tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post1835714244352987949..comments2024-03-17T08:30:21.129+00:00Comments on Open and Shut?: The Finch Report in a global Open Access landscapeRichard Poynderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05433823131339077354noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7961882.post-10506906654168198392012-06-25T11:09:42.152+00:002012-06-25T11:09:42.152+00:00THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE FINCH AND L...<b>THE FUNDAMENTAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE FINCH AND LERU RECOMMENDATIONS</b><br /><br />The trouble is that the ecumenical squaring of the LERU Roadmap with the Finch Report misses the very essence of the crucial contradiction between Finch and LERU:<br /><br />Finch disparages Green OA self-archiving (and ignores Green OA self-archiving mandates altogether), downgrading Green OA to merely a means of archiving data and grey literature, and helping in digital preservation. <i>In place of Green OA, today, Finch recommends paying for Gold OA, today.</i><br /><br />In contrast, <i>LERU recommends mandating Green OA, today, and funding Gold only when Green OA has been mandated.</i><br /><br />This is the difference between night and day, because it generates OA itself, in the fastest and surest way possible, and free of any extra cost: by mandating Green OA, today.<br /><br />OA (Open Access) itself, now, is the primary goal of the OA movement. <br /><br />Most of us (including myself) agree that universal Gold OA publishing will be cheaper than today's subscription publishing model -- <i>but certainly not if today's prices are locked into the mechanism of transition to Gold OA</i>, as long proposed by publishers, a proposal now seconded wholesale by Finch: extra funding for Gold OA today, plus a UK national license for all of UK's non-OA subscription content, with a phased transition to Gold OA alone (subscription costs being reduced as Gold OA revenues grow), <i>effectively locking in publishers' total revenue at the level of their subscription revenues</i>.<br /><br />Hence, one can agree that the cost of post-global-Green-OA global Gold OA will be much less than today's global subscription/license cost, yet this does not at all imply that there is any agreement that paying for Gold OA pre-emptively now, at current prices, and on the publisher/Finch transition scenario, will cost less, nor that the publisher/Finch transition scenario is stable or scaleable from country to country, let alone that it will produce global OA in the foreseeable future, as mandating Green OA, today, will do.<br /><br />So let us not, in our haste to praise Finch for having recommended "OA" at all, omit that it has recommended OA <i>on publishers' terms</i>, at a high cost and a very slow and uncertain pace, and at the expense of the UK's lead in mandated Green OA, which is the tried-and-tested means of generating OA at a fast and proven pace (<i>if mandate adoption is increased and mandate implementation is optimized</i>), and at no extra cost, just an just an optimized policy.<br /><br />Finch should have recommended strengthening and extending the UK's lead and model, by increasing Green OA mandate adoption and optimizing Green OA mandate implementation. <br /><br />Instead Finch recommended relegating Green OA to data and grey archiving and preservation, and instead spending more money on Gold OA.<br /><br />That's the gist of it. The rest is just an exchange of trending buzz-words and pious slogans.<br /><br />Stevan HarnadStevan Harnadhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14374474060972737847noreply@blogger.com