“Is “gold” open access necessary to provide the financial resources to make open access a reality?”

No, institutional subscriptions are already paying the cost of publication, in full, handsomely. No need to pay still more for Gold OA: Just mandate Green OA self-archiving of the author’s peer-reviewed final draft. (That’s exactly what UK and EU research funders are mandating. All insitutions and funders worldwide need to do the same, and global OA will be a reality.

“Are taxpayers who have paid for the research entitled to the free access that “green” open access promises?”

Of course. And all their funders and institutions need do is mandate it, as RCUK, EC, NIH and other funders, as well as UCL, Harvard, MIT and other institutions have begun to do.

“Is there a hybrid model that preserves the positive elements of both “gold” and “green” models?”

The RCUK & EC mandates are already hybrid Green+Gold: They mandate Green and provide funds for Gold. But research money is already overstretched. Gold need not be paid for in advance until universal Green has caused global subscription cancelation, making subscriptions unsustainable as the means of paying the cost of publication. Then journals will downsize to providing just the peer review service alone and convert to Gold OA, paid for, per paper published, by the authors’ institutions, out of a small portion of the windfall savings freed up by the subscription cancelations made possible by universal availability of the Green version.

That’s a scalable, affordable and sustainable post-Green Gold “hybrid”.

The pre-emptive payment for hybrid subscription+Gold, pre-Green, that Finch/Willets have recommended, in contrast, is not: It’s just the needless and senseless waste of a lot of public money for little OA in return. The only interest served by pre-emptive hybrid subscription+Gold is publshers’ interest in preserving their current bloated revenue streams, come what may.

“Where does peer review and quality assurance fit in to all of this?”

Peer review is quality assurance, and it never left! Green OA is the self-archiving of peer-reviewed papers, the peer review paid for by institutional subscriptions. Post-Green OA-Gold OA is the peer review service itself, paid for out of the subscription cancelations.

It is pre-emptive, pre-Green payment for hybrid subscription+Gold that is a needless and senseless waste of a lot of public money for little OA in return. The only interest served by pre-emptive hybrid subscription+Gold is publshers’ interest in preserving their current bloated revenue streams, come what may.

Harnad, S. (2007) The Green Road to Open Access: A Leveraged Transition. In: Anna Gacs (ed). The Culture of Periodicals from the Perspective of the Electronic Age. L’Harmattan. 99-106.

Harnad, S. (2009) The PostGutenberg Open Access Journal. In: Cope, B. & Phillips, A (Eds.) The Future of the Academic Journal. Chandos.

Harnad, S. (2010) No-Fault Peer Review Charges: The Price of Selectivity Need Not Be Access Denied or Delayed. D-Lib Magazine 16 (7/8).

Harnad, S. (2011) Gold Open Access Publishing Must Not Be Allowed to Retard the Progress of Green Open Access Self-Archiving. Logos: The Journal of the World Book Community. 21(3-4): 86-93