Re: Lord Sainsbury on the RCUK OA Proposal: Drubbing Peter to Pox Paul

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Sun, 12 Nov 2006 18:37:58 +0000

    Pertinent Prior AmSci Topic Threads:
    "Lord Sainsbury on the RCUK OA Proposal: Drubbing Peter to Pox Paul
    (began: Nov 2004)
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4131.html
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#4152
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4319.html
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4348.html
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4907.html
    http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/4908.html

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    The following is from Peter Suber's Open Access News, 12 Nov 2006:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_11_12_fosblogarchive.html#116335233844648919

    OBSTACLE TO STRONG OA POLICY IN THE UK STEPS DOWN

    On Friday, Lord David Sainsbury stepped down from his position as
    UK science minister. However we may hear from him on UK science
    policy one more time before he leaves the public stage:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/funding/story/0,,1945280,00.html
http://www.dti.gov.uk/pressroom/news/page35238.html

    Lord Sainsbury has agreed to carry out a review of science and
    innovation policies across government - taking a forward look at
    what needs to be done to ensure the UK's success in wealth creation
    and scientific policy-making. He will report to the Chancellor and
    the Secretaries of State at DTI and the Department for Education
    and Skills.

    Sainsbury has been the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for
    Science and Innovation in the Department of Trade and Industry since
    July 1998. (Thanks to Matt Cockerill.)

    More news coverage.
http://news.google.com/news?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLJ,GGLJ:2006-42,GGLJ:en&q=sainsbury&oe=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wn

    Comments.

   1. David Sainsbury is the UK official most responsible for rejecting
   the OA recommendations (July 2004) of the House of Commons Science
   and Technology Committee.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/39903.htm
   Those recommendations were based on
   extensive fact-finding and in their basic terms have been reaffirmed
   and adopted by just about every other government since then that has
   closely examined the same issues.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399ii.pdf
   2. Thanks to a document unearthed by David Prosser through the
   UK Freedom of Information Act, we know that during the time when
   Sainsbury was supposed to be evaluating the OA recommendations, he
   met with OA opponents roughly twice as often as with OA proponents,
   and met with the Reed Elsevier CEO three times more often than any
   other stakeholder.
https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/2612.html
   3. As a result of Sainsbury's partiality, strong OA policy in the
   UK was delayed by about two years --the time between the House of
   Commons recommendations (July 2004) and the adoption of the RCUK
   policy (June 2006). And for the record, we should note that the RCUK
   could adopt its strong OA policy only because it was independent
   of Sainsbury's authority, as Sainsbury himself noted in March 2005
   testimony before the Science and Technology Committee (scroll to
   Questions 20 and following).
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmsctech/uc250-i/uc25002.htm
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/access/2006statement.pdf

   Permanent link to Peter Suber's OA News post:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2006_11_12_fosblogarchive.html#116335233844648919
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Perhaps a grocer was not the best equipped to appreciate the difference
between research and retail...

Bravo to 5 of the 8 UK Research Councils for honouring the difference
just the same! Let's hope the US will have the good sense to do
likewise with the FRPAA, and Europe, with EC Recommendation A1.
http://cornyn.senate.gov/doc_archive/05-02-2006_COE06461_xml.pdf
http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/science-society/pdf/scientific-publication-study_en.pdf

Stevan Harnad
Received on Tue Nov 14 2006 - 02:26:26 GMT

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