use a certain open license), then those authors should pursue that gold option.I take this to mean that if the journal offers paid Libre hybrid Gold, the author must choose that, even if the journal also offers 6-month Green (but it may be even more restrictive than that, if it applies to paid Gratis hybrid Gold as well). If the journal offers no suitable gold option but does offer a suitable green option (where suitability is about the maximum length of the embargo period), then grantees should pursue the green option instead.In other words: If a journal has the option to offer paid hybrid Gold and crank up Green embargoes to unallowable limits, but is instead foolish enough to offer only 6-month Green, then Finch/RCUK do not forbid the author to choose 6-month green... Don't count on many publishers turning down the more attractive option. If a given journal offers no suitable gold or green option, then those researchers must look for another journal, one which complies with the RCUK policy.By way of contrast: ID/OA mandates not only (i) moot publisher embargoes but (ii) make it unnecessary to dictate authors' journal choice. When a journal offers both suitable green and suitable gold options, the PI may choose the option he or she thinks most appropriate.This is ambiguous, because it is unclear what is meant by "suitable gold options". I take it to mean: though I am not sure of even that interpretation.(3) If the journal offers both paid Gratis hybrid Gold and 6-month Green, the author may choose either option. If a journal with a suitable gold OA option levies an Article Processing Charge (APC), then RCUK is willing to pay the APC. The RCUK will provide block grants to universities for paying APCs, which they will manage through the establishment of publication funds, and universities will decide how to spend the money to best deliver the RCUK policy.And what happens to journal choice (and publication) when the year's "block grants" have run out? Mark concedes that managing a publication fund and establishing rules on what papers will be funded, will be a big challenge for many institutions, and obtaining faculty APC funding could be a major change of working for many authors.It may do a good deal more than that. Let us not forget that the only thing Green OA mandates require of authors is keystrokes. Finch/RCUK is now (1) constraining journal choice, (2) redirecting scarce research funds, and perhaps eventually (3) leaving authors without the money to publish at all (if they comply). Great confusion and non-compliance are likely. (And I have to admit that I find this policy so ruinously wrong-headed that I cannot even wish it to succeed even on its own terms: If the policy is not fixed in response to informed advance feedback, then author confusion and non-compliance may be the only way to bring the policy-makers to their senses that they have made a huge mistake.) However, he added that journals offering a suitable gold OA option would probably not want to offer a compliant green option as well. Hence, as more journals start offering gold options to make themselves eligible for RCUK funding, many that permit green OA today may stop permitting green, or might only provide a green option with an embargo period to be too long to be compliant with the RCUK policy. Hence, authors turned down for APC funding may not have a green option to exercise at a given journal, even if those authors and their universities wanted to exercise it.This is the very core of Finch/RCUK's folly, and its perverse consequences are here shrugged off matter-of-factly as if they were just some minor contingency.: The RCUK/Finch policy provides a huge incentive to subscription publishers to offer paid hybrid Gold while at the same time increasing their Green embargoes to make cost-free Green an impermissible option for UK authors. This not only deprives the UK author of the cost-free Green option, but the rest of the world as well. (I don't doubt that some of the members of the Finch committee may even have thought of this as a good thing: a way to induce the rest of the world to follow the UK model, whether or not they can afford it, or wish to.) I mentioned the rights-retention OA policies at funders like the Wellcome Trust and the NIH, and at universities like Harvard and MIT....he added that "this might well be something we would consider in the future..."The rights-retention policies have an opt-out clause: Finch/RCUK do not. Moreover, the success of rights retention policies alone is not known. At Harvard, they are coupled with a variant of ID/OA, with no opt-out on deposit. ID/OA of course moots all retention opt-out or embargo problems. If there are differences between the RCUK policy and the Finch recommendations, they are minor. The RCUK will go forward with its current policy, and has no plans to revise it to conform more closely to the Finch report.But let's hope that RCUK may still revise it in response to critical feedback like what I've tried to provide above. I close with my specific recommendation on how to revise the RCUK policy: Revising RCUK. Let's hope that RCUK will have the