[14667] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Status: Timeline of Free Online Scholarship
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Seth Johnson)
Wed Jan 29 08:50:58 2003
Date: Sun, 26 Jan 2003 21:16:40 -0500
From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@REALMEASURES.DYNDNS.ORG>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-to: seth.johnson@REALMEASURES.DYNDNS.ORG
Message-id: <3E349688.4D47E2E2@RealMeasures.dyndns.org>
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-transfer-encoding: 8BIT
X-MDaemon-Deliver-To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Forwarded from Peter Suber's Free Online Scholarship
Weblog. Timeline pasted below sans internal links.
Seth Johnson
seth.johnson@RealMeasures.dyndns.org
FOS News - http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html
I recently sent out a call for additions to my FOS Timeline.
I was looking for some of the early and influential
institutional eprint archives but ready to add any landmark
events that I didn't already list. For a week, I got
several emails a day suggesting new items of all kinds. I'm
pleased to say that the Timeline has now reached a new
plateau, and I thank all those who wrote in with
suggestions. Have a look. As always, I welcome additions
and corrections. (1/25/2003 6:09:27 PM)
----
> http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/timeline.htm
Timeline of the Free Online Scholarship Movement
This timeline is a product of the Free Online Scholarship
Newsletter.
I've tried to limit the items to landmark events. Entries
are brief in order save space. Most link to entries in my
Guide to the FOS Movement, where you can find more detail
and links to relevant external sites.
So far I'm deliberately omitting books, articles, and
speeches, no matter how important. However, I might include
some in a later draft and would be curious to know which
ones you think belong here. I'm also omitting the eprint
archives at individual institutions except the earliest
which helped to prove the concept.
For reference, I've inserted a small number of entries on
the history of the internet and world wide web. The dates
for these entries are in a green font.
I try to give year, month, and day for each item. When one
or more of these details is missing, that means I don't have
them. When I know the year, but not the month or day, I list
the item at the beginning of the year. When I know the year
and month, but not the day, I list the item at the beginning
of the month.
Beware of an illusion based on my collection priorities. I
know recent developments best, and I'm particularly
interested in discovering and recording the earliest
stirrings of this movement. So the entries are thickest at
the beginning and the end of the timeline. But that doesn't
mean there was a decline in the middle period. As I fill in
more of the landmark events, this illusion should disappear.
This is a draft. As I find time, I will supplement it out of
my own notes (e.g. back issues of FOSN) and with help from
readers.
I welcome additions, corrections, and missing details from
incomplete dates. If you can help, please let me know.
Peter Suber
Last revised, January 26, 2003.
Before 1990
1966. Medline launched by the National Library of Medicine
(but not free until 1997).
April 7, 1969. First Request for Comments (RFC) published by
Steve Crocker, triggering a long series of free online
documents on the development of the internet. See these
details on the history of RFCs.
August 30, 1969. Advanced Research Projects Agency Network
(ARPANET) launched by the U.S. Department of Defense. It
ceased operation in 1990. See these details on ARPANET's
history.
1971. Project Gutenberg launched by Michael Hart.
1974. The libraries of the Stanford Linear Accelerator
Center (SLAC) and Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron (DESY)
began electronic cataloging of preprint literature in
physics. Their catalog soon joined the Stanford Physics
[later Public] Information Retrieval System (SPIRES) High
Energy Physics (HEP) online database. See these details on
SPIRES HEP's history.
1979. USENET launched by Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis, Steve
Bellovin, and Steve Daniel. See these details on USENET's
history.
1981. Joint Academic Network (JANET) launched by JISC.
May 5, 1981. Because It's Time Network (BITNET) launched
with a link between Yale and the City University of New
York. See these details on BITNET's history.
January 1, 1983. ARPANET switched from the NCP protocol to
TCP/IP, marking what many consider to be the birth of the
internet. See these details on the planning for this
transition.
July 1987. Perseus Project launched on CD's (not free until
it moved to the web in 1994).
Fall 1987. New Horizons in Adult Education launched by the
Syracuse University Kellogg Project. (An early free online
peer-reviewed journal.) See these details on NHAE's history.
1989. Newsletter on Serials Pricing Issues launched. See
these details on NSPI's history.
