The February issue of Research Information has a brief story on the UK inquiry. Excerpt: "The committee will investigate pricing policies for scientific journals, particularly 'Big-Deal' agreements, as well as open-access initiatives. It will decide whether to recommend that the UK Government should encourage open-access projects - such as BioMed Central and the Public Library of Science - which represent a challenge to traditional pricing models of journal publishers. The chairman of the committee, Dr Ian Gibson, is a former academic from the University of East Anglia. He promised some 'very tough questions for publishers, libraries and government on these issues'. 'Journals are at the heart of the scientific process,' he continued. 'Researchers, teachers and students must have easy access to scientific publications at a fair price. Scientific journals need to maintain their credibility and integrity as they move into the age of e-publication.'"
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/21/2004 12:58:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
