We believe that a shift towards the provision of online rather than physical
access is appropriate. However, customer expectations of what is
possible with online content are limited only by the capabilities of the
technology, and not by realistic business considerations; at the extreme,
every UK citizen might expect free online access, and unhindered re-use,
at home or at work to everything in the Library’s collection, which would
obviously destroy the market for publishers....
We welcome the Library’s intention to play a more active role with regard
to the collection of primary research data. Publishers believe that primary
research data should, wherever possible, be made freely available for
other researchers to build upon. However, the creation of sometimes
very sophisticated databases to enable organisation, retrieval and
manipulation of data is expensive, and these (though not the facts they
contain) are and should remain protected by copyright....
We absolutely reject, however, the Library’s view (see footnote 3, Page 3)
that digitised full-text resources should be considered in the same light as
research data. They are not the same – both authors and publishers may
still have rights in these resources, which must be respected....Where such
digitisation has been funded from an external or internal source, the
content may be made freely available; when it has not, the publisher has
every right to recoup its investment....In particular, we would very strongly urge that re-digitisation
should not take place with the intention of providing a free alternative to a product that is being sold in order to recoup the cost of digitisation; this
is not an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money....
We remain to be convinced that institutional repositories will ever be
significantly populated, even with funder and institutional mandates (see,
for example, the recent study of the obstacles to deposit by NIH-funded
authors3). However, we do anticipate that subject-based repositories at
least will become increasingly significant.
To date, publishers’ policies with regard to author self-archiving have been
remarkably relaxed. However, some journals have now reached the
situation where all or most of their content is available in a single subject-based
repository, and this is giving rise to some concern. Those
publishers whose journals are affected are noticing a drop (in some cases,
to an alarming extent) in usage on their own sites; publishers have also
noticed an impact on subscriptions if they make their own content freely
available too quickly....Thus, many are modifying their self-archiving policies, often
introducing an embargo period before which author deposits are not
permitted....
Thus we would urge the Library to exercise caution in its involvement with
those repositories which replicate the content of journals; we are
particularly concerned to hear of its involvement with the UK PubMed
repository, since the Wellcome Trust has publicly stated that it expects
and indeed welcomes damage to existing subscription journals. We would
be deeply concerned if the Library were seen to be promoting the use of
free but potentially inferior versions of published content.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/25/2006 09:23:00 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.
