From a Conservation Commons listserv post today by Tom Hammond (thanks to Mick Wilson):
...Downloads of [Canada's] NTDB [National Topographic Data Base] data during the government fiscal year ending in 2007, when a fee for use policy was still in place, numbered under 100,000. A change of policy was enacted during the current fiscal year making the NTDB an open access resource [at GeoGratis] – during which downloads jumped by a magnitude of 54 to well over 5 million....
The jump in downloads occurred between April 1, 2007, when the OA policy took effect, and March 31, 2008.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/22/2008 02:11:00 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.
