JANUARY High - Andrew Gowers’ IP review Dry - European Library at risk of failure...
FEBRUARY High - MIT puts all courses online Dry - TFPL to jettison recruitment arm
Info pros were shocked to learn that major publishing companies including Elsevier and John Wiley were taking “public relations” advice on how to counter open access from Eric Dezenhall, a US PR agent famed for defending those not worthy of a defence in the public eye. Dezenhall was recruited to help fight a proposed change to the medical funding bill travelling through the US Senate that would place US federally funded research with the state-funded PubMed Central open access depository within 12 months. Dezenhall advised worried scientific publishers fearing a drop in revenue to found a campaign group to persuade the Senate that the move would destroy peer review and the validity of science.
MARCH High - E-book readers Dry - Brussels Declaration against OA....
APRIL High - Strategic e-Content Alliance Dry - Peer review under review
Government attitudes towards information were revealed in April when MPs from the two main parties showed their true shared colours in their disregard for public access to information about how the country is governed....
MAY High - Manchester Council relaunches web presence Dry - BvD sell-off rumours resurface....
JUNE High - National Archives launches wiki Dry - FoI Act under attack....
JULY/AUGUST High - Malaria Journal spreads Dry - Leading academic casts doubt on impact factors....
SEPTEMBER High - National Archives takes over government info management Dry - RAE demands CD-ROMs for the internet age
The Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (PRISM) launched a campaign attacking open access publishing. Funded by the Association of American Publishers (AAP), itself financed by member companies such as Elsevier and Wiley, PRISM claimed that open access was creating “junk science” that could not be trusted. The open access and scientific communities swung into action, demonstrating that rigorous peer review policies are in place at open access journals, just as they are in paid-for publications....
OCTOBER High - BSI introduces standards for enterprise content management Dry - AAP and PRISM
Peer review continued to dominate debate as scientists and authors turned against the PRISM campaign, while the British Academy added a new dimension to the debate, calling for training in peer review....
NOVEMBER High - BL Newspaper Archive goes live Dry - WSJ move forces FT to go free....
[T]he US Senate ignored the hyperbole of PRISM and voted in favour of the NIH bill, endorsing open access within 12 months for federally funded research. But the world’s most powerful man, George W Bush, vetoed the bill, claiming the Senate was acting like a kid with a new credit card.
DECEMBER High - Amazon launches Kindle Dry - Bush bombs OA....
PS: It looks like the December entry went to the printer before the big news. After Bush vetoed of the first version of the bill to mandate OA at the NIH, on November 13, Congress passed another on December 19, and Bush signed it on December 26.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/11/2008 11:29:00 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.
