[BOAI] Academic Knowledge, Open Access and Democracy

[Peter Suber]

[Forwarding from Fay Bound Alberti at the Arcadia Fund.  --Peter Suber.]


‘Academic Knowledge, Open Access and Democracy’


The Arcadia Fund is petitioning the UK government for Open Access to
publicly funded academic research. The charity, which has provided extensive
funding for the conservation and dissemination of endangered materials
throughout the globe, has written an evidence based paper showing how OA is
compatible with the needs of universities in the current economic crisis, as
well as government’s desire to stimulate economic growth and social and
commercial innovation. Arcadia calls for Open Access (Gold or Green) to be
properly mandated and monitored so that publicly-funded research is freely
available to the tax-payer. This non-legislative measure will fulfil the
government’s commitment to transparency and openness, ensure that British
universities can compete in the changing European and global context,
provide greater return on investment for the funding councils and enable
fairer access to knowledge across society as a whole. Arcadia’s
recommendations are being supported and undersigned by many of the country’s
leading users, creators and distributors of academic knowledge.
Representatives from Arcadia are taking place at a round-table with
government on 17 March to discuss the issue of Open Access in some detail,
and the charity is collecting signatures until the end of March 2011.


For a copy of the Arcadia recommendations, see:
www.arcadiafund.org.uk/publications


To add your support, please email your full name, contact details and
affiliation to: Arcadia’s Head of Philanthropy and Grants Management,
fay.boundalberti at nyland.org.uk





Dr Fay Bound Alberti
Head of Philanthropy and Grants Management

*ARCADIA
*Sixth Floor
5 Young Street
London W8 5EH

Telephone: +44 20 7361 4907
Facsimile: +44 20 7361 4949
Mobile: +44 7715 699688
E-mail: fay.boundalberti at nyland.org.uk
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pipermail/boai-forum/attachments/20110307/4f383129/attachment.html