SPARC Europe (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), a leading organization of European research libraries, calls for wide support for the proposed policy released by Research Councils UK (RCUK), the main public investor in fundamental research in the UK. The policy, announced in June, requires Research Council grantees to deposit the resulting research reports into openly accessible repositories in order to speed and widen dissemination. David Prosser, Director of SPARC Europe, commented – 'We are currently in the position where UK researchers cannot get easy access to all the work of their peers, despite the vast majority of it being published online. So, while the UK Government has greatly increased research spending, to £2.4B for the Research Councils, the return on this investment is not maximized. If implemented, the RCUK policy would rectify this.'...SPARC Europe encourages submission of favourable comments that support the draft during the public comment period set to end August 31st....The academic libraries represented by SPARC Europe look forward to the challenge of working with their academics, the Research Councils, and publishers to maximize research impact by implementing the policy. 'Many of our members, especially in the UK, already have great experience with running institutional repositories and there is a strong commitment to further develop these repositories as research tools,' said David Prosser. 'Ensuring access to high-quality, peer-reviewed research is one of the central remits of the library and the new policy will enable greater access to a wider range of research, so benefiting researchers, students, and society in general.'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/14/2005 01:40:00 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.
