Lessig makes a new pledge

Lessig just pledged a few days ago the following.

Open Access pledge:

I will not agree to publish in any academic journal that does not permit me the freedoms of at least a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license.

He is in an inviable position. Not many of us can make this pledge in academia. In fact, today at the CCCC-IP caucus in San Francisco, we found ourselves wanting to participate in the JUST ASK policy of encouraging publishers to allow us Creative Commons licenses for our work. But we are not in a position to demand them. We also considered developing an edited collection for which we would try to secure a cc license. The consensus, however, was that most publishers would not enter such a contract and that tenure and promotion committees would look down on them.

With Lessig taking this stand, we do at least have an advocate who can be firm. The more we ask, the more chance we will have for publishers to start accepting.

jrg