[Irtalk] Open and Shut?: HEFCE, Elsevier, the “copy request” button, and the future of open access

[Hilton Gibson]

This is surely the long game publishers are playing: appropriate gold OA in
a way that preserves their profits, while simultaneously seek to
appropriate green OA in order to control it, and then gradually phase it
out, thus ensuring a transition to a pay-to-publish environment that best
suits their needs, and at a cost based on their asking price.

But we need to ask: would this not be the best outcome? Does it matter how
open access is achieved, as long as it is achieved?

Actually, it does matter.* As we noted, one of the main promises of the OA
movement was that open access would solve the affordability problem that
has held universities in its iron fist for several decades now — the
so-called “serials crisis”. Pay-to-publish gold OA may seem like a good
solution, but if it proves as expensive as (or more expensive than)
subscription publishing, how will the research community afford it?*

http://poynder.blogspot.com/2015/06/hefce-elsevier-copy-request-button-and.html
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