Yesterday 10 major science organizations issued a joint statement (in German) explaining the rudiments of OA and reaffirming that OA does not violate copyright or interfere with the freedom of publication. Read it in German or Google's English.
The joint statement is an answer to the objections and misunderstandings of the Heidelberg Appeal, a sign-on petition against Google Books and OA launched earlier this week. The petition's criticism of OA is based on several mistakes, including the assumption that OA policies apply to royalty-producing works like novels and that OA expropriates the intellectual property of authors or publishers, rather than resting on the consent of authors or publishers.
The 10 science organizations are:
Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung
Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst
Fraunhofer Gesellschaft
Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren (which organized the joint statement)
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.
