From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, 29 Jul 2012 21:44:47 -0400

On 2012-07-29, at 9:25 PM, LIBLICENSE wrote:
From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 23:44:35 +0000

This is a very interesting announcement, not least because it suggests the
existence of an alarming tendency on Stevan's part: a habit of "talking
up" and "seeking to win over sceptics and doubters (to)" proposals and
initiatives before he has fully thought them through or considered their
implications. It suggests that perhaps the next time he feels compelled to
"(flood) mailing lists with messages" either in favor of or in opposition
to a new initiative or proposal, he should perhaps wait a week or so and
make sure he really agrees with it. This might save a lot of listserv
bandwidth.

***************

RP:  If you are right, then what puzzles me is that OA advocates also
failed to see the implications. Not only did you initially applaud the
RCUK policy, but so too apparently did SPARC Europe (which “warmly
welcomed” the new policy,describing it as a stronger policy).
Likewise, Peter Suber wrote on 16th July, “Instead of favouring gold
over green, and even disparaging green, the new RCUK policy favours
green over gold”. You are saying that in reality the reverse is
actually the case I believe.

SH: I can’t speak for others, but in my case it was a combination of:

(1)   shock at the Finch recommendation, which was to phase out Green
altogether, and just fund Gold, exactly as publishers had been urging
for the past several years (once they had realized that the clamour
for OA was not going to go away, and had to be placated somehow)

(2)   relief that RCUK quickly announced that it would continue to
“allow” Green as an option, and, frankly,

(3)   some conscious wishful thinking (if not self-delusion), and the
desire to put a more positive spin on the new RCUK policy than its own
wording quite warranted, especially to limit the damage that mindless
emulation of the Finch recommendations could do to the global OA
movement.

I am ashamed to say that I even told Richard van Noorden, a journalist
for Nature, that I hoped he would not mention the awful contingency
that the RCUK might inspire (hybrid Gold plus hyper-embargoes), in the
hope that publishers would not notice it.

In a word, a combination of stupefaction and stupidity on my part.  SH.


On 7/26/12 3:42 PM, "LIBLICENSE" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From:  [log in to unmask]
Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2012 13:06:16 -0400

** Cross-Posted **

Thursday, July 26, 2012

When on July 16th Research Councils UK (RCUK) published its updated
Policy on Access to Research Outputs the Open Access (OA) movement
greeted the news with enthusiasm. This was hardly surprising: unlike
the recommendations in the controversial Finch Report (published a
month earlier), RCUK stressed that it continues to view both gold OA
publishing and green OA self-archiving as equal partners in any OA
policy.

Gold and green are the two strategies outlined eight years ago when
the OA movement was born, and are viewed as being essential components
of any successful transition to OA.

By contrast, Finch concluded that the main vehicle should now be gold
OA, either via pure open access journals or via hybrid journals, and
that this should be funded by article processing charges (APCs).

At the same time, Finch argued, it was time to downgrade green OA, and
reduce the role of institutional repositories to merely, "providing
access to research data and to grey literature" and assisting in
digital preservation.

Set alongside the Finch proposals, OA advocates quickly concluded that
RCUK¹s policy was a godsend.

One of the first to applaud the new policy was long-standing OA
advocate, and self-styled archivangelist, Stevan Harnad. The minute
the report was published a relieved Harnad began flooding mailing
lists with messages congratulating RCUK on coming up with a policy
that not only defied Finch, but was stronger than its current OA
policy.

But as Harnad set about talking up the policy, and seeking to win over
sceptics and doubters, he himself began to have doubts. And eventually
he was driven to the conclusion that he had no option but to withdraw
his support for the RCUK policy ‹ which he now characterises as
autistic, and a foolish, wasteful and counterproductive step
backwards.

How has what at first sight seemed so desirable rapidly become
something terrible? Curious to find out, I contacted Harnad. I publish
the email interview that emerged from our conversation.

http://poynder.blogspot.com/2012/07/oa-advocate-stevan-harnad-withdraws_26.html#more