Information and knowledge are "natural resources" of the current information epoch, so fight for getting hold of them becomes one of forms of global competition.   The mankind spends more and more on production of new knowledge and information, which become a source of social and economic development for particular countries, communities and personalities. It is more important for a scientist to manifest the results of his efforts and to fix his priority as a discoverer, than to extract profit from a published article.  

In the scientific community the understanding of the fact that not only articles but also data obtained in the course of researches must be available in the free access and serve others is becoming more popular. Movement of open data, which the authorities must make a public domain, is welcomed by scientists with no less and even greater enthusiasm.  

One of the most perfect legal constructions allowing nowadays exercising simple, open, free, legal and transparent distribution of results of intellectual activity in science is the family of licenses Creative Commons. Today hundreds of scientific magazines are being published under these licenses allowing free use of results of scientific researches, and at the same time they strictly protect rights of the authors requesting absolute attribution for each product.

In Russia many problems associated with free use of results of scientific researches depend on imperfection of legislation, amendments to which have been developing for several years. The quicker it is completed, the sooner authors will have opportunity to be masters of their creations’ fates.

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