The Academic Copyright in the Age of Commodification of Scientific Research

Abstract

There is a large stream of literature related to academic copyright. Nonetheless, a comprehensive interdisciplinary analysis of the interplay between economic rights and moral right of paternity appears to be missing. Furthermore, the impact of commodification of research on academic copyright has not been sufficiently investigated. The basic thesis of this article is that academic copyright with reference to academic texts is currently going through a distortion that alters its nature and functions. This distortion is one of the effects of commodification of scientific research. This paper dwells on these aspects with a focus on the role of modern science and the context in which research is performed and highlights the perverse effects of the current evaluation system based on metrics and numbers and the scientific publishing system dominated by an oligopoly of information and analytics providers. Open Science can represent a tool to defend independence of science and academic freedom, though strong actions are required to change the current situation.