Information policies from the republic of science to the realm of innovation

The "information factor" is increasingly becoming an economic issue in the contemporary society. In fact, since the seminal work of Machlup (1962), where a new economic sector was identified as the "information industry", increasingly the idea of a post-industrial society emerged and evolved into the idea of "information economy", that is, an economy based on information. Nevertheless, despite such a pivotal role, information is still largely absent from the priorities of the national policies for the Information Society, which appear mainly focused on the technological dimension of the dominating communication processes. The main question addressed in the paper is how a National Information Policy should be defined, given the conflicting interests of the Information Economy. The focus is on Scientific Information Policies, since it is this area of information that is more strictly linked to the Lisbon Strategy's goal of making Europe the most competitive knowledge-based society in the world.