From: Stevan Harnad <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2012 16:54:53 -0400


**Cross-Posted **

The Finch Report, under strong and palpable influence from the
publishing lobby, instead of recommending extending and optimizing the
UK's worldwide lead in providing Green OA, cost-free, through
institutional and funder self-archiving mandates, has recommended
abandoning Green OA and Green OA mandates and instead spending extra
money (£50-60 million yearly) on paying publishers' Gold OA fees as
well as a UK blanket national site-license fee to cover whatever is
not yet Gold OA (i.e., all the journals that UK institutions currently
subscribe to, rather like the "Big Deals" publishers have been
successfully negotiating with individual institutions and consortia):

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]…"

Finch on Gold: "Gold" open access, funded by article charges, should
be seen as "the main vehicle for the publication of research"… Public
funders should establish "more effective and flexible arrangements" to
pay [Gold OA] article charges… During the transition to [Gold] open
access, funding should be found to extend licences [subscriptions] for
non-open-access content to the whole UK higher education and health
sectors…

Now here are some of the actual figures behind the above assertions.
Let readers come to their own conclusions about the relative success,
cost, benefits, cost-effectiveness, growth potential and timetable of
mandating Green OA vs funding Gold OA:

http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/905-Finch-Fiasco-in-Figures.html