Science Commons signs the Berlin Declaration
Science Commons has signed the Berlin Declaration. Director John Wilbanks explains why:
I’m in Golm, Germany at the Berlin 4 Conference on Open Access. It’s been a wonderful week here and the movement behind open access is really remarkable. I signed the Berlin Declaration on behalf of Science Commons yesterday. It’s an important step in connecting the philosophy of a statement like the Declaration with the practice of the Creative Commons copyright licenses that implement Open Access philosophy in a free, legal manner. To be clear, Science Commons is not engaged in writing new copyright licenses: Creative Commons licenses already implement the Declaration, are already international, and are used by a large number of Open Access journals. There are too few signatories to the Declaration in North America. We’ll be encouraging our partners in the Neurocommons project and other work to examine the Declaration and sign up for the scientific benefits of Open Access to their institutions and their own research.