sense and integrity to recognize its mistake, once the unintended negative consequences are pointed out, and will promptly correct it. The current RCUK policy can still be made workable with two simple patches, to prevent publisher-imposed embargoes on Green OA from being used to force authors to pay for hybrid Gold OA: RCUK should: (1) Drop the implication that if a journal offers both Green and Gold, then RCUK fundees must pick Goldand (2) Urge but do not require that the Green option must be within the allowable embargo interval.That way RCUK fundees (i) must all deposit immediately (no exceptions), (ii) must make the deposit Green OA immediately or as soon as possible and (not or) (iii) may pay for Gold OA (if the money is available and the author wishes): Green OA:This ensures that publishers (1) cannot use embargoes to force authors to pay for hybrid Gold and that authors (2) retain their freedom to choose whether or not to pay for Gold, (3) whether or not to adopt a Libre license (where it is possible) and (4) which journal to publish in. Stevan Harnad Friday, August 3. 2012Digital Research 2012: How and Why the RCUK Open Access Policy Needs to Be RevisedStevan Harnad UQaM & U Southampton Keynote: Digital Research 2012 St Catherine's College, Oxford 11 September 2012: 9:00am-10:30am (Video will be online shortly afterward)
Wednesday, August 1. 2012ParalogicJan Velterop, OA advocate, wrote in The Parachute:"The 'sin' that RCUK, Finch and the Wellcome Trust committed is that they didn't formulate their policies according to strict Harnadian orthodoxy. It's not that they forbid Harnadian OA (a.k.a. 'green'). It is that they see the 'gold' route to OA as worthy of support as well. Harnad, as arbiter of Harnadian OA (he has acolytes), would like to see funder and institutional OA policies focus entirely and only on Harnadian OA, and would want them, to all intents and purposed, forbid the 'gold' route... It is the equivalent of opening the parachute only a split second before hitting the ground. " Peter Suber: "In general I'm with Stevan on this. The RCUK policy and the Finch recommendations fail to take good advantage of green OA. Like Stevan, I initially overestimated the role of green in the RCUK policy, but in conversation with the RCUK have come to a better understanding. In various blog posts since the two documents were released, I've criticized the under-reliance on green. I'm doing so again, more formally, in a forthcoming editorial in a major journal. I'm also writing up my views at greater length for the September issue of my newsletter (SPARC Open Access Newsletter).Stevan Harnad: "If the UK first... — clearly and unambiguously mandates Green OA for all UK research output — then it is welcome to throw all the cash it has to spare on also subsidizing Gold OA if it so wishes. --- But not instead."Finch on Green:The crucial contingency, and the one that caused all the confusion about whether or not RCUK is truly continuing "to support a mixed approach" is that if a journal offers Gold, RCUK fundees must choose Gold. If so, the only thing that any subscription journal needs to do to ensure that RCUK authors cannot choose Green (and hence must pay for Gold) is to offer hybrid Gold."The [Green OA] policies of neither research funders nor universities themselves have yet had a major effect in ensuring that researchers make their publications accessible in institutional repositories… [so] the infrastructure of subject and institutional repositories should [instead] be developed [to] play a valuable role complementary to formal publishing, particularly in providing access to research data and to grey literature, and in digital preservation [no mention of Green OA]…" That's the contingency that needs to be clearly and unambiguously dropped in order to fix the RCUK OA mandate and bring it into line with the EC mandate, as well as the adopted and planned OA mandates in the US. Swan & Houghton's 2012 executive summary (as excerpted by Peter Suber in "Transition to green OA significantly less expensive than transition to gold OA" ): "Based on this analysis, the main findings are: [1] so long as research funders commit to paying publication costs for the research they fund, and [2] publication charges fall to the reprint author’s home institution, [3] all universities would see savings from (worldwide) Gold OA when article-processing charges are at the current averages, [4] research-intensive universities would see the greatest savings, and [5] in a transition period, providing Open Access through the Green route offers the greatest economic benefits to individual universities, unless additional funds are made available to cover Gold OA costs....[F]or all the sample universities during a transition period when subscriptions are maintained, the cost of adopting Green OA is much lower than the cost of Gold OA - with Green OA self-archiving costing institutions around one-fifth the amount that Gold OA might cost, and as little as one-tenth as much for the most research intensive university sampled. In a transition period, providing OA through the Green route would have substantial economic benefits for universities, unless additional funds were released for Gold OA, beyond those already available through the Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust...."Swan, Alma & Houghton, John (2012) Going for Gold? The costs and benefits of Gold Open Access for UK research institutions: further economic modelling. Report to the UK Open Access Implementation Group. JISC Information Environment Repository. Monday, July 30. 2012Suber, Neylon & Harnad on Finch, RCUK & Hybrid Gold OA
Excerpts from ongoing discussion:
Glyn Moody: OA advocate Stevan Harnad withdraws support for RCUK policy - if true, this looks disastrous for UK :Open and Shut?: OA advocate Stevan Harnad withdraws support for RCUK policy Cameron Neylon: Disagree strongly with Stevan here. His main objection is that this will annoy researchers but to be honest the Wellcome has been taking this line for some years with no signs of revolt. Yes the question of pricing is core but what the RCUK policy does is push those purchasing decisions exactly where they should be, at the institutional/researcher level. Thomas Pfeiffer: +Cameron Neylon From reading the interview it seems to me that +Stevan Harnad's main objection is not that it will annoy researchers but that it creates a loophole for publishers to force authors to pay atronomical prices for Hybrid Gold OA instead of using Green OA. This does sound rather serious to me. Cameron Neylon: It's not a mistake its quite deliberate. RCUK position as I understand it is that they want to ensure there is a market - if authors don't like the price that journals are charging they should go elsewhere. I would prefer a green option in these cases myself but they're prepared to take the flack. What they can't do is set prices...as a QUANGO this would be illegal - what they can do is set up a system where there is price sensitivity and that's what they've done. Thomas Pfeiffer: But isn't that was Finch is aiming for as well? Cameron Neylon: Finch doesn't really aim for anything - it suggests what the priorities are, but it's main weakness in my view was precisely in not providing a mechanism that constrains prices. Several routes to this: one is ensure a green option is allowed and viable (one sentence to this effect in Finch would have changed the whole tone). The second is to force researchers to be price sensitive - which seems to be the RCUK route. A third is for the funder to take on the price negotiations - this is the Wellcome approach. Thomas Pfeiffer: It seems that this is really the central question: How important will price be for authors? Will they favor a less well-known journal with similar quality but lower price, or will they stick with the prestigious journals, no matter the price? Thomas Pfeiffer I also wonder what +Peter Suber has to say about this? Peter Suber: Hi +Thomas Pfeiffer: In general I'm with Stevan on this. The RCUK policy and the Finch recommendations fail to take good advantage of green OA. Like Stevan, I initially overestimated the role of green in the RCUK policy, but in conversation with the RCUK have come to a better understanding. In various blog posts since the two documents were released, I've criticized the under-reliance on green. I'm doing so again, more formally, in a forthcoming editorial in a major journal. I'm also writing up my views at greater length for the September issue of my newsletter (SPARC Open Access Newsletter). Thomas Pfeiffer: Thank you for stating your opinion here, +Peter Suber. I know that you have been promoting Green OA and I've read about your opinion on the Finch report and your initial very positive reaction to the RCUK policy. Seems like I missed your posts about your opinion on RCUK after a re-examining it, so it was interesting to know what you think about it by now. Cameron Neylon: It's probably worth saying that I broadly agree with +Peter Suber 's position (and even to an extent Stevan's) but I disagree with Stevan's tactics. I don't think that the RCUK position is so bad - but its a question of degree. It also has to be understood in the context of the philosophical background to the policies. Stevan has generally argued from a public good perspective - more research available for researchers to read is a public good - rather than a technological or industrial policy perspective. Thomas Pfeiffer: I concur. Until now I hadn't realized that the differences between preferring Gold or Green OA depended on the philosophical stance, but the way Cameron explains it, it absolutely makes sense. However I can't really say which position seems more valid to me, they both have good reasons speaking for them. Cameron Neylon: Yeh, the trouble I have with the whole "its free!" argument is that of course, it isn't. That seems to be getting missed in the discussion somewhere. We are paying for this - and we should be able to do this by at worse zero-sum with some transitional costs. Frustrating that people still believe the current system is "free". Stevan Harnad: reply to +Cameron Neyon1. PRIORITIES Richard Poynder: +Cameron Neylon wrote: "Stevan has generally argued from a public good