Knowledge in digital form offers unprecedented access to information                  through the Internet but at the same time is subject to ever-greater restrictions                  through intellectual property legislation, overpatenting, licensing, overpricing,                  and lack of preservation. Looking at knowledge as a commons--as a shared                  resource--allows us to understand both its limitless possibilities and what                  threatens it. In Understanding Knowledge as a Commons, experts from a range of                  disciplines discuss the knowledge commons in the digital era--how to conceptualize                  it, protect it, and build it.Contributors consider the concept of the commons                  historically and offer an analytical framework for understanding knowledge as a                  shared social-ecological system. They look at ways to guard against enclosure of the                  knowledge commons, considering, among other topics, the role of research libraries,                  the advantages of making scholarly material available outside the academy, and the                  problem of disappearing Web pages. They discuss the role of intellectual property in                  a new knowledge commons, the open access movement (including possible funding models                  for scholarly publications), the development of associational commons, the                  application of a free/open source framework to scientific knowledge, and the effect                  on scholarly communication of collaborative communities within academia, and offer a                  case study of EconPort, an open access, open source digital library for students and                  researchers in microeconomics. The essays clarify critical issues that arise within                  these new types of commons--and offer guideposts for future theory and                  practice.Contributors:David Bollier, James Boyle, James C. Cox, Shubha Ghosh,                  Charlotte Hess, Nancy Kranich, Peter Levine, Wendy Pradt Lougee, Elinor Ostrom,                  Charles Schweik, Peter Suber, J. Todd Swarthout, Donald Waters

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