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From: [identity deleted]

I've been tasked with chairing the OA working group at [deleted] and have found
your blogs and articles incredibly helpful in trying to plot a way through the mess
created by Finch/RCUK. I've been trying to push the University in the Green OA
direction you have been recommending - that is, [depositing the] accepted versions
[in] the institutional repository.
 
Yesterday a lengthy email appeared in my inbox, an extract from which is reproduced
below.  It seems that Wiley are trying to forbid publication of the accepted version in
an institutional repository (I think that they mean 'accepted version' in the last but one
sentence, not 'submitted version'). Can they do this if the version published in the
repository is not in their typeface etc?
 
Any help you can give would be welcome.
 
Green OA: submitted version v accepted version
I think that more understanding needs to be promoted about the difference between
Green OA with the submitted version [preprint] and with the accepted version and the unsuitability
of the former in some circumstances. I have a co-authored article coming out with [deleted],
published by Wiley. The research was not RCUK-funded. Wiley's policy for this journal is
that the only Green OA they will permit is making available the submitted (pre-refereed)
version of the article [preprint]. This is obviously completely pointless as the article has changed
significantly as a result of the referees' reports. We anticipate that there will be significant
public interest in the article... and so we need to go Gold so that it is not hidden from
most of the public, journalists etc behind a subscription paywall. I know that there are plenty
of other situations where (submitted version)  [preprint] is fine - effectively it is putting a draft
out there for comments. However, that does not apply to our paper. Wiley have told us that
the Green OA [refereed, accepted postprint] option is not open to us. My sense of it is that those who
are pro-Green don't yet appreciate sufficiently that the only version,,, that can be
available at times can be completely unsuitable.

Dear [deleted],

Many thanks for your kind words about my (unheeded) words…

Wiley, like other formerly Green-friendly publishers, are now deliberately putting up an almost 
impenetrable smokescreen of variants and details in their OA policy in order to confuse and deter authors. 

This is all with the unwitting collaboration of funders, who themselves adopt vague, varied and mutually 
contradictoryOA policies, institutional IP “specialists” who give absurd and arbitrary “legal” advice, and 
SHERPA/Romeo, which slavishly canonizes and formally publicizes publishers’ every arbitrary whim as 
if it made sense and desperately needed to be known and heeded by one and all.

I’ve responded to every single subterfuge many a time, but here it is again:

(1) The distinction between authors' “personal website” and their “institutional repository” is bogus. Ignore it.

(2) Wiley (still) states that there is no OA embargo on the author’s refereed, accepted final draft. 

(3) Whenever minded to be intimidated by publisher FUD or compliant with an OA embargo, deposit the final 
refereed, revised, revised, accepted final draft immediately on acceptance for publication anyway, set access 
as restricted-access instead of OA, and rely on the repository’s copy-request Button  (one click from the requestor, 
one click from the author) to provide almost-OA till the embargo elapses, the FUD implodes, or 
authors/funders/institutions/IP-experts/Sherpa-Romeo come to their senses — whichever comes first.

This is what the sensible authors of the 973,909 preprints and postprints deposited and made immediately OA in Arxiv
(for example) have been doing, unchallenged, since 1991, without begging the leave of anyone. The flurry of FUD 
since obligingly floated elsewhere has been inspired purely by those who did not have the sense to do likewise.

Dixit,

Stevan Harnad