[open-economics] works of Economics in Public Domain

Jia Lyng jialyng at ysicommons.org
Thu Jan 24 19:53:26 UTC 2013


Dear all,

Link for open access to several classics of Political Economy:

http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/

which ways to get systematic on collecting all those different sources and
bringing forward to a wider public?
best
jia


Berlin Chapter
Young Scholars Initiative
Institute for New Economic Thinking
+49 (0) 157 887 44 884
twitter: @YSIBerlin


On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 11:04 PM, Jia Lyng <jialyng at ysicommons.org> wrote:

> 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
>>
>>
>> ______________________________**_________________
>> open-economics mailing list
>> open-economics at lists.okfn.org
>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/**listinfo/open-economics<http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-economics>
>> Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/**options/open-economics<http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-economics>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Head of Berlin Chapter
> Young Scholars Initiative
> Institute for New Economic Thinking
> +49 (0) 157 887 44 884
> twitter: @YSIBerlin
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-economics/attachments/20130124/c433817b/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the open-economics mailing list