Jocelyn Kaiser, Zerhouni Plans a Nudge Toward Open Access, Science, September 3, 2004 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: "Hoping to resolve an escalating debate about public access to biomedical research reports, National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Elias Zerhouni consulted with scientists this week and said that he is leaning toward a delay of 6 months after publication before posting grantees' papers on NIH's free Web archive. This plan won't satisfy everyone, he acknowledged, but it is 'reasonable.' A war of words broke out this summer after Zerhouni responded to a House report urging NIH to come up with a plan to give free access to published papers. In a stern seven-page letter last week, the Association of American Publishers and other groups called NIH's plans a 'radical new policy' and an 'inappropriate intrusion' on free enterprise [PS reply]; they contend that it could force journals to adopt an 'unproven' model in which authors pay publication costs [PS reply]. Lobbying for the plan, 25 Nobel laureates --led by Richard Roberts and including former NIH director Harold Varmus and James Watson-- wrote Congress on 26 August expressing 'strong support' for posting NIH grantees' papers in PubMedCentral --NIH's free, full-text archive-- as soon as they are published. A new coalition of patient and library groups called the Alliance for Taxpayer Access, meanwhile, is backing a 6-month release plan." (Thanks to Alexei Koudinov.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/03/2004 08:09:00 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.
