Growth, jobs and more

I have been involved in publishing on the World-Wide-Web since 1992 and with scholarly publishing since 1995, also as a co-editor of a peer-reviewed journal ITcon and a coordinator of a framework program SciX, that was studying the topic in depth. The bottom line is that in the scientific publishing process there is a decreasing value added by the publishers. The research is funded by the governments or the industry, performed by the researchers, papers are written and reviewed by them for free, only at the very end a publisher comes along that takes over the copyright, publishes the work and sells the journal at great expense to the community that created and edited the content for free. At the Competitiveness (Internal market, Industry and Research) Council meeting in Brussels, on 22 and 23 November 2007 a conclusion has been reached on scientific information in the digital age: access, dissemination and preservation . It recognizes: the major contribution of universities, internati...

Soon after I became a government minister in March 2007 I started a blog in Slovenian language . A very natural decision, because I have been a computer geek since early 1980s. I blog to share my thoughts about politics, science and technology, research and development, sustainable development, day to day life etc. And also to get feedback from the citizens, sometimes even from colleagues-politicians. In the first half of 2008, Slovenia is taking over the presidency of the EU , more specifically, it will preside over the European Council. Ministers of our government are involved in the preparations and will be involved in the presidency. So there is much to blog about in English as well. The European Union, as an abstract entity, is aware of the problem of communicating the policies to the citizens . But the EU are also very concrete people with ideas, thoughts and worries. As a minister in a member state government I am one of them. By taking an open, direct, two way approach to commu...