I just want to register my regret and dismay that SHERPA is yet again slavishly following and echoing all noise in the air, instead of reflecting, and doing something to lead the way to OA rather than just cranking up the volume of the ambient buzz.
For years SHERPA/ROMEO has been slavishly amplifying publishers' every whim instead of just cataloguing the essential points of publisher policy: Do they endorse immediate Green OA to the peer-reviewed version? and if not, how long do they propose to embargo it?
Instead, SHERPA faithfully parrots every nuance of FUD and double-talk that publishers dream up -- I await a solemn stipulation that the author may only provide OA on Tuesdays, and only if they have a blue-eyed maternal uncle -- leaving users in a wash of useless detail and confusion.
Now this same indiscriminate parroting of arbitrariness and nonsense on the part of the RCUK OA policy has been given a megaphone in SHERPA/FACT.
Instead of leaving RCUK to work out a coherent policy, SHERPA/FACT takes the tentative vagaries of the RCUK policy-makers and canonizes them as if they made sense and were ready to be etched in Mosaic tablets of stone for UK (and worldwide!) researchers to revere and obey.
Instead of agonizing over what journal they may or may not publish in, in order to comply with RCUK requirements, by working their way through the maze of SHERPA/FACT contingencies, RCUK authors would be best to publish in whatever journal they wish and deposit their refereed final drafts in their institutional repositories immediately upon acceptance for publication (as HEFCE/REF requires).
Sensible authors should make their deposits OA immediately. Cautious or timid authors can look up the length of their publisher's embargo on OA (if any) and set access to the deposit to be made OA when the embargo has elapsed. All authors can be confident that RCUK will not be monitoring or "enforcing" embargo lengths for years to come, whilst the RCUK policy is being "re-evaluated."
And that's the only information SHERPA/FACT ought to be providing, apart from links to either the publisher's website or RCUK's website, so curious authors can see their respective caprices at first hand.
As to the rest of the new RCUK policy -- the part that both publishers and RCUK/Wellcome are really interested in namely, how the Gold subsidy is to be administered and disbursed -- nolo contendere, but the less said, the better: Once you've deposited your final draft in your institutional repository, forget about the Gold subsidy unless your chosen journal happens to be Gold.
Stevan Harnad