I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at The University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. I received my PhD at the Université du Québec à Montréal in 2002. My research interests include symplectic geometry and topology, low-dimensional geometry, geometric analysis, with a view to mathematical physics.
Martin Pinsonnault
Department of Mathematics
The University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario N6A 5B7
Canada
Office phone: (519) 661-2111 x81149
Fax: (519) 661-3610 (include my full name)
E-mail: mpinson "at" uwo "dot" ca
Western has, with the University of Toronto, entered into an agreement with Access Copyright (AC), the licensing body responsible for regulating the reproduction and use of copyrighted materials in the education sector. There is growing criticism of this decision from the academic community, including a critique from the CAUT, and from people who specialize in the areas of copyright law, fair-dealing, and the education sector.
Among other troubling issues, the new Access Copyright agreement sets in motion a process that could eventually permit audits of faculty and librarian & archivist email to ensure compliance and accounting inventory with the terms of the agreement. Under these terms, the URL links above have been defined as instances of digital reproduction or “copying”. The university has now publicly declared that there will be no inspection of faculty emails under the terms of the agreement. They have also publicly stated that there will be no inspection, restriction, or monitoring of faculty activities pursuant to the Access Copyright agreement.
Two outstanding issues remain. The first is whether or not an URL constitutes a "copy." The second regards the status of online course materials, that is, whether or not the university can inspect those files under the terms of the AC agreement.
The cost of knowledge is a web page at which one may register a protest against the practices of Elsevier by pledging not to submit a paper to an Elsevier journal, not to referee for an Elsevier journal, not to join an editorial board of an Elsevier journal, or some combination of the three. This site was inspired by the following blog post: