**Cross-posted*
RCUK & EC DID NOT FOLLOW FINCH/WILLETS, THEY REJECTED IT, PROMPTLY AND PROMINENTLY!
Irony of ironies, that it should now appear (to some who are not paying attention)
as if the the RCUK & EC were following the recommendations of Finch/Willets
when in point of fact they are pointedly rejecting them!
RCUK and EC were already leading the world in providing and mandating Green OA.
Finch/Willets, under the influence of the publisher lobby, have recommended
abandoning cost-free Green OA and instead spending scarce research money
on paying publishers extra for Gold OA.
Both RCUK & EC immediately announced that, no, they would stay the course
in which they were already leading -- mandatory Green OA. (They even shored it up,
shortening the maximum allowable embargo period, again directly contrary to Finch/Willets!)
What Finch/Willets have mandated is that £50,000,000.00 of the UK's scarce research
budget is taken away annually from UK research and redirected instead to paying
publishers for Gold OA.
The UK government is free to squander its public funds as it sees fit.
But as long as cost-free Green OA mandates remain in effect, that's just a waste of money,
not of progress in the global growth in OA.
(A lot of hard, unsung work had to be done to fend off the concerted efforts of
the publisher lobby, so brilliantly successful in duping Finch/Willets, to dupe the
RCUK and EC too. They failed. And they will fail with the US too. And the UK
will maintain its leadership in the worldwide OA movement, despite Finch/Willets,
not because of it.)
Stevan Harnad
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