1989. Psycoloquy launched by Stevan Harnad. (An early free
online journal that became peer-reviewed on January 28,
1990.)
June 1989. Eddy van der Maarel and most of his editorial
board resigned from Vegetatio in order to launch the Journal
of Vegetation Science. See Declarations of Independence.
August 16, 1989. The Public-Access Computer Systems Review
launched by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. (An early free online
journal with a peer-reviewed section starting in April
1992.)
1990
1990. Electronic Journal of Communication launched. (An
early free online peer-reviewed journal.) See these details
on EJC's history.
1990. Postmodern Culture launched by Eyal Amiran, Greg
Dawes, Elaine Orr, and John Unsworth. (An early free online
peer-reviewed journal.) See these details on PMC's history.
October 1990. Tim Berners-Lee wrote first web client and
server (released March 1991).
November 1990. Bryn Mawr Classical Review launched. (An
early free online peer-reviewed journal.) See these details
on BMCR's history.
1991
1991. Gopher launched by Paul Lindner and Mark McCahill.
February 4, 1991. Behavioral and Brain Sciences (not an
open-access journal) launched an open-access FTP Preprints
archive containing accepted papers but not their
accompanying commentaries and responses. This became an
open-access web archive in 1993 and an OAI-compliant eprint
archive, BBSPrints, in 1999.
April 1991. EJournal launched by Edward M. Jennings. (An
early free online peer-reviewed journal.) See these details
on EJ's history.
May 17, 1991. World Wide Web standard released by CERN and
Tim Berners-Lee.
August 16, 1991. arXiv launched by Paul Ginsparg.
1992
1992. Computer Science Technical Reports (CS-TR) launched.
The project ended in 1996. See these details on CS-TR's
history.
1992. Entrez launched by the National Center for
Biotechnology Information (on CD's, not free until 1993).
April 27, 1992. First Symposium on Scholarly Publishing on
the Electronic Networks: Visions and Opportunities in
Not-for-Profit Publishing [no web site], sponsored by the
Association of Research Libraries and the Association of
American University Presses.
June 1992. Project Runeberg launched by Sweden's Linköping
University.
December 5-8, 1992. Second Symposium on Scholarly Publishing
on the Electronic Networks: Visions and Opportunities in
Not-for-Profit Publishing, sponsored by the Association of
Research Libraries and the Association of American
University Presses.
1993
1993. The Aboriginal Studies Electronic Data Archive (ASEDA)
was launched on gopher by the Australian Institute of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. A web edition
appeared in 1994.
1993. Network Entrez launched, replacing priced CD's with
free network access (pre-web).
January 14, 1993. The Langley Technical Report Server (an
open FTP service for research papers) was launched by NASA's
Langley Research Center. A WAIS server was added on
February 10, 1993. The web version was launched in August
1993. See these details on LTRS's history, and these details
on the web version.
February 1993. National Center for Supercomputing
Applications (NCSA) and Marc Andreeson released the alpha
version of Mosaic.
February 1, 1993. Working Papers in Economics (WoPEc)
launched by Thomas Krichel.
April 30, 1993. CERN announced that anyone may use WWW
technology free of charge.
May 1993. The Unified Computer Science Technical Report
Index (UCSTRI) launched by Marc VanHeyningen and Indiana
University. See these details on UCSTRI's history.
November 1993. CERN launched its preprint server.
1994
1994. Digital Libraries Initiative launched by the National
Science Foundation and other U.S. federal agencies.
1994. HighWire Press launched by the Stanford University
Libraries (fall or winter).
1994. Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library
(NCSTRL) launched by DARPA and NSF, merging the two prior
projects, CS-TR and WATERS. NCSTRL was suspended in 2001,
but might be revived in an OAI-compliant form. See these
details and these on NCSTRL's history.
1994. Perseus Project launched its free web version
(formerly limited to priced CD's).
January 16, 1994. Wide Area Technical Report Service
(WATERS) launched on the web by the Computer Science
Departments of Old Dominion University, SUNY Buffalo,
University of Virginia, and Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University. (It emerged from discussions at the
1992 Snowbird Conference for Computer Science Department
Heads and may have had a pre-web incarnation but I'm still
investigating that.) See these details on WATERS' history.
