concludes they are not a viable model on their own, stating that there is a:
widespread acknowledgement that repositories on their own do not provide a sustainable basis for a research communications system that seeks to provide access to quality-assured content; for they do not themselves provide any arrangements for pre-publication peer review.
Rather, they rely on a supply of published material that has been subject to peer review by others; or in some cases they provide facilities for comments and ratings by readers that may constitute a more informal system of peer review once the material has been deposited and disseminated via the repository itself.
However, this is a statement of the current position. If a national initiative is being proposed, then a repository (or collection of repositories) may well be a viable approach. The recommendation to move to Gold open access means that effectively the taxpayer will be funding publishers, since the money will come from research bodies. Viewing this money as possible expenditure to be allocated to open access then it could be usefully spent on a national, interdisciplinary arXiv. Green OA advocate Harnad (2012) argues that Green OA is free, and that the Finch report’s Gold OA will cost £50–60M annually to implement, and criticises Finch for not backing this model.
The second concern is the lack of demand the report places on publishers. The report suggests that it would be good for publishers to link data with publications, but does not mandate it:
In an ideal world, there would be closer integration between the text and the data presented in journal articles, with seamless links to interactive datasets; a
