On November 9, the Financial Times published an unsigned editorial on open access. Excerpt: 'Although the angry MPs may have gone too far in accusing the Department of Trade and Industry of kow-towing to the publishing lobby at the expense of British science, the government should not have taken such a negative stance. A more measured response would have been to adopt some of the committee's suggestions for establishing Britain as a test-bed for open access journals, with publishing and peer review costs met ultimately by the research funding agencies, while making clear that there would be no precipitate move away from the existing system....The main reason for considering a change now is that computer and communications technology make it possible, for the first time, to disseminate research results far beyond the traditional purchasers of scientific journals, such as university libraries. There is a powerful ideological argument that the public, having funded the research in the first place, should not have to pay again to see the results....Although the lukewarm attitude of the government will disappoint open access activists, the publishing industry must recognise the growing international pressure for fundamental change. The Wellcome Trust is determined to introduce open access publishing through the £400m a year it spends on biomedical research and there are powerful voices for reform in the US and elsewhere in Europe. A fair compromise might be to give journals six months exclusivity and then guarantee free public access." (Thanks to Ray English.)
(PS: This is welcome support. However, like the government response itself, it focuses on OA journals, a secondary issue in the original committee report, and ignores OA archiving, the primary recommendation of the report.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/11/2004 11:20:00 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.
