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Investments in cyberinfrastructure are organized differently in each country, but from the point of viewof this Commission, the salient fact is that they do include the humanities and social sciences. More importantly, the humanitiesand social sciences are a fully integrated part of the conversation and planning in these countries in a way that has not occurred inthe United States. The United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia are only three of the nations gearing up strategic efforts incyberinfrastructure with the humanities and social sciences in mind. The United States must make similar investments if we are tocompete internationally—for students, corporate funding, and cultural impact.
Addressed to: University presidents, boards of trustees, provosts, and counsels; university presses; fundingagencies; libraries; scholarly societies; Congress
Implementation: The Association of American Universities, in collaboration with other organizations such as theNational Humanities Alliance, the Scholarly Publishing and Research Coalition, and the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, shouldtake a leadership role in coordinating the engagement of the humanities and social sciences with issues of informationpolicy.
Open access is critical to constructing and deploying meaningful cyberinfrastructure, and it will be importantfor the humanities and social sciences to engage in active dialogue and then to lobby effectively concerning legislative and policydevelopments in this area—for example, in support of the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006. The Open Content Allianceoffers one good platform for the dialogue the Commission wishes to promote; it lists as its members a number of libraries and museumsas well as commercial content providers, software companies, and search engine companies. We encourage scholarly societies anduniversity presses—currently unrepresented—to join the Alliance.
The Commission also strongly encourages the funders of research in the humanities and social sciences torequire from applicants a plan for sharing and preserving data generated using grant funding, and we urge universities withcommercial digitization partners to address long-term ownership and access issues when creating those partnerships. We also call onuniversity counsels, boards of trustees, and provosts to provide aggressive support for the principles of fair use and open access,and to promote awareness and use of Creative Commons licenses.
We call on senior academic leaders to ensure that their own practices(as producers of intellectual property and as editors of journals) and the practices of university presses, libraries, and museumssupport fair use and open access. And, finally, the Commission calls on scholarly societies and universities to advocate thatCongress redress imbalances in intellectual property law that currently prevent or inhibit preservation, discourage scholarship,and restrain research and creativity.
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