[GOAL] Free Knowledge: confronting the commodification of human discovery

[Heather Morrison]

Members of the list may be interested in the chapters of this new book from University of Regina Press (edited by Patricia Elliott & Daryl H. Hepting), available for free download here:
http://uofrpress.ca/publications/Free-Knowledge

The chapters by Sally Mahood on "Privated knowledge and the pharmaceutical industry" and Arthus Shafer on "Pseudo-evidence based medicine: when biomedical research becomes an adjunct of pharmaceutical marketing" may be particularly useful for OA activists looking for ways to compare the current issues with predatory OA publishers with pre-existing problematic practices in scholarly research and publication such as the problems arising downstream from massive pharmaceutical funding of medical research and "education".

Disclosure: the book ends with my chapter which represents my current perspectives on open access (but that's not why I am recommending the book, rather the other chapters). Readers outside of the university system would benefit from reading the whole book to get a sense of how the context of open access fits into the broader context of current issues in scholarly communication. 

best,

Heather Morrison