Dan Hunter of the Wharton School has written an open letter to the California Law Review, protesting its policy that articles must be removed from preprint exchanges and eprint archives once they are published in the CLR. Excerpt: "Second, there is the issue of your capture by the commercial providers. On the face of it, your decision to remove my drafts cannot help but appear to be motivated by the interests of the commercial online database providers. Even if you are happy acting as the stalking horse of these commercial interests, the practical effect of your actions is to remove public access to information. Thanks to you, if people want access to my ideas then they can pay Westlaw or Lexis or Hein monopoly rents to get it. This was literally your suggestion in your first email message. You said that my articles were "available through a number of online subscriber services, including Westlaw, Lexis, and Hein Online, and we encourage you to direct interested readers to these services." You'll have to forgive me if I think that this is the single most appalling statement I have ever heard from a law student. [PS: Law reviews have student editors.] You may be happy with the idea that the general public cannot access my ideas without paying for them, but I think it is outrageous." (Thanks to Harlan Onsrud.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/20/2003 12:28:00 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.
