In a breakthrough applauded today by the international Group on Earth Observations, scientists and decision-makers will soon have unrestricted global access at no charge to the USGS Landsat archive, the world's most extensive collection of continuously-acquired land imagery. By the end of this year, the full collection will, for the first time, be freely available online to users around the globe under a policy initiated by U.S. Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne.
Prof. José Achache, Director of the GEO Secretariat, said, "...The wide availability of images from Landsat and other Earth-observation satellites will be crucial for both developing and developed countries, especially as the world's increasing population deals with the effects of climate change and the limitations of water, petroleum and other vital resources."
Some 300 officials from nearly 80 GEO member governments and organizations are attending the GEO-V plenary meeting in Bucharest, Romania, this week. U.S. participation in GEO (USGEO) includes 14 Federal agencies and two White House offices.
USGS Director Mark Myers, who leads the U.S. delegation to GEO, stated, "By opening its entire archive of Landsat data for free electronic access, the USGS seeks to promote a common global understanding of land conditions - historical and contemporary - for users worldwide. This new policy supports a central GEO goal: to promote the distribution of Earth observation data to any scientist, analyst, or citizen who can use this information to better understand the nature of our world." ...
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/20/2008 02:29:00 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.
