[this article reminds me of the http://www.architexturez.com and
http://www.architexturez.net initiatives. making research texts
available to the public and other researchers, in the case below, for
the sciences. what is interesting is that the project below would be
taking on the journals which monopolize free information. question is,
in most US universities, they own whatever is produced during time
spent at their facilities, so could any research ever be free and open?]
Thursday, 14 February, 2002, 00:03 GMT
Boost for research paper access
Campaigners want free access to research results
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1818000/1818652.stm
By BBC News Online's Ivan Noble Plans to extend free access to
scientific and academic research papers have received a boost with
the announcement of a $3m grant from financier and philanthropist
George Soros' Open Society Institute.
The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which
scholars give to the world without expectation of payment
Budapest Open Access Initiative Open access advocate Professor Stevan
Harnad of the University of Southampton, UK, says the money could
make it easier for academics wanting to set up their own alternatives
to commercially run journals.
"The vast potential benefits of open access to research and
researchers are already there... but the subsidy lowers the entry
barriers for would-be open-access initiatives," he said.
Critics of commercial journals say their subscription charges hamper
research at institutes and in countries where research budgets are
tight.
They say that researchers write and review papers for free, so the
journals should not charge to read them.
"They don't want to get paid, what they want is that other
researchers should read and use their work," Professor Harnad told
BBC News Online.
"The fact that their literature is treated for trade is anathema," he said.
Budapest declaration
Some commercial journals have extended the amount of literature they
make available for free in response to a boycott campaign by
scientists calling themselves the Public Library of Science.
But journal publishers defend their charges as necessary to finance
their operations.
The new money for open alternatives comes as part of a new
declaration called the Budapest Open Access Initiative, signed by
dozens of institutions and hundreds of researchers.
They say they are not opposed to commercial journals, but want to see
an alternative system of free access journals and self-archiving set
up in parallel.
"The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which
scholars give to the world without expectation of payment," reads the
declaration.
It calls for "free availability on the public internet, permitting
any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link
to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass
them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose".
Seed money
Professor Harnad's colleagues Chris Gutteridge and Rob Tansley
developed a piece of software called Eprints, which, they hope, makes
the process of publishing easier and therefore cheaper.
He says the Soros money could be used to "seed" schemes where
academics will pay a small fee to have their papers reviewed but
users will pay nothing to read them.
"To start up and fill an institutional Eprint Archive costs less than
$10,000; to start up and fill an alternative journal costs less than
$50,000; so $3m can do a lot of good in three years," he says.
More important though than the money, he adds, is for there to be a
critical mass of research available from free archives online.
"It's a question of when the dominos start falling," he said.
(2002. fair-use, .edu)
http://www.architexturez.net initiatives. making research texts
available to the public and other researchers, in the case below, for
the sciences. what is interesting is that the project below would be
taking on the journals which monopolize free information. question is,
in most US universities, they own whatever is produced during time
spent at their facilities, so could any research ever be free and open?]
Thursday, 14 February, 2002, 00:03 GMT
Boost for research paper access
Campaigners want free access to research results
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1818000/1818652.stm
By BBC News Online's Ivan Noble Plans to extend free access to
scientific and academic research papers have received a boost with
the announcement of a $3m grant from financier and philanthropist
George Soros' Open Society Institute.
The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which
scholars give to the world without expectation of payment
Budapest Open Access Initiative Open access advocate Professor Stevan
Harnad of the University of Southampton, UK, says the money could
make it easier for academics wanting to set up their own alternatives
to commercially run journals.
"The vast potential benefits of open access to research and
researchers are already there... but the subsidy lowers the entry
barriers for would-be open-access initiatives," he said.
Critics of commercial journals say their subscription charges hamper
research at institutes and in countries where research budgets are
tight.
They say that researchers write and review papers for free, so the
journals should not charge to read them.
"They don't want to get paid, what they want is that other
researchers should read and use their work," Professor Harnad told
BBC News Online.
"The fact that their literature is treated for trade is anathema," he said.
Budapest declaration
Some commercial journals have extended the amount of literature they
make available for free in response to a boycott campaign by
scientists calling themselves the Public Library of Science.
But journal publishers defend their charges as necessary to finance
their operations.
The new money for open alternatives comes as part of a new
declaration called the Budapest Open Access Initiative, signed by
dozens of institutions and hundreds of researchers.
They say they are not opposed to commercial journals, but want to see
an alternative system of free access journals and self-archiving set
up in parallel.
"The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which
scholars give to the world without expectation of payment," reads the
declaration.
It calls for "free availability on the public internet, permitting
any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link
to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass
them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose".
Seed money
Professor Harnad's colleagues Chris Gutteridge and Rob Tansley
developed a piece of software called Eprints, which, they hope, makes
the process of publishing easier and therefore cheaper.
He says the Soros money could be used to "seed" schemes where
academics will pay a small fee to have their papers reviewed but
users will pay nothing to read them.
"To start up and fill an institutional Eprint Archive costs less than
$10,000; to start up and fill an alternative journal costs less than
$50,000; so $3m can do a lot of good in three years," he says.
More important though than the money, he adds, is for there to be a
critical mass of research available from free archives online.
"It's a question of when the dominos start falling," he said.
(2002. fair-use, .edu)