[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       dmca-discuss
Subject:    [DMCA_Discuss] ERIC, Oldest Open Access Initiative, In Jeopardy
From:       Seth Johnson <seth.johnson () realmeasures ! dyndns ! org>
Date:       2003-03-24 0:49:11
[Download RAW message or body]


(Forwarded from Free Online Scholarship News Blog)

FOS News - http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html

ERIC (http://www.eric.ed.gov/) is in jeopardy. A project of the U.S.
Department of Education (DOE), ERIC is the Educational Resources
Information  Center, and by far the most the comprehensive and venerable
open-access resource in the field of education. The problem in  a nutshell
is that the ERIC Clearinghouses (http://www.eric.ed.gov/sites/barak.html#1),
which collect and index the material in the ERIC database, come up for 
reauthorization this year. But the DOE offices that oversee ERIC and its
Clearinghouses are being reorganized, and the  current plan shrinks the ERIC
system and eliminates some of the Clearinghouses. Kate Corby has created an
extremely  useful web page on the threat to ERIC
(http://www.lib.msu.edu/corby/education/doe.htm), covering all the relevant
issues, players, actions, and dates. See her page, especially  her log of
open letters (http://www.lib.msu.edu/corby/education/eric/openletters.htm),
for ideas on how to help ERIC survive. 

The problem isn't exactly like last November's defunding of PubScience
(http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=pubscience&sp-a=sp10021077&sp-f=ISO-8859-1),
which was the result of a deliberate, anti-FOS  lobbying campaign by a trade
association of commercial electronic publishers. But the effect might be the
the defunding of  another government-supported open-access resource, this
time a much more significant one. ERIC is older, larger, and much  better
entrenched in its niche than PubScience was. It was launched in 1966, tying
with Medline (http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/guide.htm#medline) as the
oldest known  open-access initiative
(http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm). ERIC is "the largest
education database in the world (http://www.eric.ed.gov/about/about.html) --
containing more than 1 million records of  journal articles, research
reports, curriculum and teaching guides, conference papers, and books."
(3/22/2003 9:33:01 AM)

-- 

DRM is Theft!  We are the Stakeholders!

New Yorkers for Fair Use
http://www.nyfairuse.org

[CC] Counter-copyright: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/cc/cc.html

I reserve no rights restricting copying, modification or distribution of
this incidentally recorded communication.  Original authorship should be
attributed reasonably, but only so far as such an expectation might hold for
usual practice in ordinary social discourse to which one holds no claim of
exclusive rights.

_______________________________________________


------------------------
http://www.anti-dmca.org
------------------------

DMCA_Discuss mailing list
DMCA_Discuss@lists.microshaft.org
http://lists.microshaft.org/mailman/listinfo/dmca_discuss
[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]