Leipzig 2002 – scientific programme

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AKI: Information

AKI 101: Wissenschaftliche Information und Kommunikation

AKI 101.1: Invited Talk

Friday, March 22, 2002, 09:30–10:15, HS 14

What is to be done? — •Thomas Krichel — Palmer School of Library and Information Science, Long Island University and RePEc

The prospect of free online access to scholarly documents over the Internet continues to occupy the minds of all participants in the scholarly communication process. Much of the discussion concentrates on technical features, or on descriptive models of scholarly behavior. The transition from toll-gated scholarly publication outlets to free outlets is essentially a social process. This talk assumes that free access is desirable in principle and examines conditions under which it can be achieved with a minimum of external subsidies. We set out a business model for free scholarship. It is based open archives storing document and related data. At the center of the model, a virtual organization called an aggregator makes quantifiable assessment of the scientific process. We use the example of the RePEc initiative in economics as an embryonic aggregator to discuss the relevance of the model to physics.