Re: Royal Society Publishing and Open Access

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2010 08:30:44 -0400

I have a question about the Royal Society's Open Access policy. According to SHERPA Romeo, the RS is green, meaning it has formally endorsed the self-archiving of the author's final, refereed draft, in the author's institutional repository, immediately upon acceptance for publication.

But in the RS FAQ, the RS misdefines Green OA as follows:

"Green open access:
Authors may deposit a pre-print of their article in a repository at any time and they may deposit the final, accepted manuscript version of their article in a repository from 12 months after publication."
http://royalsocietypublishing.org/site/authors/EXiS.xhtml#question1

This needs to be clarified. For whereas one can be agnostic about the hybrid gold OA option that the RS and many publishers are offering (including the promise of transparency in translating hybrid Gold OA uptake increases into subscription price reductions), this takes on an entirely different complexion *if the publisher is not green* (as, for example, CUP, APS, IOP, AAAS, Springer and Elsevier all are, whereas OUP and NPG, and now possibly the RS, are not).

For if the publisher imposes a 1-year embargo, that is tantamount to a constraint -- on any author that needs and wants immediate OA -- to pay for the hybrid Gold OA option instead of just providing Green OA.

Whereas the hybrid gold OA option per se is an innocent enough development on the part of green publishers, not only transparency but very explicit exposure, naming and shaming will be necessary for those non-green publishers who try to use embargoes on Green OA to leverage hybrid gold OA options.

Stevan Harnad

On 2010-06-22, at 7:45 AM, Crawshaw, Lesley A wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I've been asked to forward this message to this list on behalf of the Royal Society. I am sure you will find it interesting - it's a positive move by the Royal Society.
>
> Royal Society Publishing and Open Access
>
> ***Apologies for cross posting***
>
> In keeping with our role as the UK's national academy of science, The Royal Society is committed to the widest possible dissemination of research outputs. Consequently, our own publishing operation is one of the most open access of all science publishers.
>
> From 2012 we shall implement a new and more transparent pricing policy in which the price of each journal is tied to the number of non-open access articles published in that journal and each journal will publish the relevant article counts annually. We recognise the legitimate concerns of the research community that publishers of hybrid open access journals should take full account of the income they receive from article charges when setting subscription prices and believe that this model represents a coherent and viable way forward.
>
> For further information on our new and more transparent pricing policy please visit:
>
> http://royalsocietypublishing.org/site/authors/EXiS.xhtml#question2
>
>
> All our content is currently free to access<http://royalsocietypublishing.org/journals> until 30 July 2010
> To celebrate a summer of science and the launch of See Further: the Festival of Science and Arts, we are pleased to announce that the Royal Society Digital Journal Archive will be freely available to view until 30 July 2010. Our archive dates back to 1665 and contains in excess of 68,000 articles, from the first ever article published in our oldest journal Philosophical Transactions to the most recent interdisciplinary article published in our youngest journal Interface Focus.
> Access our archive <http://royalsocietypublishing.org/info/archive> today and remember that all articles <http://royalsocietypublishing.org/journals> are completely free to access until 30 July 2010
> Shania Khan
> Library Relations
>
> Tel +44 (0)20 7451 2216
> Fax +44 (0)20 7930 2170
> Web royalsocietypublishing.org<http://royalsocietypublishing.org/>
>
> The Royal Society
> 6-9 Carlton House Terrace
> London SW1Y 5AG
>
> Registered Charity No 207043
> See further with the Royal Society in 2010 - celebrate 350 years of excellence in science
>
>
> Cheers
> Lesley
>
> Lesley Crawshaw
> Knowledge & Business Intelligence Consultant
> Information Hertfordshire
> University of Hertfordshire
> Tel: 01707 285508
>
Received on Tue Jun 22 2010 - 13:33:47 BST

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