...Synergies, an initiative led by five Canadian universities including the University of Toronto, plans to digitize Canadian social science research. Once fully operational, it will provide researchers with a new outlet to disseminate their work and give Canadians open access to cutting-edge research.
Canadian museums are transforming their collections into digital archives that serve users around the world. For example, Montreal's McCord Museum of Canadian History has already digitized more than 125,000 images, all of which are freely accessible....
[T]he federal government would do well to resist introducing expensive new initiatives by first maximizing the benefits that can be extracted from the current set of policies and programs. For example, Canada spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year on research funding through its three federal granting institutions in the health, sciences, and social science fields. The government should mandate an open access model that would require that all taxpayer-funded research be made available to the public at no charge within six months of initial publication.
Ottawa could also amend the legal deposit program that requires all Canadian publishers to provide the National Library with two copies of every newly published book. By expanding the program's requirements to also include a digital copy, the government would effortlessly build a digital library featuring thousands of new books....
Crown copyright, the archaic policy that grants the government copyright over its own work, should be dropped, thereby enabling thousands of documents to instantly enter into the public domain. The elimination of crown copyright would not only facilitate access, but also spur new commercial innovation as businesses follow the U.S. model of providing new services on top of freely available government data....
PS: At least three times before (one, two, three), Geist has called on Canada to mandate OA for publicly-funded research.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/11/2006 09:19:00 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.
