James Fallows, The Twilight of the Information Middlemen, New York Times, May 16, 2004 (free registration required). One of the better articles putting the OA movement in a larger perspective. Excerpt (after discussing PLoS): "A similar battle involves, of all things, weather. In the pre-Internet era, the National Weather Service agreed with its middlemen, the commercial weather services, not to compete with them in certain products. Now, the Internet makes the vast range of the weather service's data available to anyone. In a recent study called Fair Weather, the National Research Council urged that the service seize this new technological opportunity so that farmers, aviators, city officials and others affected by weather can have free access to information their tax dollars have paid for. Commercial companies, most notably AccuWeather, have been lobbying Congress for rules that would force the National Weather Service to close or restrict some of the excellent free sites it has already opened. No matter how that battle turns out, the public will win the longer war. The Internet's impact on the value of information may still be in flux, but its long-term impact on middlemen is clear." (PS: Fallows quotes me accurately. But just before he quotes me, he writes that OA has met with "resistance from journals and authors who traditionally have held copyrights." I did not make this claim about authors.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 5/16/2004 07:44:00 AM.
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.
