The Italian Alliance Against Cancer (Alleanza contro il cancro, or ACC) has purchased institutional memberships in BioMed Central for all nine Italian oncology institutes in the alliance. From the BMC press release: "The ACC decision is an important one for BioMed Central - bringing the number of Italian institutional members to 19. ACC institutions employ over 1200 physicians, and produces more than 1350 articles a year published in domestic and international scientific journals. BioMed Central is optimistic that many of these articles will now be published in it's Open Access journals - making the research immediately and freely available for anyone to use, reuse or redistribute." (PS: To me, this is also important as another sign that groups focused on disease eradication and patient advocacy see how OA serves their mission. It's not just for universities or governments acting on behalf of universities.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/18/2004 01:49:00 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.