perspective - more research available for researchers to read is a public good - rather than a technological or industrial policy perspective. RCUK and Finch are coming from a much more innovation and industry focussed perspective."I am not sure what industry Cameron is referring to here. Certainly, if Stevan is correct then the publishing industry has a great deal to gain from RCUK and Finch. However, I suspect he means that CC-BY can turn research papers into raw material that new businesses can use (by, for instance, mining their content). That's fine, but at what price? Stevan Harnad: DECLARATION OF INTERESTS@Thomas Pfeiffer wrote: "Until now I hadn't realized that the differences between preferring Gold or Green OA depended on the philosophical stance"Thomas, I don't think the difference is a matter of philosophical stance. I think it depends on whose and what interests are motivating one's position on OA, Green OA and Gold OA. Thomas Pfeiffer: Thank you, +Stevan Harnad, for your detailed reply. Especially the reasoning about priorities and using Green OA for the transition from subscription to Gold OA makes sense to me. Cameron Neylon: +Richard Poynder Thomas Pfeiffer: I definitely agree with Cameron that it's better to talk with people instead of for people. Funders, OA publishers and researchers ultimately have the same goal, they just prefer different routes to it. That should not keep them from working together to reach the goal, though. Stevan Harnad:
Stevan Harnad:
Friday, July 27. 2012How to Repair the New RCUK OA PolicyFor more details, please see: http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/oa-advocate-stevan-harnad-withdraws_26.html WHEN SUPPORTED BY ILL-DESIGNED OA MANDATES Suppose you're a subscription journal publisher. Adding a Hybrid (Subscription/Gold) Open Access (OA) option means you keep selling subscriptions as before, but -- on top of that -- you charge (whatever you like) as an extra fee for selling Gold OA, for a single article, to any author who agrees to pay extra for it. How much do you charge? It's up to you. For example, if you publish 100 articles per year and your total annual revenue is $X, you can charge 1% of $X for hybrid Gold OA per article. Once you've got that for 1% of your articles (plus your unaltered subscription revenue of $X) you've earned $X + 1% for that year. Good business. And now in the UK -- thanks to the Finch committee recommendations and the revised RCUK OA policy -- if the UK provides 6% of the world's research articles yearly, then on average 6% of the articles in any journal will be fee-based hybrid Gold OA. That means worldwide publisher revenue -- let's say it's $XXX per year -- will increase : at the UK tax-payer's (and UK research's) expense. Not bad. Publishers are not too dense to do the above arithmetic. They've already done it. That is what hybrid Gold is predicated upon. And that is why publishers are so pleased with Finch/RCUK: "The world purports to want OA? Fine. We're ready to sell it to them -- on top of what we're selling them already." In the UK, Finch and RCUK have obligingly eliminated hybrid Gold OA's only real competition (Green OA) -- Finch by ignoring it completely, and RCUK by forcing fundees to pay for Gold -- rather than to provide cost-free green -- whenever the publisher has the sense to offer hybrid Gold. Of course, publishers will say (and sometimes even mean it) that they are not really trying to inflate their already ample income even further. As the uptake of hybrid Gold increases, they will proportionately lower the cost of subscriptions -- until subscriptions are gone, and all that's left, like the Cheshire Cat's grin, is Gold OA revenue (now no longer hybrid but "pure") -- and at the same bloated levels as today's subscriptions. So what? The goal, after all, was always OA, not Green OA or Gold OA or saving money on subscriptions. Who cares if all that money is being wasted? I don't. I care about all the time (and with it all the OA usage and impact and research progress) that has been lost for so many years already, and that will continue to be lost, if the ill-informed, short-sighted and profligate Finch/RCUK policy prevails instead of being (easily) corrected. Uncorrected, both global OA growth and precious time will continue to be wasted. The joint thrall of Gold Fever (the belief that "OA" means "Gold OA," together with an irresistible desire to have Gold OA now, no matter what the cost, come what may) and Rights Rapture (the irresistible desire for certain further re-use rights, over and above free online access, even though only a few fields need them, whereas all fields urgently need -- and lack -- free online access) keeps the research community from mandating the cost-free Green OA that is already fully within their reach and would bring them 100% OA globally in next to no time. Instead, they are left chasing along the CC-BYways after gold dust year upon year, at unaffordable, unnecessary, unsustainable and unscalable extra cost. Let's hope that RCUK will have the sense and integrity to recognize its mistake, once the unintended negative consequences are pointed out, and will promptly correct it. The current RCUK policy can still be made workable with two simple patches, to prevent publisher-imposed embargoes on Green OA from being used to force authors to pay for hybrid Gold OA: RCUK should: (1) Drop the implication that if a journal offers both Green and Gold, then RCUK fundees must pick Goldand (2) Urge but do not require that the Green option must be within the allowable embargo interval.That way RCUK fundees (i) must all deposit immediately (no exceptions), (ii) must make the deposit Green OA immediately or as soon as possible and (not or) (iii) may pay for Gold OA (if the money is available and the author wishes): Green OA:This ensures that publishers (1) cannot use embargoes to force authors to pay for hybrid Gold and that authors (2) retain their freedom to choose whether or not to pay for Gold, (3) whether or not to adopt a Libre license (where it is possible) and (4) which journal to publish in. Stevan Harnad Image: Judith Economos; license: CC-BY. Wednesday, July 25. 2012A Serious Potential Bug in the RCUK Open Access MandateDavid A. Arnold wrote: "Stevan - you are wrong about RCUK madating green OA. It does not. The new RCUK policy only requires green OA if the journal does not offer gold OA. Since the vast majority of journals now offer a gold route, the green option is essentially redundant. Here is the wording:"Here is my response to David. But as you will see, although I am doing my level best to disagree with him, in the end, it turns out he was basically right: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: David, I think you are wrong that "the vast majority of journals offer a gold route". Stevan Harnad Monday, July 23. 2012"Special Channels" on the 2012 Finch Committee and the 2004 UK Select Committee
Anthony Watkinson wrote on LIBLICENSE:
"...There were three publishers on the Finch committee (out of seventeen members)... [1] There were more than three publishers on the Finch committee -- Learned Societies are publishers too -- but three publishers would already be three publishers too many in a committee on providing open access to publicly funded research. (Besides, the lobbying began well before the Finch Committee, and already had a hand in how the Committee was constituted and where it was headed.) Research is funded, conducted, refereed and reported as a service to research, researchers, their institutions, their funders, the R&D industry, and the public that pays for it all. Research is not a service to publishers: Publishers sell a service to research institutions, for which they are paid very handsomely. (I don't think any of this ruckus is about journal publishers being underpaid, is it?) The recommendations of the Finch committee were identical to the ones for which publishers have been lobbying aggressively for years (ever since it has become evident that trying to lobby against OA itself in the face of the mounting pressure for it from the research community is futile and very ill-received by the research community). The publisher lobbying has accordingly been for the following: "Please phase out Green OA as inadequate, parasitic and likely to destroy publishing and peer review -- and please provide extra money instead to pay us for Gold OA, if you want OA so much."The Finch outcome was already pre-determined as a result of publisher lobbying before the committee was even constituted: Finch on Green: "The [Green OA] policies of neither research funders nor universities themselves have yet had a major effect in ensuring that researchers make their publications accessible in institutional repositories… [so] the infrastructure of subject and institutional repositories should [instead] be developed [to] play a valuable role complementary to formal publishing, particularly in providing access to research data and to grey literature, and in digital preservation [no mention of Green OA]…"But that's all moot now, as both RCUK and EC have ignored it, instead re-affirming and strengthening their Green OA mandates the day after Mr. Willets announced the adoption of the recommendations of the Finch committee: RCUK: "[P]eer reviewed research papers which result from research that is wholly or partially funded by the Research Councils... must be published in journals… [either] offering a “pay to publish” option [Gold OA] or allowing deposit in a subject or institutional repository [Green OA] after a mandated maximum embargo period… of no more than six months… except… AHRC and… ESRC where the maximum... is 12 months…" The 2004 recommendations of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology were based on 23 oral testimonials and 127 written testimonials. Mine (part 1 and part 2) was one of the 127 written testimonials. If anything had influence on the outcome, it was evidence and reasons. The 2004 Select Committee recommendation 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]he Report [also] recommends that the Research Councils each establish a fund to which their funded researchers can apply should they wish to pay to publish...”At that time, despite the fact that the UK government (again under pressure from the publishing lobby) decided to ignore the Select Committee’s recommendation to mandate Green OA, RCUK and many UK universities adopted Green OA mandates anyway. As a result, the UK became the global leader in the transition to Open Access. If heeded, the Finch Committee recommendation to downgrade repository use to the storage and preservation of data, theses and unpublished work would have set back global OA by at least a decade. Fortunately, the RCUK has again shown its sense and independence, reaffirming and strengthening its Green OA mandate. Let us hope UK’s universities — not pleased that scarce research funds, instead of being increased, are to be decreased to pay extra needlessly for Gold OA — will likewise continue to opt instead for cost-free Green OA by mandating it. If so, the UK will again have earned and re-affirmed its leadership role in the global transition to universal OA. Anthony Watkinson replied on LIBLICENSE: "[In] 2003/2004 I was asked to be the expert adviser to the [UK Select] committee… and had a pleasant conversation with Ian Gibson, the member of parliament who was the committee chair. It seemed to me in our conversation that Dr. Gibson had already been lobbied by Professor Harnad or his disciplines [sic] and that his mind was already made up. I cannot remember now whether or not Dr. Gibson said that he had met Professor Harnad but it was definitely the impression I had."I am flattered that Dr. Watkinson feels I had special influence on Ian Gibson and his Select Committee. I wish I had had! But alas the truth is as I have already written (above): I was not one of the 23 witnesses invited to give oral evidence (several publishers were). Ian's parliamentary assistant Sarah Revell pencilled me in for a personal appointment on Wednesday October 13 2004 (depending on whether Ian's jury duty ended in time: it did), but my recall of that breathlessly brief audience was that it was too compressed for me to be able to stutter out much that made sense, and I left it pretty pessimistic. And my subsequent over-zealous attempts to compensate for it via email were very politely but firmly discouraged by the committee's very able 2nd clerk, Emily Commander. So my input to the Committee amounted to being one of the 127 who submitted written evidence, plus that tachylalic personal audience on the 13th. The rest of the influence on the committee was from written reasons, not personal charisma. I'm not aware of having had any "disciples," to lobby the Committee at that time (though extra disciplines, as well as discipline, are always handy in lobbying for the interests of research and researchers). My understanding, however, is that Ian Gibson was indeed pre-lobbied in favour of OA, and indeed that's why the Committee was created. But that pre-lobbying in 2003 had been done by a Gold OA publisher, Vitek Tracz of BMC (and perhaps others), not by me; and the lobbying was not at all in favour of Green OA but in favour of Gold OA. This initial goldward bent is quite evident in the Committee's original call for evidence in late 2003, which was the first I ever heard of the Committee's existence: "The Committee will be looking at access to journals within the scientific community, with particular reference to price and availability. It will be asking what measures are being taken in government, the publishing industry and academic institutions to ensure that researchers, teachers and students have access to the publications they need in order to carry out their work effectively.... What are the consequences of increasing numbers of open-access journals, for example for the operation of the Research Assessment Exercise and other selection processes? Should the Government support such a trend and, if so, how?"As a result, the Committee's final decision to recommend that institutions and funders mandate Green and merely experiment with funding Gold was an unexpected surprise and delight to me. It also turned out to be a historic turning point and blueprint for OA worldwide. As to publishers, and learned-society publishers: they are pretty much of a muchness in their fealty to their bottom lines. The only learned societies that could testify (for either the 2004 Gibson Committee or the 2012 Finch Committee) with a disinterested voice (let alone one that represented the interests of learned research rather than earned revenues) would be the learned societies that that were not also publishers. Stevan Harnad Swapping Subscriptions for Hybrid Gold "Memberships": A Trojan Horse from the Royal Society of Chemistry
The seemingly selfless offer from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) to pay £1 million in hybrid Gold OA fees for its authors at institutions that subscribe to all the RSC's 72 journals is in reality a totally self-interested strategy for locking in RSC's current publishing revenue streams should the research community prove foolish enough to seek OA via the slow and costly route of paying pre-emptively for Gold OA instead of providing cost-free Green OA by self-archiving their refereed final drafts free for all online.
