The Scottish Science Information Strategy Working Group has written a draft Scottish Declaration of Open Access. The draft will be made final, signed, and probably released after an October 11 meeting at the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Excerpt from the draft Declaration: "There are two main routes to achieving open access, and we wish to register our support for both. A growing number of open access journals have been established, with some publishers offering all their journals on an open access basis, and others offering it only for selected titles, or to selected institutions....The second route is usually described as 'self-archiving', where authors deposit electronic versions of their articles in an institutional, or subject-based, repository: appropriate software adhering to open standards and encouraging interoperability allows these repositories to be searched jointly, and relevant articles retrieved from repositories located worldwide....There is growing evidence to suggest that open access increases the reach and impact of research....Open access publishing therefore provides a more cost-efficient means of disseminating the outputs of research funded from the public purse than does the current system....In the light of these developments, and recognising the huge potential gains to Scotland in terms of impact, comparative advantage, and return on public investment if open access to our research can be established quickly, we will use our best endeavours to ensure that research carried out in Scotland is published in an open access format, recognising that a transition phase may be necessary in some areas."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/16/2004 09:13:00 AM.
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.
