Recently, news blogs and newspapers reported that some politicians had cribbed research conducted by my foundation and used the information to build their own environmental agendas.
This news sent many a blogger all atwitter. While some of them focused on whether or not the information had been adequately referenced, others decried this action on the part of the politicians as proving that they had no ideas of their own, so they had to steal them from others.
Allow me to clear something up right now. To all politicians looking for ways to reduce our footprint on nature...: Knock yourselves out. Feel free to steal, pilfer, borrow, rent, filch or otherwise take any research my foundation does and put it to good use.
This may seem obvious to some, but the whole point of conducting and publishing this research is to get people to actually use it. As public education, it helps raise awareness of environmental problems. But more important, it provides solutions to those problems. And most of those solutions are best implemented by our political and business leaders, rather than by individuals.
So if you ask me if it bothers me that politicians are stealing the solutions brought forward by my foundation, the answer is no. To use a computer term, we consider this information “open source.” It’s a free buffet; please take all you like. The whole reason why we do the research is to effect change. If those who have the power to make those solutions happen actually use that information, so much the better. This is how change happens....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 10/04/2006 08:26:00 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.
