Peter Suber

{{Short description|American philosopher and open access advocate}}

{{Infobox scientist

| name = Peter Suber

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| image = Peter-Suber8.jpg

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| caption = Suber in 2009

| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|1951|11|08}}

| birth_place = Evanston, Illinois, U.S.

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| fields = Open access
Philosophy
Ethics
Logic

| workplaces = Northwestern University
Earlham College
Harvard University
Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition
Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society
Wikimedia Foundation
Open Knowledge Foundation
Public Knowledge

| alma_mater = Earlham College (BA)
Northwestern University (MA, PhD, JD)

| thesis_title = Kierkegaard's Concept of Irony especially in relation to Freedom, Personality and Dialectic

| thesis_url = https://www.proquest.com/docview/302891187

| thesis_year = 1978

| doctoral_advisor = William A. Earle

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| known_for = Nomic
Open access{{sfn|Suber|2012}}
Budapest Open Access Initiative

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| awards = Lyman Ray Patterson Copyright Award (2011)

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| website = {{URL|http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/~psuber/wiki/Peter_Suber}}
{{URL|https://legacy.earlham.edu/~peters/hometoc.htm}}
{{URL|http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/people/psuber}}

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| spouse = Liffey Thorpe

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Peter Dain Suber (born November 8, 1951) is an American philosopher specializing in the philosophy of law and open access to knowledge. He is a Senior Researcher at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Director of the Harvard Office for Scholarly Communication,{{cite web|url=https://osc.hul.harvard.edu/|title=Home | Harvard OSC|website=osc.hul.harvard.edu}} and Director of the Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP).{{GoogleScholar|ogK4ZGQAAAAJ}}{{cite web|url=https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/Main_Page|title=Harvard Open Access Project|website=cyber.harvard.edu}}{{AcademicSearch|3045213}} Suber is known as a leading voice in the open access movement,{{cite journal | first1=M. A. | last1=Rogawski | title=Support for the NIH Public Access Policy | last2=Suber | first2=P. | journal=Science | year=2006 | volume=313 | issue=5793 | pages=1572a | doi=10.1126/science.313.5793.1572a | pmid=16973859| s2cid=46332553 }}{{cite web|url=http://www.library.uiuc.edu/scholcomm/curraware.html |title=Keeping Up To Date On Scholarly Communication Issues |publisher=Library.uiuc.edu |access-date=2010-02-25}} and as the creator of the game Nomic.

Education

Suber graduated from Earlham College in 1973, received a PhD degree in philosophy in 1978, writing a dissertation on Søren Kierkegaard{{cite thesis |degree=PhD |first=Peter Dain|last=Suber |title=Kierkegaard's Concept of Irony especially in relation to Freedom, Personality and Dialectic |publisher=Northwestern University |date=1978 |author-link=Peter Suber|id={{ProQuest|302891187}}}}{{subscription required}} and a Juris Doctor degree in 1982, both from Northwestern University.

Career

Previously, Suber was senior research professor of philosophy at Earlham College, the open access project director at Public Knowledge, a senior researcher at Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC).{{cite web |url=http://www.arl.org/sparc/index.html |title=SPARC |publisher=Arl.org |date=2009-11-06 |access-date=2010-02-25 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080907173420/http://www.arl.org/sparc/index.html |archive-date=2008-09-07 |url-status=dead }} He is a member of the Board of Enabling Open Scholarship,{{cite web|url=http://www.openscholarship.org/jcms/j_6/home|title=Enabling Open Scholarship (EOS) - EOS - Home|url-status=usurped|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100615204723/http://www.openscholarship.org/jcms/j_6/home|archive-date=2010-06-15}} the Advisory Boards at the Wikimedia Foundation, the Open Knowledge Foundation, and the advisory boards of other organizations devoted to open access and an information commons.

Suber worked as a stand-up comic from 1976 to 1981, including an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1976. Suber returned to Earlham College as a professor from 1982 to 2003 where he taught classes on philosophy, law, logic, and Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, among other topics. In 1997, he launched Hippias (later Noesis), a web search engine for the field of philosophy.{{cite journal |last1=Beavers |first1=Anthony F. |title=Noesis and the Encyclopedic Internet Vision |journal=Synthese |date=2011 |volume=182 |issue=2 |pages=315–33|doi=10.1007/s11229-009-9663-0 }}

Suber participated in the 2001 meeting that led to the world's first major international open access initiative, the Budapest Open Access Initiative. He wrote Open Access News and the SPARC Open Access Newsletter, considered the most authoritative blog and newsletter on open access. He is also the founder of the Open Access Tracking Project, and co-founder, with Robin Peek, of the Open Access Directory.

