This has resulted in a concept of information as a free resource which can be shared by all. Those who place information in their gopher for others may also be interested in retrieving information from other gophers. Of course, like all electronic media, gophers cannot be free from problems. A vast free worldwide store of information can do wonders for intelligence services, and its no surprise that Internet was developed by the US military. This aside, gophers have considerable implications for academic research and publishing.
Academics are major producers of information.
The current culture of the gopher seeks to change the system by enabling access, both to the providers of information and to the users of this information, relatively free of the constraints of classification categories or the bureaucracy of traditional publishing, at both the publication end and the distribution end. At present the gopher is used as a resource for a range of material in its pre-publication stage, or for which the copyright has been reserved by the author. Conference papers are an excellent example of this material. For example, the LTC Gopher will have the text of the papers of the rent Critical Legal Conference at Oxford. If gophers are an advantage for researchers, they can be enormously valuable for students - provided they are given access.