The purpose of this paper is to initiate a discussion among SPARC, librarians, publishers, and other interested parties of a potential initiative to digitize and disseminate the back-runs of scholarly journals. SPARC seeks to obtain feedback on the concept described here; to determine whether the fundamental approach has sufficient merit to warrant further planning and development; and to elicit preliminary expressions of interest in participation....
SPARC proposes launching a cooperative program-- tentatively titled the “Open Past Initiative”-- that would apply the digital conversion and content management expertise of academic libraries to unlock the now isolated print assets of nonprofit and other independent journal publishers. Participating publishers likely would be insufficiently capitalized or otherwise ill equipped to undertake conversion on their own. They would contribute nonexclusive electronic license rights to their backfile content, while participating libraries would contribute retrospective conversion resources and long-term web-based open access. All researchers worldwide would have free online access to the valuable digital content thus made available....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/22/2006 02:14:00 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.
