From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 21:07:58 -0400

> From: "Romano, Maria" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 15:03:17 +0100

"Remaining a fair player, The Royal Society ensures that published
open access articles bearing a publication fee are deducted from
subscription prices through its Transparent Pricing Mechanism"

http://royalsocietypublishing.org/site/librarians/transparent_pricing.xhtml"

The Royal Society thereby pledges that it will not "double-dip" for
hybrid Gold OA. The RS continues to collect subscription fees from
institutions worldwide, but whatever additional revenue if gets from
individual authors for hybrid Gold OA, it pledges to return as a
subscription rebate to all subscribing institutions.

******

But does this mean the RS is a "fair player" insofar as OA is concerned?

Hardly.

Yet this is not because the hybrid Gold OA rebate amounts to
individual authors' full payments for Gold OA subsidizing the
subscription costs of institutions worldwide. (The author's own
institution only gets back a tiny fraction of its authors' Gold OA fee
in its tiny portion of the worldwide subscription rebate.)

No. Whether the RS is indeed a fair player depends on whether RS
authors have the choice -- between providing Gold OA by paying the RS
that additional cost over and above what the world's institutions are
already paying the RS in subscriptions -- or providing Green OA at no
additional cost, by self-archiving their article free for all online.

For if the RS does not give its authors this choice, then it is
certainly not a "fair player": It is holding RS authors who want to
provide OA hostage to the payment of an additional hybrid Gold OA fee.

From 2005 - 2010, the RS has had a checquered history with OA:
http://j.mp/RoylSocOA

In 2010, however, the RS came down squarely on "the side of the
angels", endorsing immediate, unembargoed Green OA self-archiving of
the author's final refereed draft: http://j.mp/RSOANGELS

But now -- perhaps -- the RS seems to have adopted a 12-month embargo
on Green OA (under the fell influence -- perhaps -- of the new
Finch/RCUK OA policy?):

"You are free to post…the “Author Generated Postprint” - Your personal
copy of the revised version of the Article as accepted by Us… on Your
personal or institutional web site and load it onto an institutional
or not for profit repository no earlier than 12 months from the date
of first publication of the Definitive Published Version."
http://royalsocietypublishing.org/site/authors/licence.xhtml

Or is this just another (silly) attempt to distinguish between authors
positing on their "institutional website" (unembargoed) versus posting
in their "institutional repository" (embargoed) -- in which case RS
authors can happily ignore this empty pseudo-distinction, knowing that
their institutional repository is indeed their institutional website.

But the RS would do itself a historic favour if it dropped all this
double-talk, unworthy of such a venerable institution, and lived up to
its decree that:

"In keeping with its role as the UK's national academy of science, The
Royal Society<http://royalsociety.org/> is committed to the widest
possible dissemination of research outputs."

by ceasing to try to hold Green OA self-archiving hostage to
sustaining the RS's subscription revenues at all costs.

There will be time for the RS to go Gold at a fair, affordable,
sustainable price, single-paid instead of over-charged and
double-paid, as now (with or without double-dipping) -- after Green
has prevailed worldwide and made subscriptions no longer
unsustainable.

But that will be post-Green Fair-Gold. What the RS (and other
publishers, less venerable) are trying to use OA embargoes for today
is to force authors to pay pre-emptively for pre-Green Fools-Gold, so
as to ensure that their revenue streams do not shrink either way.

But shrink they must, because post-Green the only service the RS or
any other research journal publisher will need to perform is the
management of peer review in the online era.

And that only costs a fraction of what they are being paid now, with
or without double dipping.

The RS "Membership Programme" -- like all hybrid Fools-Gold, is a
Trojan Horse: http://j.mp/TRoaJan

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 7:02 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> From: "Romano, Maria" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 15:03:17 +0100
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> The Royal Society welcomes leading institutions to its Open Access Membership Programme
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The growing number of members since its launch early last year
> demonstrates the success of the Royal Society’s Open Access Membership
> Programme<http://royalsocietypublishing.org/site/librarians/membership.xhtml>,
> as University of Cambridge, MIT and The University of Melbourne have
> joined the programme along with 30 other institutions →
> <http://royalsocietypublishing.org/site/librarians/allmembers.xhtml>.
>
> The programme enables participating organisations to decrease the cost
> of the article processing charge to their authors by 25%, along with
> further promoting its open access publications and research output.
>
> Institutions choosing to affiliate themselves to the prestigious
> charity and support its open access initiatives can find out more by
> visiting our membership
> webpages<http://royalsocietypublishing.org/site/librarians/membership.xhtml>.
>
> For more information on how your institution can support its
> researchers with discounted open access article processing charges,
> please contact [log in to unmask]
>
> In keeping with its role as the UK's national academy of science, The
> Royal Society<http://royalsociety.org/> is committed to the widest
> possible dissemination of research outputs. Hence since 2006, any
> article can be published in open access under a Creative Commons
> license<http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/> in any of its
> prestigious journals<http://royalsocietypublishing.org/journals>,
> including the fully gold journal Open
> Biology<http://rsob.royalsocietypublishing.org/>.
>
> Remaining a fair player, The Royal Society ensures that published open
> access articles bearing a publication fee are deducted from
> subscription prices through its Transparent Pricing Mechanism
> <http://royalsocietypublishing.org/site/librarians/transparent_pricing.xhtml>.

[SNIP]