OPENING THE GATES TO INFORMATION COMMONS

The title is cloned from this blog.

While respecting the right of corporations to charge for information, some information professionals are calling for fewer restrictions on its distribution and are lobbying for, or actively participating in, the creation of "information commons" -- a new way of producing and sharing information, creative works and democratic discussions. Like information portals, these "commons" (drawn from the historical existence of the English commons -- pieces of land to which members of a community had specific rights of access) are digital repositories of thematically related information.

There seems to be a trend here. Recall PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Science), Plos (Public Library of Science), and arXiv.org (archives of physics preprints). Bernard Vatant mentions sustainable IT, and Roger says metadata should be free. There are numerous other examples, which I can't put my finger on right now; I'll likely add them to the comments.