Download or read book The Role of Scientific and Technical Data and Information in the Public Domain. Proceedings of a Symposium Held in National Academies, Washington, DC on September 5-6, 2002 written by and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The symposium was held on September 5-6, 2002, at the National Academies in Washington, D.C. The meeting brought together leading experts and managers from the public and private sectors who are involved in the creation, dissemination, and use of STI to discuss (1) the role, value, and limits of making STI available in the public domain for research and education; (2) the various legal, economic, and technological pressures on the producers of public-domain STI and the potential effects of these pressures on research and education; (3) the existing and proposed approaches for preserving the STI in the public domain or for providing "open access" in the United States; and (4) other important issues in this area that may benefit from further analysis. The main question that was addressed by the symposium participants was, What can the S & T community itself do to address these issues within the context of managing its own data and information activities? Enlightened new approaches to managing public-domain STI may be found to be desirable or necessary, and these need to be thoroughly discussed and evaluated. The primary goal of this symposium, therefore, was to contribute to that discussion, which will be certain to continue in many other fora and contexts. The symposium was organized into four sessions, each introduced by an initial framework discussion and then followed by several invited presentations. The first session focused on the role, value, and limits of scientific and technical data and information in the public domain. This was followed in the second session by an overview of the pressures on the public domain. Session three explored the potential effects on research of a diminishing public domain, and the final session focused on responses by the research and education communities for preserving the public domain and promoting open access to various types of STI.