The UK Ordnance Survey, or government mapping agency, is using public funds to pay a lobbying firm to push back against mounting public pressure to make its publicly-funded data OA.
For details, see two articles by Michael Cross in The Guardian (August 21 and August 28) and two blog posts by the Free Our Data campaign, in which Cross is a leader (one and two, both from August 28).
For background, see our (many) past posts on the Free Our Data campaign to free up the data gathered by the Ordnance Survey.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/30/2008 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.