First, some very good news. Civil servants revealed last week that the British government has begun work on a system to make all the geospatial data it holds on the natural environment available for free inspection and re-use. Now the bad news. In this context, "free" means we will still have to pay to download much key data, especially if it is to be published or otherwise used commercially.
The proposed "national geoportal" would create a single point of entry on the web to data held by public bodies such as local councils, Ordnance Survey (OS), the British Geological Survey and the Environment Agency. It is being considered as Britain's contribution to a Europe-wide geospatial data infrastructure to be created by 2019 under the EU Inspire Directive. ....
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 5/29/2008 07:09:00 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.
