Contribution

The Right to Science and Open Access to Legal Knowledge: An International Law(yer) Perspective

The paper aims to addressing the issue of the dissemination of the results of scientific research, and in particular of legal scholarship, in an international/EU law perspective.

The international legal order contains the definition of the right to science in the art. 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; the same right, repeatedly cited in several acts adopted by the United Nations, is also included in binding universal and regional instruments and, in the form of the principle of sharing the benefits deriving from scientific research, is also applied in international treaties pertaining specific issues.

Once affirmed the existence of a right to science in contemporary international law, less unambiguous is the reconstruction of both its nature and content: while some authors conceive it as an independent right, that adds to other fundamental rights and deserves an autonomous protection inasmuch, as it is aimed at increasing the material and spiritual quality of the life of individuals and collectivities, other scholars build it as a mere instrument for the implementation of “classic” fundamental rights such as culture or health.

Among the main concrete applications of the right to science there’s the one related to the free dissemination of research results, promoted in the scientific community by the well known “open access” movement, whose principles were defined in two declarations, adopted respectively in Budapest in 2002 and in Berlin in 2003. It is even more relevant in for the quest of the open access for the best ways to disseminate the results of public funded research: one may think, for instance, to how the dissemination of these results through publications distributed by private companies asking fees could infringe the right of access to science itself.

Despite the aforementioned widespread diffusion in the international legal order, the concrete scope of the right to access to scientific knowledge, however, only recently was addressed by the international legal scholarship: it’s time that international legal doctrine, looks into the mirror and starts the quest for the right of its own diffusion.

Related Session:

October 11th, 2018
Session II.A. Open Science and Law: from Policy to Practice
14:30-16:20
Aula Magna of the Rectorate of the University of Florence