...The new U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) mandatory policy might be transitional. Open access to articles between six (in the case of Wellcome Trust funded research) and twelve (NIH) months after publication is, in theory, completely useless, at least in some fields in which science advances incredibly rapidly. In practice, no scientist will wish to wait so long to read an article that may help advance his or her research. These policies may thus be regarded as too bland and aimed mainly at satisfying publishers. If the philosophy of open access is immediate access, why wait six or twelve months? If the overall model eventually proves successful, the natural evolution of these mandatory policies should be towards simultaneous free availability of original research in both the journal and the public repository. This natural evolution should also include the authors’ keeping the copyright and being able to reuse their work as many times as they wish....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 4/07/2009 10:06:00 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.
