Mapping Hacks

Openness, freedom of inquiry, access to knowledge…one would like to posit
a growing movement towards all things good. Or perhaps the internet just allows
us to hide in our open ghettos…in any event, the Berlin Declaration
on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities says the right things-perhaps in a bit more
formal language than that to which I am accustomed, but hey, they
also have a more distinguished list of participants and of signatories than my normal crowd (no offense to those of you in my normal crowd!).

Preface

The Internet has fundamentally changed the practical and economic realities of distributing scientific knowledge and cultural heritage. For the first time ever, the Internet now offers the chance to constitute a global and interactive representation of human knowledge, including cultural heritage and the guarantee of worldwide access.

We, the undersigned, feel obliged to address the challenges of the Internet as an emerging functional medium for distributing knowledge. Obviously, these developments will be able to significantly modify the nature of scientific publishing as well as the existing system of quality assurance.

In accordance with the spirit of the Declaration of the Budapest Open Acess Initiative, the ECHO Charter and the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, we have drafted the Berlin Declaration to promote the Internet as a functional instrument for a global scientific knowledge base and human reflection and to specify measures which research policy makers, research institutions, funding agencies, libraries, archives and museums need to consider.

Posted in policy |

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