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Contrary to the suggestion of this RCUK report, there is no "Gold Standard" for OA except universal OA. And the way to universalize OA is to universalize Green OA self-archiving mandates to all institutions and funders globally, not to divert scarce research money -- pre-emptively and needlessly -- toward paying Gold OA publication fees at a time when subscription fees are still paying for publication worldwide and only 77 out of 10,000 institutions and funders have yet mandated Green OA.
It is not that Green OA mandates are failing to achieve compliance, as this RCUK report states: It is that they have not yet been adopted by 99.23% of the world's institutions and funders!
Unlike "peer-to-peer" consumer "sharing" of creators' non-give-away commercial output, creators giving away their own peer-reviewed and public funded research output to maximize its uptake, usage and impact is not piracy but the sharing of a public good for public benefit. In contrast, publisher embargoes on research access are the hostage-taking of a public good -- and the way to counter that is immediate-deposit (IDOA) mandates coupled with the "Email EPrint Request" Button, not the payment of a gold ransom.
Stevan Harnad