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Salvatore Babones sees the consequence of the Finch report being "the destruction of the arts, humanities and social sciences".

There are many disadvantages of the gold route - not the least of which is that commercial publishers will continue to make large profits from their journals (indeed, even larger than at present as they will generate two revenue streams for years to come, one from subscriptions and one from authors).

However, authors in the subjects to which he refers will continue to publish articles in their current journals in exactly the way they do now. The majority of these authors are not funded for their work and will not pay author fees. But they should be encouraged to deposit their articles in repositories and to refuse to assign copyright to publishers that do not allow this practice, and to publish in open-access journals where appropriate.

Mike McGrath, Retired editor, Interlending and Document Supply, Leeds