Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Tuesday, December 15, 2009

French information industry calls for caution on OA

Groupement Français de l'Industrie de l'Information (French Association of Electronic Information Industry), Recommendations of the GFII Working Group on Open Access, December 4, 2009. (Also available in French.)

The GFII Working Group includes representatives from the main economic stakeholders involved in Open Access: research institutes, publishers, aggregators, internet services, subscription agents, academic libraries, etc.

This statement summarizes the Group recommendations. ...

4. The Group warns about risks for the ecology of scholarly information of posting mandates for public access, without reasonable embargo periods negotiated with the relevant stakeholders and without discipline by discipline approaches.

5. The Group recommends setting up a French language, shared, standardized and transparent information site to display each publisher’s policy with regard to Open Access repositories. Publishers should be encouraged to have a clear communication with their authors.

6. Open archives managers should aim to comply with publishers’ posting policies. Automatic systems (directly asking authors for a copy of their articles) set up by managers of repositories could be damaging to current business models and disrupt relationships between stakeholders. ...

9. The Working Group calls for a permanent committee designed for consultations, studies and recommendations on these subjects. This body, working at the national level, would bring together all stakeholders: government, publishers, journals editors, research funders, research institutes, universities, library managers, etc. ...