Rick Weiss, NIH Proposes Free Access For Public to Research Data, Washington Post, September 6, 2004. Excerpt: "The proposal, posted on the [NIH] Web site late Friday and subject to a 60-day public comment period, would mark a significant departure from current practice, in which the scientific journals that publish those results retain control over that information. Subscriptions to those journals can run into the thousands of dollars. Nonsubscribers wishing to get individual articles must typically pay about $30 each -- fees that can quickly add up for someone trying to learn about a newly diagnosed disease in the family....Whatever the outcome, both sides agree change is inevitable, given society's rising expectations of easy access to information from the Internet and the enormous interest in health -- a topic that NIH officials say accounts for about 40 percent of all Internet queries....In an interview Friday, Specter said that because of his concerns about the ramifications of open access, he would not add supportive language to the Senate appropriations bill. But he said that he generally likes the open-access principle and that he hopes a reasonable policy will emerge with public input in the next two months."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/06/2004 07:54:00 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.
