I was not surprised by the UK Government's response. I was always sceptical
about the Select C'tee's report's likely impact. Governments have a long
and dishonourable history of ignoring Select Committees! Looking at it from
a Government point of view, why on earth should it get interested in a (to
the Government) small market full of special pleading special interest
groups that appears on the surface to be well served by commercial players?
Having said that, what annoys me is that the Government conflates OA
journals with OA repositories and I do think it needs educating on that
matter. It would have been so much better if the Gov't had encouraged
Universities and the like to set repositories up and encouraged funding
agencies to make OA agencies to make OA *provision* (by EITHER (1)
publishing the article in an OA journal OR by (2) publishing it in a
non-OA journal and self-archiving it in an OA repository) a condition
of grant.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399we151.htm
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/UKSTC.htm
Professor Charles Oppenheim
Department of Information Science
Loughborough University
Loughborough
Leics LE11 3TU
Tel 01509-223065
Fax 01509-223053
e mail C.Oppenheim_at_lboro.ac.uk
Received on Fri Nov 12 2004 - 15:48:37 GMT