[Advocacy Advisors] non-free academic publishing licenses

[Tisza Gergő]

On Sat, Jul 26, 2014 at 9:12 AM, Amgine <amgine at wikimedians.ca> wrote:

> If we write up a clear ruling on Commons, stating that any STM licenses or
> other licenses with STM riders are not free and may not be uploaded to
> commons, this addresses our contributors. A friendly blog article
> explaining exactly why these are not-free again addresses our community.
> And both can then be cited by anyone who wants point out to STM  why these
> should not be promulgated.
>

The real motivation for providing truly open access would be a Wikipedia
policy of preferring such sources when the alternatives are otherwise
equally good. How easy it is to find the articles of a given journal online
has major effect on its impact factor, and referencing it often in
Wikipedia makes it easier to find, both directly, and by external links in
the Wikipedia article namespace being a factor in Google rankings.

Apparently there was an attempt back in 2007 to create such policy, but it
was abandoned:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Open_Access_(archived_proposal)
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