Lila Guterman, British Parliamentary Panel Endorses Open Access to Scientific Literature, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 20, 2004 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: "The report comes just days after a U.S. Congressional committee recommended requiring free access to papers based on research financed by the National Institutes of Health (The Chronicle, July 19)....The report recommended that all British academic institutions establish online repositories for researchers' published papers. It also recommended that government agencies require all researchers they finance to place copies of their articles in the repositories. 'These articles will be free for anyone who has access to the Internet,' said Ian Gibson, a Labor Party member who is chairman of the Science and Technology Committee, in an interview....The report also suggested that the government require researchers to maintain copyright to their articles if they receive government money. Most scientific journals currently acquire the rights to the articles they publish....Michael Eisen, a co-founder of the Public Library of Science, called the committee's concerns [about the upfront funding model for OA journals] 'important things to be worried about' and said he was 'ecstatic" at the report's overall support for open access. 'The current system is so inefficient and so irrational and so needlessly denies people access to knowledge that these concerns are really just things to think about along the way to open access,' he said."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/20/2004 10:04:00 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.
