Should all academic writings be free for us by anyone on the Web? The Virtues of Openness examines the complex history of the concept of the open society before beginning a systematic investigation of openness in relation to the book, the "open text" and the written word. These changes are discussed in relation to the development of new open spaces of scholarship with their impact upon open journal systems, open peer review, open science, and the open global digital economy. The Virtues of Openness argues that openness suggests political transparency and the norms of open inquiry, indeed, even democracy itself as both the basis of the logic of inquiry and the dissemination of its results.
