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

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

     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