JISC had a joint stand at the conference exhibition with Dutch counterpart the SURF Foundation. The two organisations also came together for a session on Open Access Publishing. Dr Malcolm Read, JISC Executive Secretary and Leo Waaijers of SURF gave a brief update on their own organisations’ activities in this area.
Leo Waaijers spoke first about SURF’s repositories programme DARE and one of its outputs, the Cream of Science, which makes the research papers and articles of nearly 200 Dutch academics freely available. However, he said, while much was being done, there was still a lack of international awareness about the benefits of making research outputs freely available. But it is not only research outputs, but also doctoral theses, conference proceedings and other scholarly materials that could be made available in this way.
Dr Malcolm Read, speaking for JISC, said that the fruits of publicly-funded scientific research should be made publicly available through institutional repositories. There is a place for publishers to add value to research outputs, he said, but a balance needed to be established that gave greater control of research outputs to the authors who conducted the research and the institutions which funded them.
A debate followed in which the subjects of advocacy and communications, copyright, and digital literacy were prominent. A consensus emerged which suggested that while national and international organisations needed to take the lead, real change would only emerge once institutions themselves became convinced of the need to address this issue.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/05/2005 07:42:00 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.
