Daniel Clery and Jocelyn Kaiser, Two Plugs for Open Access, Science, July 20, 2004 (accessible only to subscribers). Excerpt: "The nascent 'open-access' publishing movement got two high-profile endorsements this week. After a 7-month investigation, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee urges that papers produced by publicly funded research be put in free repositories soon after publication. And in a surprise move, a U.S. House committee has recommended that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) post its grantees' papers on a free Internet site. Scientific societies and for-profit publishers were stunned by the language, which they say would drive traditional journals out of business....A coalition of libraries and open-access publishers that pushed for the language says it does not require scientists to publish in open-access journals--just that their final manuscripts be made public. But scientific societies say subscriptions would dry up if essentially the same material were available immediately for free on the Web. The Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology points out that many journals already make full-text research articles freely available within 6 months or a year (the policy of Science). As the appropriations bill heads for a possible House vote this week, Representative Ernest J. Istook Jr. (R-OK), who wrote the language, and House Labor/HHS subcommittee chair Ralph Regula (R-OH) are preparing to issue a statement on the House floor that would modify the directive. It would say that the intent is for NIH to "bring all the stakeholders to the table to come up with a model" to improve public access, says Istook's spokesperson." (PS: The nascent open-access movement...?)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/21/2004 10:49:00 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.
