<div dir="ltr"><div><div>Maintaining organizations against being taken over or pwned is critical. I believe in ThomasK and PaulG, but no human is immortal. The inevitable outcome of useful public innovation is privatization, unless formal steps are taken to protect it. This can be done by a trusted organization (I would trust most Scientific Unions but not most scientific societies, for example).<br><br></div>The most powerful mechanism , which I would promote , is legal constraints in the organization. One of the best known is the GPL. In the Shuttleworth Foundation (which funds ContentMine) we have been discussing this in depth and we are now integrating legal tools such as OpenLock, MissionLock and AssetLock. These are formal phrases, enforceable by courts, which prevent certain change of direction. These tools would have prevented SSRN from this disaster.<br><br></div>You can trust that ContentMine cannot be taken over by Mendeley because we have a clause in the Articles of Association. I think arXiv and RePeC should consider protection like this.<br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 9:04 PM, Ted Bergstrom <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:tedb@econ.ucsb.edu" target="_blank">tedb@econ.ucsb.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div>Hooray for RePEc! <br></div>Thomas, Is there a short answer to the question:<br></div>"How do we know RePEc can't be bought?"<br></div>Do you have any advice to offer economists who are wary of <br></div>the SSRN sellout? <br><br><br></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, May 17, 2016 at 11:47 AM, Thomas Krichel <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:krichel@openlib.org" target="_blank">krichel@openlib.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><br>
Stevan Harnad writes<br>
<br>
> Shame on SSRN.<br>
<br>
Why? I am certainly looking forward to SSRN becoming as undynamic as<br>
Mendeley after an Elsevier takeover.<span class=""><br>
<span><br>
> I don't know about Arxiv (needless centralization and its concentrated<br>
> expenses are always vulnerabe to faux-benign take-overs) but what's sure is<br>
> that the distributed network of Green institutional repositories worldwide<br>
> is not for sale, and that is their strength...<br>
<br>
</span></span> RePEc can not be bought either. I created it before institutional<br>
repositories came along. It is based on the same principles as<br>
institutional repositories.<br>
<span><font color="#888888"><br><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<br>
--<br>
<br>
Cheers,<br>
<br>
Thomas Krichel <a href="http://openlib.org/home/krichel" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">http://openlib.org/home/krichel</a><br>
skype:thomaskrichel<br>
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<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature">Peter Murray-Rust<br>Reader in Molecular Informatics<br>Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry<br>University of Cambridge<br>CB2 1EW, UK<br>+44-1223-763069</div>
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