Bob Roehr, NIH moves towards open access, BMJ, September 11, 2004. Excerpt: "The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has taken the first step to requiring that all published papers that are based on research it supports financially will be made freely available to the public....The move to open access has been building for some time in the United States. Key dates include the launching of PubMed Central in February 2000 under the aegis of the then director of the NIH, Harold Varmus, and the creation of the electronic publisher the Public Library of Science. The library received a huge boost when the Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced that it would underwrite any fees associated with publishing the work of their supported researchers in Public Library of Science. In December 2002 the Council of Public Representatives, an advisory body to the director of the NIH, recommended that the NIH should do the same. It subsequently clarified that grant funds could be used for this purpose." (Thanks to Charles W. Bailey, Jr.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/20/2004 08:01:00 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.
