Richard Wray, Academics blame VAT for holding back internet publishing, The Guardian, April 22, 2004. Excerpt: "Lynne Brindley, the chief executive of the British Library, told a committee of MPs investigating the scientific publications market that the 17.5% tax [applied to online journals but not to print journals] was hampering the move towards the internet-based publishing of research....Frederick Friend, the director of scholarly communication at University College, London and a member of the joint information systems committee, defended the open access movement, saying 'any publicly funded research...the articles published through that research should be freely accessible over the internet.'...Select committee member Evan Harris, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, raised concerns that because under open access it is the author who pays for publication, standards may slip. But James Crabbe, head of the animal and microbial sciences school at the University of Reading and a self-styled convert to open access, hit back. He said: 'If that happened, nobody would publish in that journal....It only takes one bad paper in a journal for that journal to get a bad reputation.' "
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/22/2004 09:15:00 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.
