Re: A Role for SPARC in Freeing the Refereed Literature

From: Jim Till <till_at_UHNRES.UTORONTO.CA>
Date: Wed, 21 Jun 2000 12:27:51 -0400

If the radical (and undesirable) scenario outlined by David Goodman
(illegal free distribution) cannot be prevented, perhaps extensive stable
open-archiving of such illegally-distributed research results also can't
be prevented?

Jim Till
Joint Centre for Bioethics
University of Toronto


On Wed, 21 Jun 2000, David Goodman wrote [in response to Steavn Harnad]:

> [dg] I think most of us in this discussion fully support the efforts
> [dg] you and others are making to permit and facilitate legal free
> [dg] distribution of the results of research. But regardless of their
> [dg] sucess, the predominant mode of access may conceivably switch to
> [dg] illegal free distribution, regardless of all efforts to prevent
> [dg] it. Of course most of us -- I hope -- think this very
> [dg] undesirable, but that might not prevent it from happenning.
>
> Stevan Harnad wrote:

> > [sh] Please see the "napster" thread in this Forum. My own view is
> > [sh] that there is a profound DISanalogy between consumer-end
> > [sh] rip-off, napster-style, of NON-give-away work (such as MP3
> > [sh] music), whichis illegal and not to be condoned, and author-end
> > [sh] open-archiving of give-away work (refereed research reports),
> > [sh] which can be done completely legally, and is both optimal for
> > [sh] research and researchers and inevitable.
Received on Mon Jan 24 2000 - 19:17:43 GMT