Tag Archives: 2015

Open Access Is a Human Rights Issue (Open Access Week, One Week Late)

Let’s not portray casual sharing as more heroic than it is, though. A network of friends with institutional connections is not a luxury that everyone has. Emailing papers doesn’t fix a system in which the most cutting-edge knowledge is only available to a few people. If anything, casual sharing of limited-access papers only underscores the problem: limiting access to research keeps knowledge away from people without the same connections and privileges.

Source: Open Access Is a Human Rights Issue | Electronic Frontier Foundation

How Trade Agreements Harm Open Access and Open Source (Open Access Week, One Week Late)

Open access isn’t explicitly covered in any of the secretive trade negotiations that are currently underway, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and the Trade In Services Agreement (TISA). But that doesn’t mean that they won’t have a negative impact on those seeking to publish or use open access materials.

Source: How Trade Agreements Harm Open Access and Open Source | Electronic Frontier Foundation

FASTR Ensures that Publicly Funded Research Belongs to the Public (OPEN ACCESS WEEK, ONE WEEK LATE)

When taxpayers pay for research, everyone should have access to it. That’s the simple premise of the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act of 2015 (S.779, H.R.1477), or FASTR. If enacted, FASTR would keep federally funded research where it belongs, in the hands of the public.

Source: FASTR Ensures that Publicly Funded Research Belongs to the Public | Electronic Frontier Foundation

When You Work in the Open, Everyone Can Be a Collaborator (Open Access Week, One Week Late)

From scientific research to lawmaking, open access enables participation Open access is the practice of making research available online, for free, ideally under licenses that permit widespread dissemination. This year’s theme for Open Access Week is “open for collaboration,” and that theme hits on what’s really exciting about open access. Open access—both in academia and beyond—enables a kind of collaboration that can scale very quickly.

Source: When You Work in the Open, Everyone Can Be a Collaborator | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Banned Books, 2015: The first book banned and burned in the New World was published in London in 1650.

Price

The first book banned and burned in the New World was published in London in 1650: William Pynchon’s “The Meritorious Price of Our Redemption,” a critique of Puritanism.

Mr. Pynchon, a Puritan living in Massachusetts Bay Colony, found little welcome for his views and was eventually forced to return to England.

Fast forward three centuries, and there were about 300 cases of attempted censorship reported in 1980, the library group says.

Source: Your Monday Briefing – The New York Times