Knowledge Access and Dissemination

"This handbook was formulated using existing knowledge-sharing resources, which were collected, reviewed, and summarized. (..) This book represents an attempt to bring together the diversity of information that was scattered across books, journals, and organizations into a logical, accessible resource, which will hopefully be a useful tool to those engaged in knowledge sharing. "

"The present Communication comes from two policy strands, the i2010 digital libraries initiative and the Community policy on research. The digital libraries initiative aims to make information more accessible and usable in the digital environment. The Community policy on research looks to maximise the socio-economic benefits of research and development for the public good. The present Communication represents an initial step within a wider policy process addressing how the scientific publication system functions and what impact it has on research excellence. (...) This Communication's objective is to signal the importance of and launch a policy process on (a) access to and dissemination of scientific information2, and (b) strategies for the preservation of scientific information across the Union."

"There has been an extensive debate on the correct licensing policies for software developed with the use of public funds. (..). What has often been missing from this over-politicised debate, though, is a clear understanding of the goals and principles behind such policy decisions and a discussion of the outcome of specific license choices in furthering these goals. This discussion paper aims to provide some of this clarity. It also proposes a policy of dual licensing (where one of the licenses is a copyleft license) as a solution that arguably results in an outcome clearly in line with the principles of public funding."