The hybrid Gold "membership/transition" strategy is not new: The same Trojan Horse offer has been made by Springer (but with little uptake) for a few years now, with a promise to lower subscription fees "proportionately" as hybrid Gold uptake rises. The irony is doubled (and along with it the foolishness of researchers who fall for this option) by the fact that both RSC and Springer have already formally recognized their authors' right to provide immediate, unembargoed Green OA. See: SHERPA/ROMEO Stevan Harnad The UK Government's Fool's Gold Rush
Paul Ayris's points in
"Why panning for gold may be detrimental to open access research" are all spot on: The UK Government -- under the palpable influence of ponderous (and successful) lobbying by the publishing industry lobby -- recommends that the UK should phase out extra-cost-free Green OA self-archiving in institutional repositories and instead pay publishers extra for Gold OA out of scarce UK research funds, as recommended by the Finch Report. Fortunately, There is also the question of the rest of the world, as only 6% of research journal content comes from the UK. Paul writes: "If the whole world turned open access tomorrow, the evidence suggests that the greatest savings would come from gold, rather than green, open access."This is incorrect, because it omits the question of how the rest of the world is imagined to turn OA tomorrow: 1. If tomorrow the entire world, like the UK, immediately agreed pre-emptively to pay publishers' asking price for Gold OA, the world would have OA, but everyone would be paying more for publishing than they are paying now for subscriptions, because they would be paying for subscriptions plus pre-emptive Gold OA. Publishers would, of course, obligingly agree to cap total expenditure at what is today being paid for subscriptions, thereby ensuring their current revenue streams. 2. If tomorrow the entire world instead immediately mandated extra-cost-free Green OA, the world would have OA, and subscriptions would continue paying for subscriptions, at no extra cost or saving. But the reality is that the entire world cannot and will not agree to pay publishers extra pre-emptively for Gold OA tomorrow, as the UK seems to have agreed to do. There will be an anarchic transition period, in which mandating extra-cost-free Green OA will be the much less expensive option. And if Green OA nears or reaches 100% globally, institutions will finally able to cancel their subscriptions, forcing publishers to phase out the print and online edition, archiving and access-provision and their costs, downsizing to the management of the peer-review service and converting to Gold OA, whose far lower costs institutions will pay, per paper published, out of a fraction of their annual windfall savings from having cancelled subscriptions. This is the contingency the publishing lobby managed to gull the gullible Finch Committee and UK government into overlooking completely in favour of a gratuitous rush to pan out pre-emptively for pre-Green Gold. (And this is the reason that pre-emptive Gold is such a foolish, unrealistic and costly option, whereas post-Green Gold will not only provide 100% OA but it will also lower overall publishing cost and expenditure substantially. Swan, Alma & Houghton, John (2012) Going for Gold? The costs and benefits of Gold Open Access for UK research institutions: further economic modelling. Report to the UK Open Access Implementation Group, June 2012.From Swan & Houghton's 2012 executive summary (as quoted by Peter Suber in "Transition to green OA significantly less expensive than transition to gold OA" ) "Based on this analysis, the main findings are: [1] so long as research funders commit to paying publication costs for the research they fund, and [2] publication charges fall to the reprint author’s home institution, [3] all universities would see savings from (worldwide) Gold OA when article-processing charges are at the current averages, [4] research-intensive universities would see the greatest savings, and [5] in a transition period, providing Open Access through the Green route offers the greatest economic benefits to individual universities, unless additional funds are made available to cover Gold OA costs....[F]or all the sample universities during a transition period when subscriptions are maintained, the cost of adopting Green OA is much lower than the cost of Gold OA - with Green OA self-archiving costing institutions around one-fifth the amount that Gold OA might cost, and as little as one-tenth as much for the most research intensive university sampled. In a transition period, providing OA through the Green route would have substantial economic benefits for universities, unless additional funds were released for Gold OA, beyond those already available through the Research Councils and the Wellcome Trust...." Stevan Harnad
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