Sützl, WolfgangStalder, FelixMaier, RonaldLawrie, Magnus2018-10-082018-10-082012978-3-902811-74-5https://mediarep.org/handle/doc/3674In recent years, instrumentalist agendas have had a profound impact, internationally, on the definition and delivery of education. Strengthened by the economic crisis, these agendas today threaten to dissolve the uniqueness of many academic institutions. Communities of practitioners which depend upon these organizations find themselves pushed into ever more precarious economic relations. Media attention has highlighted the idea of information as a public good and brought the ethics of information sharing to the nub of a debate over openness in society. Is the focus on permeability, on access and integration, an opportunity to advance the ideal of academic gift exchange or a threat to its distinctive forms? How can individuals and cooperating groups (often time-limited research partnerships) within educational institutions gain through sharing as a social act? What effect can individuals have in forming sustainable creative networks and what chances do such networks have for embedding a lasting culture of sharing (of cooperative and interdisciplinary practices) within institutions, both educational and social, both institutional and self-instituted? The paper addresses these questions, by reference to the project Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice (ELMCIP) and some of its linked organizations. ELMCIP is a collaboration between several European academic institutions which aims to 'develop a network based creative community', focused on practitioners and theorists in the field of Electronic Literature. It has recently joined several international organizations with the objective to share datasets on published digital literature across a number of platforms. What are the influencing factors in such ventures and how might this cooperation be informed by methods evolved by P2P and Open Access communities? How can sharing be engaged from a social dimension in order to encourage sustainability beyond the lifetime of projects such as ELMCIP?engIn Copyrightsharingeconomycommunitydatabase30010.25969/mediarep/2023978-3-902811-74-5http://dx.doi.org/10.25969/mediarep/806