Access to education and educational materials is a global issue. Intellectual property (IP) law and policy govern the way educational materials can be accessed and used. The restrictions that are imposed by strong IP governance can play a ‘critical role’ in the way humans are afforded opportunities to live full lives. According to human development theory, removing barriers that impose restrictions on a person’s freedom can assist in human development and growth.
There is a clear and deep connection between a person’s freedom and the possibility of social development— an individual’s ability to progress and achieve is significantly influenced by the opportunities and access they have to certain freedoms such as financial stability, political liberty, social choice, basic education, access to medicine, and support and encouragement for their development. If individuals are provided ‘adequate social opportunities’, such as the ability to access and engage with education and educational materials, they ‘…can effectively shape their own destiny and help each other’.
By attempting to address some of the problems associated with access to educational materials, aspects of the educational experience may be improved for those in higher education. By drawing on human development theory to better understand the governance of knowledge within the context of higher education, I explore the social problems encountered within publishing, and in Open Education Resources (OER). Specifically, the social dilemmas relating to access, flow of information, collective action, and the intersection of formal IP laws and the non-formal rules and practices of the communities who create, disseminate, and consume the knowledge resources. Lastly, I consider how open publishing in higher education provides an avenue to highlight significant issues such as those contained in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
The use of open publishing in education, including the publishing of open textbooks, has the potential to help us develop more equity in higher education by providing avenues for individuals to access information and knowledge without the strict IP governance that is associated with traditional educational materials. Such a holistic approach to education publishing aligns with many of the goals of human development as it supports freedom and provides greater social opportunities for individuals to flourish.
In the absence of change to the IP framework, open publishing provides an alternative which has the tools and capacities to support the goals of human development. A more grounded, holistic approach to publishing for education offers a framework to better support and consider social justice issues relating to access and the use of IP such as diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as avenues to highlight issues related to sustainable development.
Included in
[Session 2E]: OER in Higher EducationReferencesJulia Janewa OseiTutu, ‘Human Development as a Core Objective of Global Intellectual Property’ (2016) 105(1) Kentucky Law Journal 1, 1;
Madhavi Sunder, From Goods to a Good Life: Intellectual Property and Global Justice (Yale University Press, 2012);
Madhavi Sunder, ‘IP3’ (2006) 59(2) Stanford Law Review 257;
Ruth L Okediji, ‘Reframing International Copyright Limitations and Exceptions as Development Policy’ in Ruth L Okediji (ed), Copyright Law in an Age of Limitations and Exceptions (Cambridge University Press, 2017) 429;
Martha C Nussbaum, Creating Capabilities The Human Development Approach (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011);
Margaret Chon, ‘Intellectual Property and the Development Divide’ (2006) 27(6) Cardonzo Law Review 2821;
Amartya Sen, ‘Capability and Well-Being’ in Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (eds), The Quality of Life (Oxford University Press, 1993) 30, 33.
Author KeywordsOpen Education, Open Publishing, Sustainable Development Goals, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion
