JANUARY
High - Andrew Gowers’ IP review
Dry - European Library at risk of failure
Beleaguered prime minister (but back then just chancellor of the exchequer)
Gordon Brown stared out from the cover of our January issue as he delivered his
pre-Budget speech, which included the recommendations of the Gowers Review on
intellectual property. At the time he was dead keen on becoming prime minister,
but by the end of the year Brown’s government would be beset with information
management problems. Former Financial Times editor Andrew Gowers had been
charged by Brown to assess the national intellectual property laws, which affect
publishers, librarians and the noisy lobby groups of the music industry. Most in
the information industry welcomed the reporter and believe Gowers delivered a
balanced view of what was required.
FEBRUARY
High - MIT puts all courses online
Dry - TFPL to jettison recruitment arm
Info pros were shocked to learn that major publishing companies including
Elsevier and John Wiley were taking “public relations” advice on how to counter
open access from Eric Dezenhall, a US PR agent famed for defending those not
worthy of a defence in the public eye. Dezenhall was recruited to help fight a
proposed change to the medical funding bill travelling through the US Senate
that would place US federally funded research with the state-funded PubMed
Central open access depository within 12 months. Dezenhall advised worried
scientific publishers fearing a drop in revenue to found a campaign group to
persuade the Senate that the move would destroy peer review and the validity of
science.
MARCH
High - E-book readers
Dry - Brussels Declaration against OA
Sarah Thomas broke the mould and made history when she became the first woman to
head the world-famous Bodleian Library at Oxford. In 400 years of information
management, leadership of the library amid the dreaming spires has been a man’s
job. But the American promised to “bring forward” traditions and to be deeply
involved in “reinterpreting these traditions for the digital age”.
As the year went on Thomas’s role also involved clashes with the planning
authorities of the historic city, as Oxford University sought to build a
state-of-the-art book depository on a flood plain. Planners were not against the
building because of its advanced technology, which is needed to preserve many of
the ancient works held, nor because of the potential flood risk. No, the
building was simply too big and locals feared that it would ruin the famous
views.
E-book readers were back on the agenda as IWR lived with one device and
pronounced it ideal for lawyers and anyone else who has heavy tomes to tote
around.
APRIL
High - Strategic e-Content Alliance
Dry - Peer review under review
Government attitudes towards information were revealed in April when MPs from
the two main parties showed their true shared colours in their disregard for
public access to information about how the country is governed. Labour planned
to tighten the rules for answering Freedom of Information (FoI) requests in a
claimed effort to reduce costs that also penalised those who made the most use
of the act and thereby put important information in the public eye.
To add insult to injury, MPs also awarded themselves bigger communications
budgets to enable them to reach out to their constituents. Although the money
was ringfenced to prevent MPs abusing the system and using it for party
political purposes, IWR notes that MPs such as John Denham seem to have websites
that reflect their political affiliation very closely.
MAY
High - Manchester Council relaunches web presence
Dry - BvD sell-off rumours resurface
Keeping abreast of world events, IWR went green in the May issue with a series
of articles looking at why the green agenda matters to organisations and the
role of the information professional in keeping theirs up to date.
IWR also decided to take a lighter look at the industry with the launch of n.0,
our comic strip featuring Anita and Tim, two overworked information
professionals with a keen interest in the industry and always prepared to
comment. Sound familiar?
JUNE
High - National Archives launches wiki
Dry - FoI Act under attack
Without doubt the biggest story of 2007 was the acquisition of international
news and markets information group Reuters by Thomson, the scientific, legal and
business information services provider. Together the two companies have
surpassed the New York mayor’s eponymous Bloomberg service and prepared
themselves for a challenging future as the internet looks set to change market
information access in the coming years.
MPs were still doing their best to cover up information about their financial
behaviour when they voted for a personal opt-out of the Freedom of Information
Act.
As Tony Blair stepped down from office leaving a country at war in Iraq, he also
left behind a legacy of failed information policy and public mistrust of
politics.
JULY/AUGUST
High - Malaria Journal spreads
Dry - Leading academic casts doubt on impact factors
Is Web 2.0 all it is cracked up to be? Author and former web entrepreneur Andrew
Keen added IWR and info pros to his global promotional tour to ask if Web 2.0
was damaging our national culture, heritage and information. His book Cult of
the Amateur pulled no punches.
Never slow to spot a trend, supermarket giant Tesco was working out how it was
going to label all of its products according to the amount of carbon emitted in
their production. A team of academics and information experts in Oxford tasked
with gathering the information and helping Tesco devise a way of measuring the
carbon footprint of the products on its shelves revealed to IWR how they would
do so and how the information industry could meet the needs of organisations lo
oking to learn more about carbon footprints.
As the year went on all the major scientific publishing houses launched titles
focusing on green issues such as energy production and biofuels.
SEPTEMBER
High - National Archives takes over government info management
Dry - RAE demands CD-ROMs for the internet age
The Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine (PRISM) launched
a campaign attacking open access publishing. Funded by the Association of
American Publishers (AAP), itself financed by member companies such as Elsevier
and Wiley, PRISM claimed that open access was creating “junk science” that could
not be trusted. The open access and scientific communities swung into action,
demonstrating that rigorous peer review policies are in place at open access
journals, just as they are in paid-for publications.
News and business information also felt the winds of change as Australian media
tycoon Rupert Murdoch acquired the Dow Jones group for $5bn, adding the revered
Wall Street Journal to his portfolio and the news aggregator service Factiva.
Murdoch put a cat among the pigeons by suggesting that he would scrap the
payment system on the Wall Street Journal website and make the site free to all.
OCTOBER
High - BSI introduces standards for enterprise content management
Dry - AAP and PRISM
Peer review continued to dominate debate as scientists and authors turned
against the PRISM campaign, while the British Academy added a new dimension to
the debate, calling for training in peer review.
Backing the peer review process, the British Academy also made the industry
aware that the increased number of scientific papers was putting a greater
strain on peer reviewers. In a report the academy called for training and
greater recognition for those who maintain high standards in scientific
literature. Albert Weale, British Academy chairman, said it was hard to believe
that no training in peer review existed.
Despite the debate surrounding the STM (science, technology, medicine) market,
Sage invested in a series of journals and maintained its focus on the area for
the rest of the year.
NOVEMBER
High - BL Newspaper Archive goes live
Dry - WSJ move forces FT to go free
The information industry is in good health, driven by search and aggregation
service providers, reported market analyst Outsell. Led by Google, the market
would be dominated by search engine companies until 2010, it predicted.
In another report, records management technology provider Tower Software
discovered that British companies were facing document mayhem. Little did they
realise the scale of the lost data fiascos that were shortly to engulf the civil
service.
Newspapers were digitising their archives while the US Senate ignored the
hyperbole of PRISM and voted in favour of the NIH bill, endorsing open access
within 12 months for federally funded research. But the world’s most powerful
man, George W Bush, vetoed the bill, claiming the Senate was acting like a kid
with a new credit card.
DECEMBER
High - Amazon launches Kindle
Dry - Bush bombs OA
After 12 months of relentless political battles over information, by December
government ministers, civil servants and new PM Gordon Brown were probably
flinching at the very mention of the I word.
The loss of CD-ROMs containing the details of every Child Benefit claimant in
the country seriously damaged the reputation of the newly merged Her Majesty’s
Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and Brown’s premiership.
