UK select committee response to government on OA

[Liblicense-L Listowner <liblicen@pantheon.yale.edu>]

Of possible interest.
____________________________

Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2005 09:20:48 -0800
From: george@library.caltech.edu
To: E-Journals in Libraries Discussion <ARL-EJOURNAL@arl.org>
Resent-Subject: UK select committee response to government on OA

Forwarding from Open Access News.� -- George � The UK House of Commons
Science and Technology Committee has issued its formal response (dated
January 26, released February 1) to the government's response (November 8,
2004) to the committee's report (July 20, 2004) on open access and STM
publishing. Excerpt: 'It is clear to us that, in the Government Response,
DTI has sought to neutralise some of views put forward by the Joint
Information Systems Committee and other organisations and
departments....Rather than engaging in the complex issues posed by the
Committee's Report, the Government has clearly decided against the
author-pays model ahead of the further investigation that it was urged to
pursue. This approach prejudges the issue....Following completion of the
European Commission study into the market for scientific publications, to
which the OFT response refers, we request that the Director General of
Fair Trading agrees to write again to the Committee setting out the
actions he proposes to take on the basis of the Commission's findings and
the concerns expressed in our Report....We recommend that the Government
reconsider its position on this important issue in the light of the other
responses to our Report published here; the forthcoming RCUK policy on the
publication of, and access to, research outputs; and in view of the
support for the Committee's stance from the Wellcome Trust, an important
research funder. In this context, we do not believe that Government should
continue to refuse to provide the modest funds necessary to make
institutional repositories workable, and to allow the experimentation
necessary to properly test the feasibility of the author-pays publishing
model.'

Posted by Peter Suber to Open Access News at 2/1/2005 10:33:58 AM 

####