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