Flat World Knowledge to Drop Free Access to Textbooks
November 4, 2012
Commentary by Stephen Downes

Flat World Knowledge, once widely-known for free and open access textbooks, will now be charging access fees, according to the Chronicle. The change was first reported by Campus Marketplace. “While free access goes away, our mission to be fair and affordable remains as strong as ever,” said Flat World CEO Jeff Shelstad. Accoding to the Chronicle report, most affiliated institutions and authors are in support of the move. Observers - including me - are more sceptical. As I commented on the Chronicle article, we now see why the people at Flat World so vehemently argued against the use of the Creative Commons non-commercial tag.

[Direct Link] [Tags: Open Access]
Comments

Re: Flat World Knowledge to Drop Free Access to Textbooks

Les Nessman, November 4, 2012

Their books are published under the same CC license you choose, CC By-NC-SA. Can you explain (or even better point to the example) of where they "argued against the use of the Creative Commons non-commercial tag" as that doesn't seem to jibe with their _USE_ of the "Creative Commons non-commercial tag." [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]

Re: Flat World Knowledge to Drop Free Access to Textbooks

Stephen Downes, November 5, 2012

David Wiley is/was part of Flat World. He is among those who argued in favour of CC-by. We had a long debate about it in BC. [Comment] [Permalink] [Previous][Next]



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