The Public Library of Science has issued a response (July 22) to the UK report, going beyond its press release (July 19) about the report. Excerpt from the new response: "The report released by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee represents an important step forward in the global movement for open access to scientific and medical literature. The Committee outlines a plan to store the entire 'published output' from UK institutions of higher education such that 'it can be read, free of charge, online' -- a watershed recommendation for its recognition that open access to government-funded scientific works is both desirable and achievable....It is worth noting that an Appropriations Committee of the United States House of Representatives recently passed a provision that would provide free access to works funded by the National Institutes of Health by a slightly different mechanism -- their mandatory deposition in PubMed Central, a single, centralized, free-to-use archive managed by the National Library of Medicine. While a centralized repository may offer several technological advantages over dispersed, locally managed repositories, at present, we are confident that any concerted effort by governments to make the results of publicly funded research freely available will ultimately have profound benefits for the general public, for scientists, and for science itself. The House of Commons report also acknowledges that open access publishing is 'a phenomenon that has already arrived' and addresses a number of common criticisms of the open access model....On virtually all of these points, the Committee concludes that the various practices and policies of open-access publishers like PLoS are preferable to the practices and policies of more restrictive publishers."
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/23/2004 02:27:00 PM.
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.
