Re: [ox-en] Re: Next successful Free Product?
- From: Michael Bouwens <michelsub2003 yahoo.com>
- Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 19:49:53 -0700 (PDT)
Free Science has more to do with lack of money. One
of the roots of
Free Science is the complaints of scientists that
their results are
given to scientific magazines for nothing but the
scientific community
has to buy back the results in form of the magazines
using ever
increasing amounts of money. However, this lack of
money is not at the
fundament of scientific activity which is still
funded by states
and/or companies. Well, the lack of money for the
expensive magazines
can be seen as a partial retreat of states /
companies from funding
science.
Isn't it also mainly motivated by the new role of
patents, which block sharing and slow down innovation
in academic research. But the abandomnent of the old
scientific publishing scheme now also has perverse
results: the authors are now asked to pay for
publishing!!
Thus I'd
say that classical science already contains many
aspects of Free
Science.
I see Free Science more as a return to the original
way of doing science, it is peer review based and
wants to undo changes induced by the
corporate-academic fusion of the James-Doyle Act (or
whatever the exact name of these law that allow
universities to privatise their research). But the
other free projects go way beyond peer review, they
are 'anti-credentialist', something lacking in the
free science movement. It is not based on the
equipotentiality inherent in peer production. On the
other hand, citizen science projects are moving into
that direction by obliterating the distinction between
professionals and amateurs.
Michel
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