Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Monday, February 26, 2007

OA to more public data in the UK

The Manchester Information and Associated Services (MIMAS) has received an £8.4 million grant from the UK's Economic & Social Research Council to provide OA to government information.  From today's press release:

The award by the Economic and Social Research Council will renew the services which are free of charge for researchers and students until 2012....

The billions of data items managed by the School of Social Sciences and Manchester Information and Associated Services (MIMAS) give researchers access to the census and many national household surveys for free.

They are also a key source for data held by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) among others....

The new funding includes:

  • £2.01 million for census data.
  • £4.39 million for national and international economic and social data.
  • £2 million for internet and computer related social science data...

"What makes this significant is that whereas many researchers have paid for this sort of information, our work enables them to access it for free....The data is free at the end point of use and chimes with the Guardian's free our data campaign....The fact that it is freely available encourages budding researchers to come forward from many countries across the world."