If the university holds patents, it readily licenses them for free software, essential medicines, and the public good.
The university network reflects the open nature of the internet.
where "university" includes all parts of the community: students, faculty, administration.
Here's some background from Karen Rustad at Little Green River:
...The second day, the spontaneous participant-organized “unconference”, provoked a lot of good conversations and was surprisingly productive --by the end of it, everyone agreed to what people are calling the Wheeler Declaration (after the building we were in): an agenda for Students for Free Culture to focus on for next year. We’re still arguing about what to call it (since Open University is trademarked, apparently), but the idea is to pressure and grade our campuses based on five criteria: opening access to research, creating/using open courseware, embracing free/open-source software and open document formats, using university-held patents for the public good (think cheap drugs for the developing world), and keeping the university network unfiltered and uncensored. We’ll see how SFC executes this plan, but I think it’s an excellent target for the org to have.
Comment. It appears that this version is just a draft and that SFC is still working on the final form and the plan for implementation. If anyone has more information on it, please drop me a line or post it to the SPARC Open Access Forum.
Update (10/23/08). The draft now includes this addendum:
Steps in an Open University Campaign
Define best practices for each criteria
Research universities' statuses
Educate and help universities to move towards openness
Grade universities
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/18/2008 12:14:00 PM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
