Academics and society publishers have clashed over a potential mandate by the Research Council UK (RCUK) in support of institutional repositories. Senior academics, including web inventor Sir Tim-Berners Lee, have written an open letter to RCUK denying claims made by society publishers that the mandate will kill of journal publishing....The open letter to the RCUK was signed by Sir Berners-Lee, open access advocate Professor Stevan Harnad and academics from the University of Cambridge, Loughborough, Sheffield and Strathyclyde....ALPSPs members are concerned that if the RCUK passes its mandate subscriptions to journals published by small publishers and societies will dry up. "Institutional repositories of non-organised papers will draw away subscriptions because the articles are easier to find due to Google Scholar and because budgets are dropping," [ALPSP Chief Executive Sally Morris] said....Sir Tim and his fellow academics refute the claims made by ALPSPs, stating that ALPSPs claims that the "mandate would lead to the financial failure of scholarly journals" is "unsubstantiated" and that "all objective evidence is precisely contrary to this dire prediction". Morris said she has a meeting with RCUK to discuss the mandate, where she will ask for a delay in implementation so that publishers and societies can " evaluate what potential there is for damage." The academics have called on RCUK to "implement its immediate self archiving mandate without delay".
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/31/2005 08:29:00 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.
