OA mandates took effect today at four of the Research Councils UK: the Biotechnology & Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), the Medical Research Council (MRC), and the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).
Last year on this date, the Wellcome Trust implemented its OA mandate for all new Wellcome research grants. Today the WT extended the policy from new grants to all outstanding grants, no matter how long ago they were awarded.
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.
