I suspect that Peter Suber had more than a small hand in this excellent,
spot-on overview, endorsement and recommendation to the RCUK, from the
Open Access Working Group (of which Peter is a member).
This is from Peter Suber's Open Access News (today):
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2005_08_28_fosblogarchive.html#a112566620063039785
The Open Access Working Group
http://www.arl.org/sparc/oa/oawg.html
has publicly released its August 23 comment
http://www.arl.org/sparc/oa/RCUK.html
on the draft RCUK policy.
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/access/index.asp
Excerpt:
"We believe that open-access research dissemination is an
indispensable part of the overall remedy to the serious problems
now facing the system of scholarly communication. Moreover,
open access is a necessary ingredient in any plan to fully
realize the social benefits of scientific advances. While these
advantages are important no matter the source of the funding,
it is particularly critical when the research is publicly funded
and the resulting output is a public good....Implementation of
[the draft] policy will result in taxpayers gaining immediate,
full and direct access to the research for which they have already
paid. Moreover, such a policy will increase the return on the
government's investment in this research; as a result of deposit
the research becomes more accessible, discoverable, sharable, and
for these reasons, more useful, than toll-access research....We
are particularly pleased to note that the Research Council's
policy requires grantees to deposit final published articles,
greatly enhancing the policy's chances for successfully achieving
these important goals and ensuring maximum participation....To
further ensure the success of this policy, we would suggest that
the Research Councils consider revising the section of the policy
that specifically relates to the timing of the deposit of research
materials. [The current language in paragraph 14.b] language
seems to allow publishers, in cases where they have become the
copyright-holder, to object to deposit or to demand long delays
or embargoes prior to deposit or public release. We encourage
the Research Councils to close this loophole before the final
draft is finished to ensure that deposit does indeed occur at
the desired point, at or around the time of publication. We note
that the draft policy exempts researchers from the requirement
to deposit their research in instances where they do not have
access to an institutional or disciplinary repository. We hope
that the Research Councils will implement strategies to encourage
the development of repositories in the U.K. in a manner that
makes deposit available to all researchers."
The OAWG members who signed this comment are the American Association
of Law Libraries (AALL), the American Library Association (ALA),
the Association of Academic Health Sciences Libraries (AAHSL), the
Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL), the Association
of Research Libraries (ARL), the Medical Library Association (MLA),
Public Knowledge (PK), and the Scholarly Publication and Academic
Resources Coalition (SPARC). I participated in the drafting of
this comment.
Posted by Peter Suber at 9/02/2005 08:54:00 AM.
Received on Fri Sep 02 2005 - 20:00:40 BST