Abstract

We analyse why the open access movement split into two paths, gold and green, and try to explain the reasons behind the choices between them that were made in the UK and USA. The analysis shows that lobbying in favor of the gold path had its origins in the publication policies of The New England journal of medicine: its director, Franz J. Ingelfinger, introduced the publication rule of not accepting manuscripts that previously had been circulating as pre-prints, known as the “Ingelfinger rule”.