Mike Taylor wrote:
MT: "Where have the Wellcome Trust opposed mandating immediate-deposit Green? I don’t see how the fact that they pay their grantees’ Gold APCs implies any objection to people taking other routes. Unless they’ve said something that I missed."
In their recommendations and support for the Finch Report, which declared Green ineffective and recommended downgrading it to preservation archiving instead of OA. See:
On Robert Kiley (Wellcome Trust) on Finch Report and RCUK Mandate
RCUK: Don't Follow the Wellcome Trust OA Policy Model!
MT: "My own position, stated several times, is that I’ve got no very strong preference for either Gold or Green, caring much more about Open Access. I do think there are advantages to Gold, and that our current Green infrastructure needs a lot of work, but those are minor issues compared with the big one of open vs. non-open."
The advantages you see in Gold lie in your preferred definition of OA (and of "open" vs. "non-open"). And we are talking about Green OA and Gold OA, not Green and Gold. Your preferences are hence camouflaged by using the terminology generically.
There are, as you know,
two kinds or degrees of OA:
Gratis OA: Free online access
Libre OA: Free online access plus certain re-use rights (e.g., CC-BY).
You are an advocate for Libre OA, and when you use the words "OA" and "open" you mean Libre OA.
I am an advocate for Green OA, and have given many reasons -- empirical, logical, strategic and practical -- for why Green, Gratis OA must come first:
1. Gratis OA is a prerequisite of Libre OA.
2. Gratis OA is more urgently needed than Libre OA.
3. Gratis OA is needed by all fields, Libre OA only by some.
4. Gratis OA faces far fewer publisher obstructions than Libre OA (because it is much less of a threat to publishers).
5. Green Gratis OA can be mandated without over-riding author choice of journal, Libre OA cannot.
6. Green Gratis OA entails no extra cost; Libre Gold OA does.
So when you say you have no preference between Green and Gold and what you care about is OA, what you mean is Libre OA, which in turn entails a preference for Gold OA at the expense of Green OA (hence OA).
And that is exactly what you have been defending in your many public postings: You have criticized Green OA mandates for not requiring Green Libre OA (even though such mandates are presently impossible and would lead to author non-compliance and non-feasibility of Green OA mandates) and you have endorsed paying for Libre Gold OA in preference to providing just Gratis Green.
Not only is Libre OA just as premature and out of reach of mandates today as (Fool's) Gold OA (overpriced, double-paid, and, if hybrid, also double-dipped) is out of reach financially today, but even immediate, unembargoed Gratis Green OA is still not quite within reach of mandates yet:
The compromise has to be precisely the
Liège-
FNRS model immediate-deposit mandates now being recommended by
BOAI-10,
HOAP,
HEFCE and
BIS (with the eprint-request
Button tiding over user needs during any allowable embargo) first.
Once those mandates are adopted globally, they will not only provide a great deal of (Gratis, Green) immediate-OA (at least 60%), plus Button-mediated Almost-OA for all the rest (40%): with all articles being immediately deposited, and with immediate-OA just one access-setting click away they will also exert mounting global pressure for immediate-OA. And 100% immediate-OA will in turn eventually exert cancelation pressure on publishers, which will force downsizing and conversion to
Fair-Gold OA and as much Libre OA as users need and authors wish to provide.
MT: "What I have been very negative about, and this may be what you’re thinking of, is the specific form of Green that Finch favours, i.e. prohibiting commercial use and in any case embargoes for one to two years. When that is the Green on offer, then yes, I prefer Gold. But the much better Green that the BIS select committee is recommending is much more appealing."
Yup, I know that's what you prefer! And I've explained why your preferences are not directly realizable above. They are pre-emptive over-reaching. Grasp what's reachable first -- immediate-deposit mandates -- and that will bring the rest of what you seek within reach. Keep counselling unrealistic over-reaching instead, and we'll have yet another decade of next to nothing.
First things first.
And that is precisely what BIS (and HEFCE and BOAI-10) are recommending to be mandated (not what you seem to be imagining).
OA mandates can only work if it is in authors' interests to comply willingly: if mandates try to co-opt authors' choice of journals, or cost them money, authors will not comply, and mandates will fail.
MT: "(For that matter I am also not super-keen on Finch-flavoured Gold, which seems to be £2000 APC fed to double-dipping troll-access publishers.)"
Even at one quarter the fee, and non-hybrid, the cost would still be double-paid (core-journal institutional subscription payments, uncancelable till their contents are accessible without them + individual author Gold journal APC payments), hence unaffordable Fool's Gold (and hence a disaster for a UK that pays it unilaterally). Only Green OA-induced cancellation pressure can downsize them to
Fair Gold.
Postscript
MT: "I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make in your last paragraph, so I will simply repeat: we never, ever delete comments because of not agreeing with their message..." [emphasis added]
...we just ignore them...
Stevan Harnad