Writing, publishing and disseminating new scientific knowledge is a significant part of the academics’ activity. “Publish or perish” is (or should be at least) the tenet governing the everyday life and the career of university researchers. Moreover, it is a way for actively participating to the scientific debate and to the invisible colleges characterizing the research environment and far exceeding the boundaries of the single institutions. Copyright of course enters the scene as the legal device regulating in general the production of books and journal’s articles. However, in this case its meaning is somewhat reversed from the usual role: whereas the economic dimension and the royalties of copyright are normally the most important constituent for the entertainment and media markets, in academia the moral component gets the lion share and it is narrowly connected the scientist’s reputation, the most important currency within the scientific community.
Moreover, an idiosyncratic social norms spontaneously emerged in the scientific community with the aim of fostering the selection and the circulation of idea validated in some way, as the publication in itself has no meaning without a proper recognition by the peers’ community. This favored the endorsement on one hand of the blind peer-review system, employed to maintain standards in research outcomes and on the other hand the ranking systems such as the impact factor, devoted to provide a qualitative differentiation among journals and hence articles. At present all the above has an important effect directly in determining researchers’ career and indirectly in attracting the attention of follow-on researchers, as readers and authors, obviously with consequences on the research decision.
The goal of this conference is to shed lights on the the previous issues with the aim to provide a proper representation of the complex system governing the production and the dissemination of scientific knowledge, so far heavily relying upon scholarly publishing.

An international conference organized by the Istituto POLIS, Dipartimento DiGSPES, Università del Piemonte Orientale con il contributo della Fondazione CRT, Torino in collaborazione con la Fondazione Luigi Einaudi Torino, il Dipartimento Cognetti De Martiis,Università di Torino e IEL, InternationalProgramme in Institutions, Economics & Law