The UK Government has given its second response to the UK Select
Committee's objections to the Government's first response to the
Committee's Recommendations (the major one, to (1) *mandate* institutional
OA self-archiving, and the minor one, to (2) continue to explore and
support OA publishing).
Once again, all the focus and the polemic is on OA Publishing (Gold)
and the gist of the Committee's recommendation (OA Self-Archiving, Green)
is glossed over. Here are the pertinent excerpts:
"The Government has not decided against the author-pays model, but
does not want to force a premature transition to a different system.
"To strongly endorse or reject the author-pays approach would not
be in the interests of allowing the market itself to evolve to meet
the needs of authors and the wider academic community...
"The Government recognises the potential benefits of Institutional
Repositories and sees them as a significant development worthy
of encouragement. But it believes that each Institution has to
make its own decision about Institutional Repositories depending on
individual circumstances."
Fair enough. So it is now time for Research Councils UK and the UK
universities to make their own decision.
This was the focus of the UK Institutional Repositories Meeting held at
Southampton University last week:
and will again be the theme of at the international meeting on
implementing the Berlin Declaration on Open Access, likewise hosted by
Southampton University at the end of this month (28 Feb - 1 Mar):