March 1994. The National Academies Press started the
practice of creating free online full-text editions of all
its priced, printed books, and documenting that the former
help sell the latter.
June 1994. NASA Technical Report Server (NTRS) launched by
NASA, to search the many distributed LTRS-inspired digital
libraries at the agency.
June 27, 1994. Self-archiving proposed by Stevan Harnad.
September 1994. NASA's Astrophysical Data System (ADS) was
folded into NTRS.
1995
May 21, 1995. HighWire Press announced its first hosted or
co-published journal, the Journal of Biological Chemistry.
June 1995. The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
launched its preprint server. See these details on the
project's history.
September 1995. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy launched
by Edward Zalta.
1996
1996. Electronic Publishing Trust for Development (EPT)
launched.
1996. Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
(NDLTD) launched by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
University.
October 25, 1996. Version 1 of Charles W. Bailey, Jr.'s
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography appeared. (The
first online edition of a bibliography with earlier
electronic editions.) See these details on SEPB's history.
1997
March 25, 1997. University Provosts' Initiative launched.
May 12, 1997. Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) launched
by Thomas Krichel.
June 26, 1997. Medline content (already online) became free
when incorporated into PubMed.
August 19, 1997. CogPrints launched by Stevan Harnad.
1998
1998. Campaign for the Freedom of Distribution of Scientific
Work (aka Free Science Campaign) launched by Stefano
Ghirlanda.
1998. Most of the editorial board of the Journal of Academic
Librarianship resigned in order to launch Portal: Libraries
and the Academy. (FOSN for 10/26/01.) See Declarations of
Independence.
March 27, 1998. Declaration of San José issued. (FOSN for
1/30/02.)
June 1998. CiteSeer (now called ResearchIndex) launched by
the NEC Research Institute.
June 1998. Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources
Coalition (SPARC) launched by ARL.
August 25, 1998. The September98Forum is launched by
American Scientist, moderated by Stevan Harnad.
September 1998. Computing Research Repository (CoRR)
launched by the ACM, arXiv, NCSTRL, and AAAI.
October 1998. The National Electronic Article Repository
(NEAR) proposed by David Shulenberger.
November 1998. Michael Rosenzweig and the rest of his
editorial board resigned from Evolutionary Ecology in order
to create Evolutionary Ecology Research. See Declarations of
Independence.
1999
1999. The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) is launched.
1999. The Open Citation Project (OpCit) is launched.
1999. Electronic Information for Libraries Direct (eIFL
Direct) launched by the Open Society Institute.
April 22, 1999. Jointly Administered Knowledge Environment
(jake) launched by the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library at
the Yale University School of Medicine.
April 26, 1999. BioMed Central announced plan to offer free
online access to all its journals.
May 5, 1999. E-Biomed proposed by Harold Varmus.
July 1, 1999. Declaration on Science and the Use of
Scientific Knowledge issued by the UNESCO-ICSU World
Conference on Science.
October 22, 1999. Sante Fe Convention issued.
November 1999. The entire 50 person editorial board of the
Journal of Logic Programming resigned in order to launch
Theory and Practice of Logic Programming. (FOSN for
5/11/02.) See Declarations of Independence.
2000
2000. The Cross-Archive Searching Service (ARC) is launched.
January 2000. Henry Hagedorn resigned (to take effect in
July 2000) as editor of the Archives of Insect Biochemistry
& Physiology in order to launch the Journal of Insect
Science. See Declarations of Independence.
February 2000. PubMed Central (free full-text articles)
launched to supplement PubMed (free citations and
abstracts).
May 10, 2000. Tempe Principles For Emerging Systems of
Scholarly Publishing issued.
May 16, 2000. Collection of Open Digital Archives (CODA)
launched by the CalTech Library System. (Named "Caltech
CODA" in September 2002.)
July 19, 2000. BioMed Central published its first free
online article.
September 29, 2000. Southampton University released Eprints,
its OAI-compliant software for eprint archiving.
2001
2001. A handful of editors of Topology and Its Applications
resigned in order to launch Algebraic and Geometric
Topology. See Declarations of Independence.
