**Cross-Posted** 
(with permission from M. Balaban)

Miriam Balaban -- the first president of IFSE, the International Federation of Scientific Editors and Editor in Chief of Desalination and Water Treatment (formerly published by Elsevier, now published by Taylor & Francis) -- just sent me the following:

From: Miriam Balaban  miriambalaban  yahoo.com 
Date: 16 August, 2012 8:10:11 AM EDT
 
...wish to speak to you urgently about OA – about the ridiculous Finch report...

We subsequently spoke by phone. The Desalination journal is Green -- it endorses and encourages immediate (unembargoed) Green Open Access self-archiving by its authors.

Miriam asked what to say to authors about the Finch report and her publisher's request to offer Hybrid Gold Open Access for an author fee of about $3000. 

Miriam did not want to offer Hybrid Gold at all, because she thought it was ridiculous to tell her authors they could pay $3000 to provide Gold OA when they can already provide Green OA at no cost.

I suggested that it would be even better to offer Hybrid Gold OA, but to tell them so, and with specific reference to British Authors, now that the UK government is proposing to fund Gold OA.

I have accordingly proposed that the following passage be added to the Desalination and Water Treatment author agreement:

All Desalination and Water Treatment authors retain the right to make their peer-reviewed final drafts Open Access (i.e., accessible free for all online) (OA) by depositing them in their institutional OA repository immediately upon acceptance for publication (no embargo). This is called "Green OA." 

The UK government has redirected some research funds to pay journals extra to make the version of record accessible free for all online ("Gold OA"). 

You are free to pay us extra ($3000) for Gold OA if you wish, but please note that Green OA also makes your peer-reviewed findings accessible free for all online, with no need for any extra payment.

Stevan Harnad

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