Scientific knowledge unchained: verso una policy dell’università italiana sull’Open Access

The aim of this paper is to explore the contribution of formal law to Open Access (OA). The main thesis is that formal law may be considered as an outstanding instrument to affirm the OA principle. However, the ultimate success of OA depends on a radical change of the informal rules that apply to scientific publishing practices. Such a variation must take into account the dynamics of power that govern academic-scientific publications, in which the interests of both scientists and publishers intersect. Moreover, a pivotal role is played by new upcoming actors that populate the system of scientific communication (repositories, search engines, scientific social networks etc.). Special attention is given to the normative change and the interaction that occurs among different types of rules (formal legal rules, informal rules and technology rules). This article focuses primarily on OA to publications and it does not discuss in details other related topics such as open research data. In the first paragraph, I briefly introduce the subject, explaining the methodology and the general framework of the paper. The second paragraph focuses on the presumption that scientific oligopoly depends on the perverse interaction between copyright and evaluation rules. In the third paragraph, I describe the legal kernel, as well as the scope, of OA. The fourth paragraph illustrates the main applicable policies and the fifth concentrates on the European Union policy on OA. Lastly, the sixth paragraph focuses on some development avenues for a normative policy that may contribute to a definitive affirmation of OA in Italian universities.