2001. Electronic Society for Social Science (ELSSS) launched
by Manfredi La Manna.
2001. Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library
(NCSTRL) re-launched.
January 2001. Programme for the Enhancement of Research
Information (PERI) launched by INASP.
March 23, 2001. Letter to the editor that launched the
Public Library of Science published in Science Magazine.
(FOSN for 3/28/01.)
March 28, 2001. Free Online Scholarship Newsletter (FOSN)
launched by Peter Suber.
April 27, 2001. Declaration of Havana issued. (FOSN for
1/23/02.)
June 2, 2001. Ellen Roche died. (FOSN for 8/23/01.)
September 1, 2001. The Australian National University
launched its E-Print Repository, the first OAI-compliant
institutional archive in Australia.
September 1, 2001. Public Library of Science deadline for
science journals to agree to put their full contents online
in public archives without charge.
October 8, 2001. Forty editors of Machine Learning issued a
public letter explaining their resignations (which took
place over the previous nine months). One of those
resigning, Leslie Pack Kaelbling, created the Journal of
Machine Learning Research. (FOSN for 10/12/01, 10/19/01.)
See Declarations of Independence.
December 3, 2001. SciDev launched by Nature, Science, and
the Third World Academy of Sciences. (FOSN for 1/23/02.)
December 9, 2001. Académie des Sciences public statement
issued. (FOSN for 2/14/02.)
2002
January 1, 2002. BioMed Central started charging processing
fees to cover the costs of free online access. (FOSN for
12/19/01, 12/26/01, 1/1/02.)
January 31, 2002. HINARI started delivering free online
content. (FOSN for 2/25/02.)
February 6, 2002. The International Scholarly Communications
Alliance (ISCA) launched. (FOSN for 2/14/02.)
February 14, 2002. Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI)
launched by the Open Society Institute. (FOSN for 2/14/02.)
February 25, 2002. OAIster launched by the University of
Michigan Libraries Digital Library Production Services.
May 16, 2002. Creative Commons launched by Lawrence Lessig.
May 26, 2002. The FOS News blog launched by Peter Suber.
April, 2002. The Association of College and Research
Libraries (ACRL) launched its scholarly communication
initiative.
April 3, 2002. eScholarship Repository launched by the
eScholarship initiative of the California Digital Library.
July 1, 2002. BioMed Central launched its Open Access
Charter, assuring open access to its journal contents for
the long-term, even after any future changes of ownership.
July 1, 2002. Eprints software affiliated with GNU,
underlining its commitment to remain free and open source.
July 1, 2002. Ingenta announced its plan to create a
commercial version of the eprints software and offer OAI
eprint services.
July 11, 2002. Citebase is launched by Southampton
University.
August 1, 2002. Eprints-UK launched by JISC-FAIR.
August 1, 2002. Project RoMEO (Rights MEtadata for Open
archiving) launched by JISC-FAIR.
August 1, 2002. Project SHERPA (Securing a Hybrid
Environment for Research Preservation and Access) launched
by JISC-FAIR.
August 1, 2002. Project TARDIS (Targeting Academic Research
for Deposit and Disclosure) launched by JISC-FAIR.
August 15, 2002. CERN released CDSWare, its OAI-compliant
open-source software for document servers.
October 28, 2002. Over 300 University of California Press
books are made freely available online as eScholarship
Editions, through a partnership with the eScholarship
initiative of the California Digital Library.
October 31, 2002. DARE launched by the Dutch government.
November 4, 2002. MIT released DSpace, its OAI-compliant
open-source software for archiving eprints and other
academic content.
November 4, 2002. PubSCIENCE was discontinued by the U.S.
federal government in response to lobbying by commercial
publishers.
November 6, 2002. Bonn statement issued by the German
university rectors.
November 8, 2002. The Public Knowledge Project released Open
Journal Systems, its open-source journal management and
publishing software.
December 17, 2002. The Public Library of Science received a
$9 million grant from the Moore Foundation for open-access
publishing and announced its first two open-access journals.
Peter Suber, Department of Philosophy, Earlham College,
Richmond, Indiana, 47374, U.S.A.
peters@earlham.edu.Copyright © 2002-2003, Peter Suber.
