On Throwing Money At Gold OA Without First Mandating Green OA, Again!

From: Stevan Harnad <amsciforum_at_GMAIL.COM>
Date: Sat, 28 Mar 2009 18:13:50 -0400

Pre-emptive Gold Fever seems to be spreading. 


Following hard on the heels of University of California's Gilded New
Deal with Springer -- UC subscribes to the Springer fleet of journals
for an undisclosed fee, but, as part of the Deal, UC authors get to
publish their articles as Gold OA for free in those same Springer
journals -- now Universities UK (UUK) and the Research Information
Network (RIN) are jointly dispensing advice on the payment of Gold OA
fees (which is fine) but without first giving the most important
piece of advice: 


Universities should on no account spend a single penny on Gold OA
fees until and unless they have adopted a Green OA mandate for all of
their refereed journal article output.


There is still time for UUK and RIN to remedy this, by prominently
setting the priorities and contingencies straight. I fervently hope
they will do so!


(Peter Suber is expressing the very same hope, but in his
characteristically gentler and less curmudgeonly way.)


Stevan Harnad

American Scientist Open Access Forum
Received on Sat Mar 28 2009 - 22:14:41 GMT