The Moral Dimensions of Open

Abstract

Scholarly publishing is currently undergoing a digital-era transition that provides both opportunities and challenges for improving the moral dimensions of this enterprise. The stakeholders in scholarly publishing need to consider the moral foundations of knowledge production and access that underlie models of scholarly publishing. This report identifies seven moral dimensions and principles to open-access scholarship and data.OSI2016 Workgroup QuestionDoes society have a moral imperative to share knowledge freely, immediately, and without copyright restriction? A legal imperative? Why or why not? What about research funded by governments? Corporations? Cancer research? For that matter, is our current mechanism for funding scholarly publishing just or unjust? What other models are there? What are the pros and cons of these models? What is the likelihood of change?