In philosophy, Suber is the author of The Paradox of Self-Amendment,{{cite book |author=Suber, Peter |title=The paradox of self-amendment: a study of logic, law, omnipotence, and change |publisher=P. Lang |location=Frankfurt am Main |year=1990 |url=http://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/10243418 |isbn=0-8204-1212-0 }}{{Open access}} the first book-length study of self-referential paradoxes in law, and The Case of the Speluncean Explorers: Nine New Opinions,{{cite book |author=Suber, Peter |title=The case of the speluncean explorers: nine new opinions |publisher=Routledge |location=New York |year=1998 |isbn=0-415-18546-7 }} the first book-length "rehearing" of Lon Fuller's classic, fictional case. He has also written many articles on self-reference, ethics, formal and informal logic, the philosophy of law, and the history of philosophy.{{cite web|last1=Suber|first1=Peter|title=Writings|url=http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/~psuber/wiki/Writings|publisher=Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society}}

He has written many articles on open access to science and scholarship.{{cite web|last1=Suber|first1=Peter|title=Writings on Open Access|url=http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/~psuber/wiki/Writings_on_open_access|publisher=Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society}}{{Open access}} His 2012 book, Open Access, was published by MIT Press and released under a Creative Commons license.{{sfn|Suber|2012}} His latest book is a collection of 44 of his most influential articles about open access, Knowledge Unbound: Selected Writings on Open Access, 2002–2010, also published by MIT Press under a Creative Commons license.{{cite book |author=Suber, Peter |title=Knowledge Unbound|url=http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap/Knowledge_Unbound |publisher=The MIT Press |location=Cambridge, Massachusetts |year=2016 |isbn=978-0262528498 }}{{Open access}}

Suber has directed the development of TagTeam since its start in 2011. TagTeam is an open-source, social-tagging platform developed for the Harvard Open Access Project at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.

Honours and awards

Lingua Franca magazine named Suber one of Academia's 20 Most Wired Faculty in 1999.{{cite web|url=http://linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org/9907/tech20.html|title=Lingua Franca July/August 1999|website=linguafranca.mirror.theinfo.org}} Readers of The Charleston Advisor gave him a special Readers' Choice Award in October 2006, "Non-Librarian Working for Our Cause." {{cite web|url=https://charleston.publisher.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/charleston/chadv/2006/00000008/00000002/art00001|title=The Charleston Advisor From Your Managing Editor Sixth Annual Readers' Choice Awards|website=charleston.publisher.ingentaconnect.com|date=October 2006 }} The American Library Association named him the winner of the Lyman Ray Patterson Copyright Award for 2011.{{cite web|url=http://www.ala.org/advocacy/copyright/pattersonaward|title=L. Ray Patterson Copyright Award|date=8 January 2007}} Choice named his book on Open Access{{sfn|Suber|2012}} "an Outstanding Academic Title for 2013."{{Cite web |url=http://www.cro3.org/content/51/05/759.full.pdf |title=Archived copy |access-date=2015-08-08 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923224530/http://www.cro3.org/content/51/05/759.full.pdf |archive-date=2015-09-23 |url-status=dead }}

File:Peter Suber at BOAI-10.ogv in February 2012.]]

Personal life

Suber is married to Liffey Thorpe, professor emerita of Classics at Earlham College, with whom he has two daughters. Since 2003, he and Thorpe have resided in Brooksville, Maine.{{cite web|title=Liffey's Home Page|url=http://legacy.earlham.edu/~liffeyt/|website=Earlham College}}

His mother was Grace Mary Stern,{{cite web | url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1998-05-19-9805190124-story.html | title=Ex-Legislator, Grace Mary Stern | website = Chicago Tribune = 19 May 1998| date=19 May 1998 }} who served in both houses of the Illinois state legislature.

Selected publications

Knowledge Unbound (MIT Press, 2016){{efn|Knowledge Unbound was released for free under the Creative Commons license, (See: Wikipedia:Text of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License) and may be downloaded for free from the Internet Archive.{{cite web |author1=Suber, Peter |title=Knowledge Unbound |url=https://archive.org/details/9780262029902/page/n0 |publisher=MIT Press |date=2016}}}}
{{cite Q|Q54410433|ref={{sfnref|Suber|2012}}}} . [https://cyber.harvard.edu/hoap/Open_Access_(the_book) Updates and supplements]
The Case of the Speluncean Explorers: Nine New Opinions (Routledge, 1998)
The Paradox of Self-Amendment: A Study of Logic, Law, Omnipotence, and Change (Peter Lang Publishing, 1990)
Self-Reference: Reflections on Reflexivity, co-edited with Steven J. Bartlett (Martinus Nijhoff, 1987)

Notes

References

External links

[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/~psuber/wiki/Peter_Suber Suber's home page]
[http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html Open Access News] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080117192748/http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/fosblog.html |date=2008-01-17 }} (Suber's former blog, May 2002 - April 2010)
[http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/archive.htm SPARC Open Access Newsletter (SOAN)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130202033143/http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/archive.htm |date=2013-02-02 }} (Suber's former newsletter, March 2001 - June 2013)
[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/~psuber/wiki/Writings_on_open_access Peter Suber's Writings on Open Access]
[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/~psuber/wiki/Writings Peter Suber's writings on philosophy and other subjects]
[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap Harvard Open Access Project (HOAP)]
[http://oad.simmons.edu Open Access Directory (OAD)]
[http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/hoap/Open_Access_Tracking_Project Open Access Tracking Project (OATP)] ({{oclc|1040261573}})
{{Google Scholar id|ogK4ZGQAAAAJ}}