Much of the Free Our Data debate, held last month in London with the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, focused on Ordnance Survey. Its chief executive, Vanessa Lawrence, defended its model of raising revenues from customers rather than the taxpayer - although with 47% of OS's revenue coming from the public sector, taxpayers often are the customers....
However, one attendee questioned the willingness of organisations that enjoy direct tax-raising powers, with no financial dependence on selling data, to free our data - local authorities.
Benjamin Bennetts, managing director of the not-for-profit company Land Management Information Service (LaMIS), told the debate that his business has enormous difficulties extracting data from local authorities, adding that he sees "absolutely no consistency [and] no means for anyone to challenge a decision not to release data"....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/24/2006 08:38:00 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.
