In most cases the sponsors are the taxpayers. Much of the world'research is funded by governments. It is only legitimate to expect that publicly funded research should be availble to the public for free. And sponsors such as the Wellcome Trust are great champions of open access, particularly open access archiving.
Unfortunately the Royal Society (today) is not a great supporter of open access as determined by the Berlin Declaration. For more about OA, please look up Peter Suber's blog. Arun > Subbiah Arunachalam wrote: > >>Physicists were among the first to adopt the culture of archiving. their >> central archive, arXiv, first set up at Los Alamos National Laboratory is >> now run from Cornell University. It is serving physicists around the >> world for the past 15 years. In our field, we do have an open access >> journal. But we need and deserve much more. >> >> > Well, the first with modern technology. The spirit has been around since > the Royal Society started, but sadly the spirit was suppressed by the > need to make money to continue research. Funding, funding, funding. > > "...ought to have their eyes in all parts, and to receive information > from every quarter of the earth, they ought to have a constant universal > intelligence: all discoveries should be brought to them: the Treasuries > of all former times should be laid open before them." --Sprat, History of > Royal Society, p.20 > > I think that this helps you with what you are saying, and is also worth > flashing around a bit.... after all, it was the Royal Society which > brought the West from alchemy to Science. It's strange how Western > Science and Western religion always seem to be at odds.... I digress. > > The real problem - the root problem here - appears to be who funds what, > and at what 'cost'. If the sponsors do not want Open Archives, and the > scientists and scholars aren't independantly wealthy, then we have a > problem. > > Perhaps the case we should be making is how sponsors can get a return on > investment for allowing Open Access. > > -- > Taran Rampersad > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > http://www.linuxgazette.com > http://www.a42.com > http://www.knowprose.com > http://www.easylum.net > > "Criticize by creating." � Michelangelo > > _______________________________________________ > DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide > To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message. > _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
