Ben Winkley, UK Govt "Unconvinced" On Open Access To Science Research, Wall Street Journal, November 8, 2004. Excerpt: 'The U.K. government said Monday it isn't convinced by a proposal to allow open access to scientific research on the Internet. The scheme, put forward in a Parliamentary Committee report entitled 'Scientific Publications: Free for All?', promotes free and unrestricted online access to science, technology and medical research. Under the system, authors pay for their articles to be published, but their research is then made available free of charge over the Internet. Currently, publishers pay authors for rights to their research, then charge subscriptions for journals." (PS: Two mistakes in a very short space: First, the proposal was for OA archiving, not publication in author-pays OA journals. Second, scholarly journals do not pay authors for their articles, and haven't done so since the first journals were launched in 1665. This is a key part of the argument for open access.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/12/2004 08:49:00 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.
