My thesis is that if a resource can be classified as infrastructure according to the economic criteria set forth in Part II of this Article, then there are strong economic arguments that the resource should be managed in an openly accessible manner....[The criteria are:] (1) The resource may be consumed nonrivalrously; (2) Social demand for the resource is driven primarily by downstream productive activity that requires the resource as an input; and (3) The resource may be used as an input into a wide range of goods and services, including private goods, public goods, and nonmarket goods....Consider, for example, basic research. What makes basic research valuable to society? Again, like a road system (and a lake), basic scientific research is socially valuable primarily because of what it facilitates downstream --how it can be used to produce further research. It satisfies all three criteria in the public infrastructure: It is nonrival; it creates benefits or value primarily because of the downstream uses, which generally involve the production of additional public goods (e.g., information, knowledge, and learning); and, by definition, there is wide variation in downstream uses. It is difficult to estimate the social value of basic research, primarily because of the wide variety of downstream uses that generate public goods and uncertainty with respect to future directions that the cumulative productive processes may go.286 Nonetheless, as with many traditional infrastructures, it is well recognized that basic research contributes significantly to economic growth and social welfare....For basic research, however, coupling government funding with a clear dedication to the public domain remains a potentially attractive method for sustaining a commons that relies on neither the government nor the market mechanism to allocate access among the public.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/13/2005 10:15:00 AM.
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.
