I couldn’t find this announcement on the StatsCan website, but this press release was sent to the Data Liberation Initiative listserv on Monday:
As of April 24, 2006, all electronic publications available on the Statistics Canada website will become free of charge. The purpose of this message is to inform you about this change in the Agency’s publishing model.
The New Publishing Model has two components:
* the free dissemination of all electronic publications on our website
* priced publications released on paper.The adoption of the New Publishing Model supports the longstanding principles underlying the Agency’s dissemination program: to make information of broad public interest widely available to the Canadian public but to charge individual clients for special products and services where the benefits do not accrue to the public at large and where additional costs are incurred by the Agency in providing them.
Free Electronic Publications
The move to free electronic publications will increase consistency in our priced publication program and improve access to our published information for users, respondents and stakeholders.
Under Statistics Canada’s New Publishing Model, all electronic publications (PDF and HTML) on Statistics Canada’s Internet site will be available for free as of April 24, 2006.
Electronic products that require a manual intervention by Statistics Canada staff (e.g. CD-ROM, files which have to be mailed, e-mailed or faxed to clients), database services (CANSIM, Canadian International Merchandise Trade database), and other priced datasets available on the Internet will continue to be priced.
Priced Print Publications
Under the New Publishing Model, the Agency’s ongoing print publication program will comprise a select group of publications, of a compendia or reference nature, which will enhance the visibility of Statistics Canada and profile the range of information that the Agency makes available. Statistics Canada will continue to charge for print publications in order to recover the printing, distribution and promotion costs.
The list of publications that will be part of the Agency’s print publication program will be established in discussion with author divisions over the next few months. This new print publication program will be maintained as long as it continues to meet client information needs and is able to recover the costs for these titles overall without a corporate subsidy.
Users may purchase print-on-demand service for PDF publications available on the website.
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