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