Scientific Civil Disobedience

Tens of thousands of academic papers from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society are being shared via BitTorrent thanks to the work of someone going by the name Greg Maxwell.  All of the papers are out of copyright — they date from the time of Newton up through 1923.  Nevertheless, they have until now been locked up behind a paywall.  Hopefully others in possession of such troves will follow suit.  Scientific publishing is long overdue for this kind of shakeup.

Cornell refuses to sign journal pricing NDAs

Many academic journals require their library subscribers to sign non-disclosure agreements to keep their pricing structures secret.  This is obviously anti-competitive, and precludes any kind of free market from forming.  Cornell has decided it’s had enough of this, and will refuse to sign any such agreement in the future, while making the (often exorbitant) prices it pays for journal subscriptions public.

Links for the week of August 20th, 2009

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Continue reading Links for the week of August 20th, 2009

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