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  • To: openeconomies(at)cyber.law.harvard.edu
  • Subject:
  • From: gsecor(at)law.harvard.edu
  • Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 23:16:05 -0500
I hope this is on-topic and worthwhile.  The Free Online Scholarship 
Newsletter is an excellent source for information on trends in scholarly 
communcation, including initiatives to enhance scholarly communication in 
developing nations.  Below please find the first three points (of many) 
contained in the "Editorial Position of the FOS Newsletter."  The newsletter 
and a discussion forum can be accessed from 
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/.

Editorial Position of the FOS Newsletter, version 1.6 

1.  Scholarly literature ought to be free and online. 

2.  "Scholarly literature" here means the professional research literature in 
every field of the sciences and humanities.
 
3.  "Free" here means both (1) free of charge for the reader and (2) 
uncensored.
 
Free of charge for the reader. Scholarly literature will never be free to 
produce. Hence if readers are not to pay the costs, then they must be 
subsidized. One premise of the FOS movement is that the costs of publishing 
scholarship online are so low that the required subsidy is trivial. The costs 
are low because the literature is donated by authors who do not expect payment 
(more below), and because publication is to the internet, not to paper. If the 
required subsidy is small, then it can be made by universities, libraries, 
professional associations, foundations, endowments, authors, non-profit 
organizations, or even for-profit publishers. 

Uncensored. The internet is becoming our common public library. Nations, 
employers, and schools which keep their people from reading certain sites are 
engaged in censorship and violating human rights; if the sites are scholarly, 
then they are also stultifying intellectual inquiry. As scholarship becomes 
online scholarship, the right to visit any site becomes a critical component 
of academic freedom. 

Regards,

Glen Secor
 
 
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