There has been quite a bit of discussion on open access mailing lists recently about something called the Finch Report, which was published exactly one month ago. As explained here, the report recommends governments endorse "gold OA, (where)publishers cease to charge readers to access scholarly journals (in the form of subscriptions), but instead charge authors, or their funders or institutions, to publish their papers." Meanwhile, "the institutional repository (i.e. green OA) should be relegated to the role of bit player, merely "providing access to research data and to grey literature" and assisting in digital preservation." The UK Minister for Universities and Science, David Willetts, announced he was accepting all recommendations from the Finch report, but not before Research Councils UK (RCUK) announced in its new OA policy that it would treat green OA as an equal partner to gold. This happened two days ago. Poynder writes, "Finch's one-dimensional approach to OA appears most unfortunate," and I agree.
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