[open-economics] works of Economics in Public Domain

Fri Jan 4 22:04:22 UTC 2013

Hi folks,
thanks a lot for all this input and for the lists.
Let me introduce you to Nathan, he's also interested in the issue.

It could be an idea to launch a common effort among several partner
organizations to list such public domain works on Economics/ Political
Economy/ Philosophy. But as I don't know what are the usual coordination
procedures that you follow at OKF, you better tell me what's worthy
pursuing.

Besides YSI INET, I am in touch with people from the World Economics
Association. All articles published in their journals are free acess (which
is not the same as public domain, but anyways...)
http://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/

cheers
jia

On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 3:36 PM, John Levin <john at anterotesis.com> wrote:

> On 04/01/2013 13:45, Guo Xu wrote:
>
>> This sounds great --
>>
>> The problem I guess with econ is that it's - when excluding the more
>> philosophical earlier contributions - a fairly young discipline. As
>> far as I know, the Journal of Political Economy for example, is one of
>> the oldest journals and started only 1892.
>>
>>
> Speaking as a historian - he says, getting on to his high horse! - it's
> dangerous to start drawing lines about what is and what isn't economics,
> and especially to do so from the perspective of the present. Without the
> earlier philosophy, could there be the modern, more technical economics?
> And note that the Journal of Political Economy is using an older construct
> - *Political* Economy - in its title, rather than the modern term
> *economics.*
>
> That said, there is the problem of copyright, meaning that any collection
> of texts we make is going to be restricted to authors deceased by 1925 (or
> thereabouts - the situation varies for different countries) and will
> therefore not be representative of the whole discipline, especially its
> modern manifestations.
>
> I also think that there is an increase in academic production over time;
> more works, and certainly more organizations and journals, the closer you
> get to the present day. Not only does the copyright problem hide this, but
> it also makes listing all the works individually on a google spreadsheet an
> endless task. But to be selective is to introduce bias.
>
> Journals are a particular problem - I think publishing a collection of
> articles by different authors on a regular basis in a serial is a real
> revolution in the production of knowledge, and needs to be considered very
> differently to the books and pamphlets that predominated up until the late
> c19th. (Of course, books are still published, and they can be very
> influential.)
>
> That said, at least journals are, by their very nature, collected together
> and come with ample metadata 'built in'; far easier to get when compared to
> gathering up disparate authors and texts published all over the place, as I
> fear we might be doing with the google spreadsheet.
>
> I think the best hope we have with journals, where they are in copyright,
> is to pressure the publishers for access to datamining, even if we can't
> get the texts outright.
>
>
>  Would those journal articles also enter the public domain when death +
>> 70 years apply?
>>
>>
> I don't know the answer to this; does anyone else on the list know?
>
> John
>
>
>
>  Guo
>>
>> On 4 January 2013 14:24, John Levin <john at anterotesis.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> Okay, I've taken the plunge, and started a google spreadsheet to list
>>> open
>>> economics texts, along the lines of that started by Open Philosophy:
>>> https://docs.google.com/**spreadsheet/ccc?key=**
>>> 0Ah5rUXTj4nHcdElMN25kMHQ1T0NyR**lUzT01hb2VPRWc<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ah5rUXTj4nHcdElMN25kMHQ1T0NyRlUzT01hb2VPRWc>
>>>
>>> (open phil doc at:
>>> https://docs.google.com/**spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ams8fpz2_**
>>> 77XdHNMeVB4SGsxMi1nQUFneHFKX2l**4T2c&hl=en_GB#gid=0<https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ams8fpz2_77XdHNMeVB4SGsxMi1nQUFneHFKX2l4T2c&hl=en_GB#gid=0>
>>> )
>>>
>>> I've put some entries in, but just as samples really. Please jump in and
>>> add
>>> what you can.
>>>
>>> Hopefully, when the spreadsheet has been populated, we can look at doing
>>> something similar to Open Philosophy with the texts.
>>>
>>> John
>>>
>>>
>>> On 04/01/2013 11:01, Jonathan Gray wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> There have been numerous threads on which authors' works enter the
>>>> public domain in 2013 on our pd-discuss mailing list [1]. Presumably
>>>> economics authors would be a subset of this.
>>>>
>>>> It depends on which jurisdiction you're in, but if you're in a country
>>>> where death + 70 years applies, you could try looking for economists
>>>> that died in 1942 on DBpedia.
>>>>
>>>> Would be curious to hear how you get on!
>>>>
>>>> All the best,
>>>>
>>>> Jonathan
>>>>
>>>> [1] E.g. see:
>>>> http://lists.okfn.org/**pipermail/pd-discuss/2013-**January/date.html<http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/pd-discuss/2013-January/date.html>and
>>>> http://lists.okfn.org/**pipermail/pd-discuss/2012-**December/date.html<http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/pd-discuss/2012-December/date.html>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 2:09 PM, John Levin <john at anterotesis.com
>>>> <mailto:john at anterotesis.com>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>      On 02/01/2013 12:36, Jia Lyng wrote:
>>>>       > Hi everybody, Happy New Year!
>>>>       > And Happy 2013 Public Domain new additions!
>>>>       >
>>>>       > I just got an inquiry from my other Econ networks, asking about
>>>>      authors
>>>>       > and works of economics accessible as public domain. Do you have
>>>>      such a
>>>>       > database?
>>>>       >
>>>>       > All best wishes,
>>>>       > jia
>>>>       > --
>>>>       > Berlin Chapter
>>>>       > Young Scholars Initiative
>>>>       > Institute for New Economic Thinking
>>>>       > +49 (0) 157 887 44 884 <tel:%2B49%20%280%29%20157%**
>>>> 20887%2044%20884>
>>>>       > twitter: @YSIBerlin
>>>>       >
>>>>
>>>>      Compiling (and mining) such a list is something I have wanted to do
>>>>      for a while. As far as I know, although there are many
>>>> digitizations
>>>>      freely available on the net (eg on archive.org <http://archive.org
>>>> >
>>>>      & google books), there isn't actually a database of them.
>>>>
>>>>      I'm waiting to see how open philosophy http://openphilosophy.org/
>>>>      and textus http://textusproject.org/ work; they could be the
>>>> example
>>>>      to follow.
>>>>
>>>>      Although, of course, if there's sufficient interest now, I'd be
>>>> very
>>>>      happy to work on such a project immediately.
>>>>
>>>>      John
>>>>
>>>
> --
> John Levin
> http://www.anterotesis.com
> http://twitter.com/anterotesis
>
>
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-- 
Head of Berlin Chapter
Young Scholars Initiative
Institute for New Economic Thinking
+49 (0) 157 887 44 884
twitter: @YSIBerlin
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