The International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR)
is planning to launch the Charter below in Tunis, after having announced
it in its prepcom3 side-event
Worldwide, research activity is confronted by diminishing budgets and
increasing control of output by a variety of actors including governments,
while researchers are being submitted to unprecedented and deleterious
changes in their status, salaries and the independence of their investigations.
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) has helped to foster
discussion worldwide on the need for unhindered and equal access to the
means of communication and information content. The importance of information
arising from high quality research in the humanities and the sciences
has not, however, been sufficiently emphasized during the Summit. It has
not emphasized the central role played by researchers in producing information,
in promoting a better understanding of media and ICT systems and their
content and functions, and in developing culturally relevant content and
fostering communication in support of the attainment of inclusive and
people-centred Knowledge Societies. Therefore, the International Association
for Media and Communications Research (IAMCR) calls upon researchers worldwide
to subscribe to the following Researchers' Charter principles and recommendations
for action:
Charter Principles:
1. Researchers worldwide constitute a community of scholars that is
central to the development of societies in which knowledge, information
and culture are produced and appropriated in the service of humankind
and in which researchers are entitled to seek, retrieve, receive and distribute
information freely, regardless of geographical borders and the medium
used, supported by information exchange enabled by ICTs;
2. Researchers¹ work should be conducted in working conditions
which acknowledge that research is crucial to knowledge production and
intellectual development and that researchers¹ contributions to knowledge
are significant in achieving a better understanding among peoples, cultures
and disciplinary traditions;
3. Researchers should be entitled to intellectual freedom and to transparent
evaluation of their results by independent, legitimate public bodies;
to express themselves as freely as possible without censorship or curtailment
of the distribution of their intellectual outputs using all media and
ICTs so as to maintain and expand the global public domain of research
and to foster the capacity to contribute to cultural diversity, as well
as to ensure informed participation by all citizens in social, cultural
and economic activities, thereby promoting a democratic environment at
all levels and in all contexts;
4. The results of publicly funded research should remain in the public
domain so as to support the development, education and welfare of the
general population; public archives, libraries, repositories of content
and other Internet and information services worldwide should be accessible
to researchers without barriers to access;
5. The universal free exchange among researchers of intellectual work
should be regarded as being of critical importance to maintaining a democratic
order; it is integral to capacity building for equitable development,
to overcoming differences in gender and training, particularly with respect
to women and junior researchers especially in developing countries, and
in accessing other resources essential for development; it must be regarded
as a common good and nurtured as a participatory and collective process
involving a network of distributed intellectual work that contributes
to lifelong capacity-building in all realms of human activity;
6. Culturally appropriate learning and research practices should be
developed to foster community-based self-supporting systems of research;
to promote open, collaborative and self-organizing publishing models and
software development methods that are accessible to researchers and available
in not-for-profit databases, libraries and archives; thereby supporting
researchers as content producers and as active participants in the open
access paradigm of knowledge creation and exchange, as outlined in various
initiatives.[1]
Implementing the Charter:
a. IAMCR invites all researchers, including educators and computer and
information science professionals, to adhere to the above principles,
by signing this Charter.
b. IAMCR invites researchers to strengthen opportunities for cooperation
and exchange and to foster communication with all sectors of society with
the aim of promoting greater understanding of the role and relevance of
research and knowledge and their wide dissemination in society, by mobilizing
decision makers worldwide to develop clear policies to implement the above
principles.
c. IAMCR recommends the establishment of an independent internationalResearchers¹
Complaints body where researchers can lodge complaints about violations
of the above principles and receive an unbiased hearing; such a body should
have a mandate to make cases public and to publicise university administrations
and governments that violate these principles.
Signing this Charter:
IAMCR invites the world's leading bodies that support these principles
and individuals to sign this Charter at http://www.PetitionOnline.com/iamcr/
and to disseminate this Charter widely.
Contact: divina.frau-meigs@univ-paris3.fr
[1] Budapest
Open Access Initiative, Berlin
Declaration, Creative Commons,
Open Courseware Initiative,
IFLA Internet Manifesto,
etc.
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