Saturday, November 04, 2006

October 2006: the month of the mandate!

The November issue of the SPARC Open Access Newsletter is online.

The story of the month: mandates! As Peter Suber puts it: We've never had a month like October 2006. Depending on how you count, more OA mandates came into being in October 2006 than in all previous months combined. I count six adopted mandates, two proposed mandates, two adopted near-mandates, and one adopted mandate limited to data. That comes to eleven actions in five countries (UK, Austria, Canada, the US, and China).

Wow!

Peter also begins to explore the phenomenon of the no-fee open access journal. An interesting finding of the Kaufmann-Wills report was that fewer of half of open access journals charge processing fees; in fact, OA journals are less likely to charge fees than subscription-based journals.

This post reflects my personal opinion only and does not represent the opinions or policy of the BC Electronic Library Network or the Simon Fraser University Library.

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