Chuck McCutcheon, Demand for Public Information Is Surging, Newhouse News Service, March 8, 2005. A good general survey on secrecy and public access to U.S. government information. Excerpt: 'Some activists say the Bush administration is not entirely to blame for limiting access. They note that members of Congress have blocked the public from easily obtaining background reports from the Congressional Research Service, an arm of the Library of the Congress. House Administration Committee Chairman Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and other lawmakers who favor restricting availability of the reports maintain that while the service is publicly financed, its mission is to provide information to Congress and not the public. They say making all reports public could inhibit lawmakers who want to learn more about sensitive topics. Anti-secrecy activists reject such arguments. "The dominant trend in the government is to increase controls on what had previously been public information," said Aftergood, who includes links to Congressional Research Service reports in Secrecy News. "That's a troubling trend, because what it does is lower people's expectations for what kind of information they can obtain. We'd like to raise people's expectations."'
Posted by
Peter Suber at 3/08/2005 09:15:00 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.
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.
