Nancy Kranich, The Information Commons: A Public Policy Report, The Free Expression Policy Project, June 8, 2004. From the executive summary: "Libraries, civic organizations, and scholars have begun to turn the idea of the commons into practice, with a wide variety of open democratic information resources now operating or in the planning stages. These include software commons, licensing commons, open access scholarly journals, digital repositories, institutional commons, and subject matter commons in areas ranging from knitting to music, agriculture to Supreme Court arguments. These many examples of information sharing have certain basic characteristics in common. They are collaborative and interactive. They take advantage of the networked environment to build information communities. They benefit from network externalities, meaning that the greater the participation, the more valuable the resource. Many are free or low cost. Their governance is shared, with rules and norms that are defined and accepted by their constituents. They encourage and advance free expression." Kranich, a past president of the American Library Association, has entire sections on open access and digital repositories.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/08/2004 04:56:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
