I’ve been doing a little research on the open access to scientific articles movement to bring myself up to speed. It’s interesting because while they have adopted CC licensing and are often mentioned in the same breath as open source and free software, they have employed a set of normative stances and tactics that seems to be very different than what you’d see in those communities. Lots of good stuff.
Nature has a nice focus page on the debate around open access in the scientific community. In it, they link to articles that they have published on the topic including one titled, Societies take united stand on journal access. Of course, if you try to click on the article and are not on an IP block of a subscriber, you are brought to a page that requires that pay US $30 for the article.
I’ll bet I can name at least one society that’s not part of that united stand.
There is a OA bill in congress right now, its stuck in a certain committee (dont remember which). The bill would require agencies of govt that do more than ‘100million USD in extramural research grants’ to release the research under OA.
<a href=”http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_bills&docid=f:s2695is.txt.pdf”>http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_bills&docid=f:s2695is.txt.pdf</a>