[Foundation-l] Access to academic journals (was Re: Remarks on Wikimedia's fundraiser)

[THURNER rupert]

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 21:50, Juergen Fenn <juergen.fenn at gmx.de> wrote:
>
>
> Am 08.03.11 21:36, schrieb Andrea Zanni:
>
>>> AFAIK, these publishers make the pricing upon the number of
>> scholars/researchers/students of a certain university/corporation: I bet
>> they would make us unbearable fees (in fact the potential users are hundred
>> thousands, if not millions).
>
> That's right if you would negotiate with the publishers to have all
> wikipedians take part in the the such a scheme, but access to academic
> literature can only be offered to those authors who contribute regularly
> and who are long-time part of a WikiProject or a Portal. Otherwise you
> would have the effects you've described.
>

there might be another effect, which is imo more critical:
one might argue that paying somebody to do the opposite of openining
up the knowledge under a free license is completely against the basic
mission of wmf, and the whole free knowledge movement. my personal
guess is that quite a high number of people / donators do not like
this.

rupert.