The battle for open-access information | The Saturday Paper

abernard102@gmail.com 2015-07-06

Summary:

"In years ago, American artist and teacher Sean Dockray established a modest online archive of academic papers. It was called AAARG. But not for long. Its domain name changed along with its contents ... It was one way around the lawyers. Originally intended for those interested in critical or political theory, members began uploading texts important to them, or demanded by others, but almost always written by someone else. Dockray – and his site’s users – believed it was a way around the illiberal copyrighting of scholarly papers, and the dramatic costs imposed upon accessing official archives ... And it grew. Ten years later, the site boasts some 50,000 texts and almost as many members. It has been subject to cease-and-desist letters from publishers’ lawyers – not all of which have been adhered to – as it has been heralded by men and women in the Middle East and Africa who seem reliant upon the site for information. The site is essentially a radical commons: Dockray does not profit from it, and he’s not kidding about there being no moderation. From an hour of browsing I could find a good section of the contents of my personal bookshelves ..."

Link:

https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/media/2015/07/04/the-battle-open-access-information/14359320002073

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.comment oa.p2p oa.social_networks

Date tagged:

07/06/2015, 18:08

Date published:

07/06/2015, 14:08