Note that I'm not calling this open access. Here's a statement from the project web site: "A participating journal gives NLM permanent rights to archive the scanned material and make it freely available to the public through PMC, subject to normal 'fair use' provisions of copyright law [emphasis added]. As with existing content in PMC, copyright for the scanned material remains with the publisher or with individual authors, as applicable." As I read this, users must ask the copyright holder's permission if they want to copy an entire article e.g. to print, share with a colleague, hand out to a class, or post online. If true, this is a rare case of removing price barriers but not permission barriers to a body of literature. Open access removes both. (Can anyone clarify the user rights to this literature? Is it just fair use or is it closer to open access? I'm trying to find out, but would appreciate any help.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/06/2003 05:46:00 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.
