Hi all,
Long-time lurker, first-time poster, apologies if I'm rehashing info that's already known by most here.  I'm a research data management librarian who also has a lot of exposure to the OA space because of open data and running our IR.  I also coauthored a paper recently where we explored the OA citation advantage in hybrid journals and engaged in some broader discussion of OA issues especially from the standpoint of authors.  During the review process of our paper, one peer reviewer fiercely criticized us for implying immediate open access (as sometimes required by funders) nearly always required authors to pay (and also criticized us for daring to suggest higher JIF journals can extract higher APCs, but that's a discussion for another time).  He insisted rights retention statements solved this problem.  As the author tasked with responding to this particular reviewer comment, I tried to explain RRS are functionally not "a thing" from the perspective of the authors - without institutional support, it's just individual authors adding some language that has no legal force and could complicate the editorial process.  He would not hear it, but I believe my point that RRS statements may as well not exist as far as authors are concerned (in the US, which is my context).
Currently, I'm working through the submission process at a certain Springer Nature journal (but not Nature-branded).  While looking through the Instructions for Authors, I ended up examining their OA policies in depth (this is a hybrid journal).  You can see what I'm seeing here: https://www.springernature.com/gp/open-research/policies/journal-policies Needless to say, they tout the benefits of OA and encourage you to pursue the Gold OA route by paying them a sizable APC...not as much as I've seen by any stretch, but north of $3000 for the journal in question.  That wasn't a surprise.  What took me aback was their policy about depositing Author Accepted Manuscripts into a repository.  They have an embargo period, which again was known and expected, but they also explicitly forbid attaching a CC license to the AAM and have several other restrictive terms of use that they presumably expect repositories to enforce (how, I have no idea).  They also disallow making any changes to the AAM before deposit (for example, you can't make it prettier or correct a typo you found).
And then of course there's the section on RRS which says, in summary, "We won't punish you for having rights retention language but you will be directed to go the Gold OA route, and if you don't and choose traditional subscription access, the rights transfer agreement you sign supersedes and nullifies any RRS."
This comes on the heels of ACS's announcement that manuscripts with rights retention language will have to pay an APC at the review stage instead of after acceptance.  As a librarian who frequently encourages my university's authors to make use of our IR for Green OA at no cost to them, doing my best to disentangle the concepts of "make a work OA" and "pay a publisher for OA", this is really discouraging.  I wonder whether fierce advocates for OA mandates (such as the peer reviewer mentioned earlier) understood that the major publishers were never going to tolerate a system where they did not get paid one way or another and that they have effectively maneuvered us into an OA regime that must run through them as the gatekeepers of the VOR.
By the way, they will still make money even if APCs don't fully cover their publishing costs by becoming data companies and selling their gatekeeping services, but that is, again, a discussion for a different day.
Ali Krzton, Research Data Management Librarian
Auburn University, Auburn, AL


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