A consortium of research institutions is lobbying to extend the NIH open-access policy to other federally funded research.
The NIH requires free, public access to research they fund. Now the Office of Science and Technology Policy is considering extending the policy to other federal agencies that fund academic research.
Worth reading and considering is a new draft article by Professor Steven Shavell that proposes abolishing copyright on academic works.
There’s a new law journal in town: “The International Free and Open Source Software Law Review (IFOSS L. Rev.) is a collaborative legal publication aiming to increase knowledge and understanding among lawyers about Free and Open Source Software issues. Topics covered include copyright, licence implementation, licence interpretation, software patents, open standards, case law and statutory changes.”
Jul 012009
Ed Kohler points us to a long, but fascinating blog post, by Stuart Shieber, a CS professor at Harvard, discussing the somewhat ridiculous copyright situation that many academics deal with in trying to promote their own works. I’ve heard similar stories from other professors I know, but this one is worth reading. Shieber points out [...]
Jun 292009
Michael Nielsen wrote a stellar piece dealing with disruptive changes that doom old business models: newspapers and science publishers, to mention his examples. He does a particularly good job at explaining how this could happen even without anyone doing anything wrong or stupid.
A recent change to the Texas Rule of Appellate Procedure gives “memorandum” opinions full precedential value – but those opinions are currently only accessible through the very expensive Westlaw or LexisNexis.
May 122009
Looking for alternatives to expensive legal research through Westlaw and LexisNexis? Here’s a non-exhaustive list of ten alternative sources for legal research (aimed primarily at lawyers and law students) that are useful – and much cheaper.
Image by mattlary via Flickr
Minneapolis News – Westlaw rises to legal publishing fame by selling free information:
West makes its money by selling free, public information – specifically, court documents – to lawyers. On this simple model, the company raked in $3.5 billion in revenue last year, placing it on a par, sales-wise, with retail giant [...]
Apr 292009
Image via Wikipedia
Marketplace: Publicly funded research for a price:
Publicly funded research doesn’t seem so public when the public has to pay to read the results in a journal. A proposed law would help publishing companies preserve their business models, but it would limit public access to the research.
Publishers continue to resist the open-access movement, it [...]
Apr 112009
I found this interesting discussion of IP today:
Information, however, has properties that make it sufficiently different from physical objects to question whether the property model is a good metaphor for information. Unlike natural resources, information is non-depletable. Overuse of information does not lead to its scarcity, nor does it attenuate its value; in fact, it [...]
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