This week UAEM was invited along with Doctors Without Borders/MSF and Oxfam to participate in Canadian government consultations on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). ACTA is has been highly controversial due to the secrecy with which it has been negotiated and the lack of clarity of the intentions of the negotiating parties. You can read more about the controversy here.

Today, UAEM along with Knowledge Ecology International and the Electronic Frontier Foundation made a submission to the Canadian government on the future of the ACTA negotiations which can be read below. Read more »

Thanks to the heroic efforts of Taylor Gilliland, Gloria Tavera and many others, UAEM has just released the first edition of our newsletter. Read it here.

The newsletter will be released on a quarterly basis and in advance of the next edition we’ll be asking for submissions and new ideas. Thanks to the many people who contributed to putting it together.

UAEM is a part of a coalition of student groups that today launched a statement on the right to research by improving open access to research. You can read the statement and press release at http://www.righttoresearch.org/.

Student Statement on The Right to Research

Scholarly knowledge is part of the common wealth of humanity.

Unfortunately, not everyone has access to the scholarly literature, despite advances in communications technology. The high cost of academic journals restricts access to knowledge; in some fields, prices can reach $20,000 for a single journal subscription1 or $30 for an individual article.2 Despite these high prices, authors of scholarly articles are not paid for their work. The profits from these publications go solely to the publishers of the journals. A vast amount of research is funded from public sources – yet taxpayers are locked out by the cost of access.

Learning and inquiry are impeded when scholars lack access to fellow researchers’ work, and when students lack access to the work of scholars before them. Read more »

Hillary Chen, a member of our board who has headed up our alumni outreach efforts, has put together the first edition of our alumni newsletter. You can download it here.

In the future, alumni news will be included as a regular part of the UAEM newsletter.