Two years ago, we launched our Free Our Data campaign on an act of faith. We knew that making the government's information available freely - and for free - for re-use by individuals, charities, academics and entrepreneurs was the right thing to do. What we did not know was precisely how much richer Britain could be as a result.
Last week, an authoritative independent economic study, commissioned by the government and published along with the Budget, answered that question. Looking at the arms of government most dependent on selling data and taking conservative and pessimistic scenarios throughout, the study - Models of Public Sector Information via Trading Funds - concludes that the benefits of giving government data away outweigh the loss of income from licence fees from the current practice of "cost recovery" by more than £160m for the largest six "trading funds" alone....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/21/2008 11:38:00 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.
