Google à la française, The Economist, March 31, 2005. An unsigned story. Jacques Chirac wants to launch a search engine for French culture, not just digitize French books. Excerpt: 'Why not let Google do the job? Its French version is used for 74% of internet searches in France. The answer is the vulgar criteria it uses to rank results. "I do not believe", wrote Mr Donnedieu de Vabres [French Minister of Culture] in Le Monde, "that the only key to access our culture should be the automatic ranking by popularity, which has been behind Google's success."...The flaws in the French plan are obvious. If popularity cannot arbitrate, what will? Mr Jeanneney wants a "committee of experts". He appears to be serious, though the supply of French-speaking experts, or experts speaking any language for that matter, would seem to be insufficient.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/03/2005 09:38:00 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.
