Jeremy Warner, Outlook: Reed Elsevier, The Independent, July 20, 2004. Excerpt: "With more than 35 per cent of the global market for scientific publishing in UK hands (besides Reed Elsevier, there's Taylor & Francis and Blackwell Publishing), Britain doesn't so much lead this industry as dominate it. There is no other global industry where this is the case. You might have thought the body politic would be careful to nurture and encourage such an outstanding British success story. Regrettably, that's not always the case. Dr Ian Gibson, chairman of the Commons Science and Technology Committee, has long had a bee in his bonnet about scientific publishing, which he seems to think profits excessively at the British taxpayer's expense, and for choice he would have mandated a complete upheaval in the way the industry operates by moving it from a subscriber pays basis on to an author pays, open access model. Fortunately his bark has turned out to be worse than his bite....Though the report is generous in its support for the open access model, it stops well short of recommending mandatory adoption. Rather its tone is that the market should decide." (PS: This is not how I read the report. It wouldn't mandate OA through journals, but it would mandate OA through institutional repositories. Like many others, Warner confuses OA through journals with OA itself.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/20/2004 09:42:00 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.
