Kevin Davies, UK MPs Debate Open Access, Bio-IT World, July 27, 2004. Excerpt: "The report – 'Scientific Publications: Free for All?' authored by British Members of Parliament and published earlier this week – concludes that research findings should be made freely available to fellow researchers and the public alike. The MPs criticized the traditional scientific publishing model, in which libraries and individuals are forced to absorb steeply rising subscription costs....The committee endorsed the alternative 'open access' model, championed by journals such as PLoS Biology and the Journal of Clinical Investigation, which requires authors to cover the costs of publishing, but in return makes the text of the published papers fully and freely available online....The UK report urges British universities to establish a network of computerized 'institutional repositories,' which would store all UK-based research papers." (Thanks to Gary Price.) (PS: Actually the report does the reverse. It would mandate institutional repositories and encourage experimentation with OA journals funded by processing fees paid by authors or their sponsors.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/28/2004 02:54:00 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.
