Open Access News

News from the open access movement


Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Email-forwarding and the digital gift culture

Will Knight, Email forwarding amounts to ritual gift exchange, NewScientist, July 12, 2005.
Forwarding a quirky email or an amusing link or video attachment to colleagues may seem innocent enough, but it is the modern equivalent of ritual gift exchange and carries with it similar social implications, say US researchers....Benjamin Gross at the University of Illinois, US, and colleagues studied email forwarding behaviour by conducting informal interviews among email users. He says forwarding emails plays a vital role in constructing and maintaining modern social ties, despite the phenomenon receiving scant attention from social scientists.

Comment. No doubt. But how about a more exciting and significant form of digital gift culture --open access to scientific and scholarly research literature?