 |
 |
The wide range of activities reported on the gold oa blog illustrate the priority now given to APC-funded gold OA by Government and other Establishment agencies in the UK, and the second-class status being given to repositories and other green OA developments by those same agencies. After many protests following the Finch Report, the role of repositories has been given greater recognition in the policies of RCUK and HEFCE, but this welcome recognition cannot disguise the fact that within the UK Establishment repositories are now not to be encouraged. Both gold and green OA are the twin sisters born of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, and across the globe they have been allowed to grow unhindered, indeed actively supported by many governments and official bodies. And so it was it in the UK until the summer of 2012, when powerful lobbying by vested interests achieved their aim of banishing the green sister to the back of the political house.
One result of the second-class status now granted to green OA is that there are now few UK projects to support the development of repositories. So much could be done to illustrate the sustainability of the repository route to OA, or to develop new services based upon repository content, but such developments no longer find favour with agencies committed to gold OA. Fortunately, while the UK Government and Government-funded agencies are content to leave repositories in their partially-developed state and pour taxpayer funds into APC-funded gold OA, many UK universities remain as committed to their institutional repositories as they were before the Finch Report. The problem they face is that while they are expected to prioritise funding for APCs, few universities can afford to fund the developments which would show the true value of repositories as the most cost-effective route to OA for publicly-funded research outputs. Fortunately the UK Government's misguided policy in prioritising APC-funded gold OA at the cost of supporting green OA is unlikely to be followed by other governments wishing to maintain balanced policies.
Fred Friend
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL
http://www.friendofopenaccess.org.uk
Colleagues
There is a series of insightful blog posts on Gold OA infrastructure here:
There will be a meeting of international experts on this topic tomorrow. We’d welcome any comments on these ideas via the blog, which will inform the direction taken by people like CrossRef, COUNTER, international publishers, NISO, etc.
Many thanks
Neil