There's a growing movement among academicians and their institutions to retain the copyright on articles published in scholarly journals, rather than turning those rights over to the publisher as is usual. If you're going to change that system, copyright is the nexus that you have to go after. Other universities now considering turning the tables on publishers include Yale University and the University of Kansas. Koonin would like to see Caltech and its faculty members jointly own copyright to journal articles and to license those rights to publishers on a limited basis. Publishers have basically been getting a free good up to this point - which is the copyright.
Publishers are less than enthusiastic about the movement.
Whichever bills failed to pass before the 105th Congress adjourns will die, and will need to be reintroduced into the 106th Congress next January. In distance education, the cornerstone to a market responsive programming strategy is a reliable market intelligence system. Such a system can be established by developing a type of computer database known as a knowledge tree. The real time data in the knowledge tree helps keep decision-makers abreast of the various interactions that occur between the service offering, the consumers, and the environmental influences. From a strategic planning standpoint, this feedback is absolutely critical.