Comment. To me, the most interesting of these is the second, on the RCUK. Campbell's spin is that the RCUK's draft OA policy emphasized the need for more study, and that the Medical Research Council has gone beyond the draft policy by mandating OA. The opposite is the case. The RCUK draft policy mandated OA across the board, for all eight of the Research Councils, even if it also recommended further study. The Medical Research Council is right in line with the draft, and the Research Councils not mandating OA, like the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils, are retreating from the draft. Don't take my word for it; read the draft yourself. Quoting Section 13: "RCUK believes that in order for Research Councils to demonstrate their commitment to enhancing access to published research outputs through the medium of e-print repositories, it should...introduce a requirement that Research Council-funded researchers should deposit their published outputs in appropriate e-print repositories." The details of the requirement are spelled out in Section 14.b.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/10/2006 08:27:00 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.
