<
https://www.techdirt.com/2023/09/29/publisher-wants-2500-to-allow-academics-to-post-their-own-manuscript-to-their-own-repository/>
"As a
Walled Culture explained back in 2021, open access (OA) to published
academic research comes in two main varieties. “Gold” open access papers are
freely available to the public because the researchers’ institutions pay
“article-processing charges” to a publisher. “Green” OA papers are available
because the authors self-archive their work on a personal Web site or
institutional repository that is publicly accessible.
The self-archived copies are generally the accepted manuscripts, rather than
the final published version, largely because academics foolishly assign
copyright to the publishers. This gives the latter the power to refuse to allow
members of the public to read published research they have paid for with their
taxes, unless they pay again with a subscription to the journal, or on a per
article basis.
You might think that is unfair and inconvenient, but easy to circumvent,
because the public will be able to download copies of the peer-reviewed
manuscripts that the researchers self-archive as green OA. But many publishers
have a problem with the idea that people can access for free the papers in any
form, and demand that public access to the green OA versions should be
embargoed, typically for 12 months. There is no reason for academics to agree
to this other than habit and a certain deference on their part. It’s also
partly the fault of the funding agencies. The open access expert and
campaigner, Peter Suber, explained in 2005 why they are to blame:
Researchers sign funding contracts with the research councils long before
they sign copyright transfer agreements with publishers. Funders have a
right to dictate terms, such as mandated open access, precisely because they
are upstream from publishers. If one condition of the funding contract is
that the grantee will deposit the peer-reviewed version of any resulting
publication in an open-access repository [immediately], then publishers have
no right to intervene.
Accepting embargoes on green OA at all was perhaps the biggest blunder made by
the open access movement and their funders. Even today, nearly 20 years after
Suber pointed out the folly of letting publishers tell academics what they can
do with their own manuscripts, many publishers still demand – and get –
embargoes."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
