From: Anthony Watkinson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, 8 Dec 2012 16:57:59 +0000

As this is an international list, it may be worth pointing out that all
those stakeholders in the Finch group signed up for it and (as I have
pointed out before) very few of them were commercial publishers. It was not
their view that it was a badly put together report and it is not surprising
that there has been general agreement with its conclusions. If you are on a
committee and you come to a consensus it would be odd to answer the
inevitable criticisms which have mainly come from a small group of friends
of Mr Frend. Their views are no longer the norm in open access circles,
which must be annoying. The report was notable for its clarity and the way
it weighed up the evidence with much care.

Anthony

-----Original Message-----
From: Frederick Friend <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2012 15:32:06 +0000

Stevan summarises the current situation on UK OA policy very well. It is
surprising after almost six months of criticism of the Finch Report that
there has been so little defence of the Finch/RCUK/BIS position and (to my
knowledge) no response to the criticism voiced. Of all the parties involved,
RCUK have been the most communicative in defending their policy, although
largely repeating the Finch Group's position. I have only seen one e-mail
from one member of the Finch Group (Martin Hall of Salford University)
explaining his personal position. There has been no response at all from HM
Government, although BIS civil servants must be monitoring the blogs and
lists and the articles by Paul Jump in "Times Higher Education". I myself
have addressed three e-mails to Rt Hon David Willetts MP through a message
system on the BIS web-site for those taxpayers who "want to get in touch
with a BIS Minister", receiving no reply to any of the three messages within
the 15 working days promised. He is a busy man, no doubt, but the failure of
BIS civil servants to send even an acknowledgement illustrates the
determination of UK Government to ignore any criticism.

Equally surprising is the lack of any dialogue with journal publishers. Are
not those smaller OA publishers who must have been hoping that the UK
Government policy would give them a bigger share of public expenditure on
academic journals not wondering whether the goldmine is a mirage? We rarely
hear anything to do with business models from the big international STM
publishers. Are they feeling secure in the knowledge that libraries will
continue to pay high prices for big licensing deals even if insufficient
money is available to pay for all APCs?

One of the benefits from OA to research publication is that OA enables a
broader dialogue on the outcomes from academic research than is possible in
a toll-access publication system, enabling other researchers to comment on
published research and taxpayers to see the results from the research they
have funded. It is sad that no such dialogue appears to be allowed on the
policy to implement OA in the UK.

Fred Friend
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk