Excerpts from the Free Online Scholarship (FOS) Newsletter
February 6, 2002
Elsevier CEO on the Public Library of Science
In the February issue of _Information Today_, Dick Kaser interviews
Elsevier CEO Derk Haank on his response to the Public Library of Science
(PLoS). Quoting Haank: "Elsevier...[is] much closer to a PLoS initiative
than anybody believes, because we are working toward the same end."
What Haank means is that Elsevier wants university researchers to have free
online access to all the journals they need for their research. What he
doesn't mention is that he wants universities to continue to pay high
prices for this access --a disagreement with PLoS at least as large as his
agreement.
There are roughly two ways to provide researchers with free access to
research literature. On the prevailing commercial model, universities pay
a lot of money for it, and institutions without a lot of money do
without. Researchers employed by paying universities needn't pay for
access out of their own pockets and in that sense get it for free. On the
FOS model, universities or other institutions pay a small amount of money
to disseminate articles published by their faculty, which are thereafter
freely available to everyone. The models differ on the size of subsidy,
what it pays for (access or dissemination), and the scope of free
access. On the commercial model, access is only free for the buyer's
lucky beneficiaries, such as employees, while on the FOS model it is free
for everyone. (For more on these two models, see FOSN for 1/1/02.)
Elsevier and the FOS movement (including PLoS) agree that users can have
free access if someone buys it for them. But they advocate these two very
different models with very different consequences. What divides them is
not a mere bookkeeping distinction, and not a mere difference of means to
the "same end".
Let's say that researchers have only a "narrow interest" in free access if
they only care whether they have access without paying for it. They don't
care whether it requires a large subsidy from their employer, rather than a
small one, and they don't care whether researchers without rich employers
are left in the cold. Haank assumes that researchers have only this narrow
interest.
Perhaps Haank is thinking that the wider interest that supports FOS adds
nothing to the narrow interest except political idealism. But this would
be a mistake. It's true that FOS will have far-reaching political
consequences, which include giving control of scholarship to scholars,
de-enclosing a commons, and serving the under-served. But it doesn't
follow that researchers who care only about research, and not these
consequences, have only the narrow interest that Haank attributes to
them. There are at least two very practical reasons for practical
researchers to transcend the narrow interest in free access. The first is
to see one's institution save money in its library budget that it could
then spend on other pressing needs, including other research needs met by
libraries. The second is that research advances more quickly and surely if
more people are able to participate. If the lesson of open source software
is that "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" (Eric Raymond), then
the analogous lesson of FOS is that "given enough researchers in the loop,
all research errors are shallow".
There are several other interesting points to observe about Haank's
position, beyond the way he overstates his agreement with PLoS.
The first is simply the extent to which Haank does agree with PLoS. He
admits that scholarly publishers have made a mistake to accept high
subscription prices at the expense of low circulation. He admits that "the
end-user gets poor service" and understands that this leads many to support
FOS initiatives like PLoS. He acknowledges that scholars want free access
to all scholarly journals. He acknowledges that moving journals online is
part of the solution. He wants free online access to journals for
end-users to be subsidized. This is all real, even if he doesn't
acknowledge the very large differences that remain.
The second is the way Haank acknowledges that there is a "movement" to
achieve free online access to scholarly journals, and the way he feels
constrained to position himself as agreeing with this movement. If his
project of aggregating journals and charging universities for them is
called X, then he could have said, "This movement is simply wrong. We will
do X despite its misguided arguments." But instead he said, "This movement
is right. We will do X and achieve its goal by a different means." The
same X could have been plugged into a criticism of the FOS movement, but he
felt obliged to spin it as agreement.
The third is an attitude toward FOS that belies his agreeable spin. He
argues that if publishers like Elsevier can put the research literature
online and disseminate it with efficiency and neutrality, then "the need
for these new initiatives will go away". Despite his rhetoric of
agreement, then, he doesn't understand the real motivation for preferring
FOS, doesn't accept it, and would rather make this movement go away than
serve it.
Dick Kaser, Ghost in a Bottle
http://www.infotoday.com/it/feb02/kaser.htm
Public Library of Science
http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org
* Postscript. In the same issue of _Information Today_ with the Haank
interview, Robin Peek writes on "The Future of the Public Library of
Science". Unfortunately this article is not part of the free online
edition of the paper, and I'm still in rural Maine without access to a
newsstand that carries _IT_. I'll recommend it sight-unseen on the theory
that it builds on the Kaser-Haank interview.
* PPS. I slightly oversimplified the commercial funding model above when I
said that institutions that cannot afford the price of access must do
without. There is a notable exception for institutions in developing
countries. A growing number of programs offers them free or discounted
subscriptions to a growing number of journals. On the one hand, publishers
who adopt tiered pricing in order to spread access to those who cannot
afford to pay full prices are truly spreading access and deserve
thanks. On the other hand, these publishers are cultivating new markets
and the dollar value of their "donation" is close to zero, since their
costs are already covered and we're talking about the marginal cost of
letting more people view their online files. Self-interest and generous
inclinations can coexist in publishers just as they can in researchers.
----------
Copyleft for science?
_NewScientist_ is intrigued by the success of open source software and the
claims that similar licensing arrangements for scientific literature could
enhance research. To inform readers and test the hypothesis, it published
an article by Graham Lawton in its February 2 issue on the general idea of
"copyleft", an alternative to copyright conceived by Richard Stallman in
the early 1980's.
"Copyleft" is a nickname for the GNU General Public License (GPL) that
covers "free software" in Stallman's sense of the term (FOSN for
1/30/02). Because Lawton's article is itself copylefted, "you can copy it,
redistribute it, reprint it in whole or in part, and generally play around
with it as long as you, too, release your version under a
copyleft...." I've posted a copy to the FOS discussion forum.
To stay on the safe side, _NewScientist_ has also copyrighted Lawton's
article, but has waived many of the rights traditionally retained by
copyright holders.
Because copylefted literature can be copied and distributed freely,
copyleft is one way to license literature for FOS. It's not the only way
of course. Traditional copyright is 100% compatible with FOS, if the
copyright holder consents to permit free online access and copying.
My only criticism of the Lawton article is that he implies that copyleft
is, or could be, beneficial for science, perhaps more beneficial than
copyright, but he doesn't tell us why. He spends more than three-fourths
of the article on copyleft for software, music, and even law, leaving
himself very little space to discuss copyleft for scientific
literature. When he finally gets to this topic, he focuses on Nupedia and
Wikipedia (FOSN for 10/26/01), resources that most scientists would not
recognize as serious.
If scientists were not only allowed to view, copy, and distribute articles
without charge, but also allowed to modify them and distribute the
modifications, would that benefit science? It might, but I'm still looking
for someone who is willing to be specific and detailed in telling us how.
NewScientist editorial explanation of the copyleft experiment
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/copyleft/
(Thanks to many readers who sent this in at once.)
Graham Lawton, The Great Giveaway (the copylefted article)
http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/copyleft/copyleftart.jsp
Copy of the Lawton article in the FOS discussioon forum
http://makeashorterlink.com/?E2411226
(Ready for further discussion.)
Terms of the copyleft license used by _NewScientist_ (there are other
variations)
http://dsl.org/copyleft/dsl.txt
GNU General Public License (GPL)
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
* Postscript. I hope you can do better that Lawton. What does copyleft
have to offer scientists and scholars? What benefits does it create for
research that we can't have, or can't have as easily, without it? If you
have thoughts, please post them to our discussion forum.
FOS discussion forum
http://www.topica.com/lists/fos-forum/read
(Anyone may read; only subscribers may post; subscription is free.)
Here are some articles that might help the discussion more than Lawton's.
Jan Newmarch, "Lessons from Open Source: Intellectual Property and Courseware"
http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_6/newmarch/index.html
(More about online teaching materials than research literature.)
Bryan Pfaffenberger, "Why Open Content Matters"
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=4709
(Explicit that making derivative works out of texts is as important as
making them out of source code. But more specific for non-scholarly texts
than scholarly ones.)
Michael Stutz, "Applying Copyleft to Non-Software Information"
http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/nonsoftware-copyleft.html
(More specific on the "how to" than the benefits.)
----------
Developments
* The Journal of Health and Population in Developing Countries has
transformed itself from a print journal to an online-only journal. The
main reason for the change is to save money on printing and mailing. The
change saves so much money that the new version of the journal will also be
free of charge. The back issues will also be free online starting March
15. (PS: This is a perfect case study in how a journal can enlarge its
audience and save money at the same time.)
http://www.jhpdc.unc.edu/
(Thanks to Catherine Fisher.)
* BioMed Central has signed up its first institutional member (McMaster
University) and revealed some data on BMC usage.
http://www.biblio-tech.com/UKSG/S_PD.cfm?alert=104
(Thanks to Serials eNews.)
* The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DMCI) has formed its first board of
trustees.
http://dublincore.org/news/communications/pr-200202.shtml
New on the net
* The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has published an
online report recommending principles for building digital
collections. Some of the principles call for digital collections to be
interoperable and their components to be persistent (as technologies
change), modular, and reusable.
http://www.imls.gov/pubs/forumframework.htm
(Thanks to Shelflife.)
* Denise Troll Covey's survey of 24 digital libraries for DLF is now
online. The report focuses on how to measure the usage and usability of
digital libraries, and gives a good deal of methodological attention to the
advantages and disadvantages of the ways in which libraries currently
assess themselves.
http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub105/pub105.pdf
* OSSNLibraries (Open Source Software for Libraries) is now online with a
prototype portal. Users can download code from the site and will soon be
able to participate in discussions. The site designers welcome your
comments about it. The idea for a portal devoted to open source software
for libraries arose at an October 2001 DLF meeting. OSSNLibraries is the
first in what might become a series of DLF "technology watch" sites on
topics of interest to digital libraries.
http://dewey.library.nd.edu/ossnlibraries/portal/
Report of the DLF meeting where the idea of the OSSNLibraries Portal arose
http://www.diglib.org/architectures/ossrep.htm
* The University of California at San Francisco put its enormous (20+
million documents) "Legacy Tobacco Documents Library" online free of
charge. They will be maintained by the UCSF Library and Center for
Knowledge Management. All the documents are from tobacco industry files
and until recently were unavailable to the general public. Together they
constitute the world's largest digital archive maintained by a
library. The American Legacy Foundation is funding the free online access
to the documents and a research center to study them.
American Legacy Foundation press release
http://makeashorterlink.com/?I1C121D5
(Thanks to DigLib.)
Legacy Tobacco Documents Library
http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/
* The text-e online seminar has moved on to a new text, "Reading Without
Writing" by Dan Sperber. This will be the subject of discussion until
February 14.
http://www.text-e.org/index.cfm?switchLang=Eng&
* Adam Chandler has put online his notes from January 18 session of the the
ALA Midwinter 2002 meeting devoted to licensing electronic resources.
http://www.library.cornell.edu/cts/elicensestudy/alamidwinter2002.htm
(Thanks to ERIL.)
* Here are two new, free, online, peer-reviewed journals.
Neurographics, from the American Society of Neuroradiology.
http://foundation.asnr.org/neurographics/
Trickster, "An Online Journal of Trickster Research".
http://www.trinity.edu/org/tricksters/
----------
Share your thoughts
* The Open eBook Forum hopes you'll take its online ebook features
survey. It will accept responses until February 8.
http://www.openebook.org/ebooksurvey.asp
* The European Union would like your comments on a draft document, "eEurope
2002: Creating an EU Framework for the Exploitation of Public Sector
Information". Comments will be posted to the web site unless authors
request confidentiality, and will be welcome until February 21.
http://www.cordis.lu/econtent/psi/
(Thanks to QuickLinks.)
----------
In other publications
* Thomas Krichel and Simeon Warner have put a preprint online at Krichel's
web site arguing that the best path to FOS will use the Open Archives
Initiative and the Academic Metadata Format (AMF). The argument is based
on their experience with RePEc (Krichel) and arXiv (Warner). They have
some worries. One is a "catch 22" in which authors won't have incentives
to submit their work to FOS sources until large-scale change has made FOS
sources the preferred sources. Another is a "vacuum cleaner scenario" that
creates two tiers of online literature, one with sophisticated quality
control and indexing, and one without, the former priced and the latter
free. One factor in the solution to both problems is the rise of
disciplinary OAI archives (like arXiv and RePEc) to supplement
institutional archives. Another is the use impact review to supplement
peer review, and the use of AMF to support richer kinds of online indexing
agnd organization. Another is for digital librarians to help data
contributors as much as they help data users.
http://openlib.org/home/krichel/papers/koganei.html
* In the February issue of _Searcher_, Laura Gordon-Murnane reviews several
digital tools for the dissemination and retrieval of U.S. government
digital information --GPO Access, PubMed, PubScience, DOE Information
Bridge, FirstGov, Google's UncleSam, FedForms, and American FactFinder.
http://www.infotoday.com/searcher/feb02/gordon-murnane.htm
* In the January issue of _Information Today_, Barbara Quint reports on
BioMed Central's adoption of per-article processing fees. For those new to
the model, she gives a detailed summary of how it works, including fee
waivers, institutional memberships, and the timing and independence of
payments and peer review.
http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb020107-1.htm
My list of journal declarations of independence
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/lists.htm#declarations
* In a recent article to _TrendSiters_, Sam Vaknin asks whether free online
content stimulates, or undercuts, sales of print editions of the same
content. He identifies nine variables that affect when it does one and
when it does the other.
http://www.trendsiters.com/article1037.html
* Philippe Aigrain has a preprint online in which he asks, in effect: What
if we defined intellectual property rights positively (rights of access and
use) rather than negatively (rights to block copying)? The right to block
copying has exceptions, such as fair use, but the exceptions are cast as
secondary to what is primary. What if free access and use were primary,
and the exceptions were secondary? In addition to arguing for the positive
approach, and delineating its premises and consequences, he looks at the
practical question of how to get there from here. The most important first
step is not a legislative change, but "a critical mass of exchanges that
follow by choice the positive rights approach". The paper is forthcoming
in Michael Century (ed.), _Code_, MIT Press, 2002.
http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/aigrain.pdf
(Thanks to Red Rock Eater.)
----------
Correction
In the last issue, I overstated the difference between the open source
licenses and the GPL or free software license (aka "copyleft", see
above). I said that the open source licenses permit code to be
incorporated into commercial products and the GPL does not. I should have
said that the GPL discourages but does not prohibit commercial use. It
discourages commercial use by requiring the seller to make the source code
available without charge, which has the effect of limiting the price or the
profit on any commercial program. I thank the several readers who wrote to
set me straight. (All their comments are online in our discussion forum.)
----------
Conferences
If you plan to attend one of the following conferences, please share your
observations with us through our discussion forum.
* International Conference on Bioinformatics 2002: North-South Network
http://incob.biotec.or.th/
Bangkok, February 6-8
* E-volving Information futures
http://www.vala.org.au/conf2002.htm
Melbourne, February 6-8
* Kongress für digitale Inhalte
http://www.e-content-forum.de/
Wiesbaden, February 7-8
* Book Tech 2002
http://www.booktechexpo.com/bt_index.bsp
New York, February 11-13
* "Will Free Expression Survive the Digital Media Revolution?" (A public
panel discussion by EFF attorneys.)
http://www.law.berkeley.edu/institutes/bclt/events/bayff.html
Berkeley, February 12
* Society for Scholarly Publishing, Top Management Roundtable. Successful
Publishing in the Global Environment.
http://sspnet.org/public/articles/index.cfm?cat=45
Washington, D.C., February 13-14
* ICSTI Seminar on Digital Preservation of the Record of Science
http://www.alpsp.org/meetdb/searchresdet.cfm?ID=222
Paris, February 14-15
* Conference on Intelligent Text Processing and Computational Linguistics
http://www.cic.ipn.mx/cicling/2002/
Mexico City, February 17-23
* Wissensmanagement im universitären Bereich
http://www.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de/ags/ag1/wisman01/
February 19-20
* Symposium on Foundations of Information and Knowledge Systems
http://foiks.massey.ac.nz/
Schloß Salzau, February 19-23
* Digital Libraries and Copyright
http://www.asis.org/Chapters/michap/events.htm
Lansing, Michigan, February 20
* Fifth International Publishers Association Copyright Conference
http://www.ipa-uie.org/ipa/AccraCoverpage.html
Accra, Ghana, February 20-22
* Integrating _at_ Internet Speed: Strategies for the Content Community
[conference on reference linking]
http://www.pa.utulsa.edu/nfais/Conf2002/anco2002highlights.htm
Philadelphia, February 24-27
* Getting your message across: How learned societies and other
organizations can influence public and government opinion
http://www.alpsp.org/s250202.htm
London, February 25
* Electronic Journals --Solutions in Sight?
http://www.subscription-agents.org/conference/200202/index.html
London, February 25-26
* [Public lecture], Will Thomas and Ed Ayers, "The Next Generation of
Digital Scholarship: An Experiment in Form
http://www.neh.gov/news/ehumanities.html
Washington, D.C., February 27
* Meeting of the Digital Preservation Coalition
http://www.onlinepublishingnews.com/htm/n20020204.047633.htm
London, February 27
* A Symposium on the Research Value of Printed Materials in the Digital Age
http://www.lib.umd.edu/TSD/PRES/symposium.html
College Park, Maryland, March 1
* International Spring School on the Digital Library and E-publishing for
Science and Technology
http://cwis.kub.nl/~ticer/spring02/index.htm
Geneva, March 3-8
* Search Engine Strategies
http://seminars.internet.com/sew/spring02/index.html
Boston, March 4-5
* Redefining [Digital] Preservation (ARL and the University of Michigan)
http://www.lib.umich.edu/conferences/preservation/
Ann Arbor, Michigan, March 7-8
* Towards an Information Society for All
http://www.britishcouncil.de/e/infoexch/berlin.htm
Berlin, March 8-9
* 17th ACM Symposium on Applied Computing. Special tracks on Database and
Digital Library Technologies; Electronic Books for Teaching and Learning;
and Information Access and Retrieval
http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2002/Tracks.htm
Madrid, March 10-14
* Digitization for Cultural Heritage Professionals: An Intensive Program
http://www.ils.unc.edu/DCHP/
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, March 10-15
* EUSDIC Spring Meeting. E-Content: Divide or Rule
http://www.eusidic.org/Paris2002Spring%20Meeting.htm
Paris, March 11-12
* Knowledge Technologies Conference 2002
http://www.knowledgetechnologies.net/
Seattle, March 11-13
* Computers in Libraries 2002
http://www.infotoday.com/cil2002/default.htm
Washington D.C., March 13-15
* International Conference on the Statistical Analysis of Textual Data
http://www.irisa.fr/manifestations/2002/JADT/welcome.htm
St. Malo, March 13-15
* The Electronic Publishers Coalition (EPC) conference on ebooks and
epublishing (obscurely titled, Electronically Published Internet
Connection, or EPIC)
http://www.epccentral.org/epic.html
Seattle, March 14-16
* Digital Resources and International Information Exchange: East-West
http://www.iliac.org/seminar/sem1.html
March 15 (Washington DC), 18 (Flushing NY), 20 (Stamford CT)
* Internet Librarian International 2002
http://www.internet-librarian.com/index.html
London, March 18-20
* The New Information Order and the Future of the Archive
http://www.ed.ac.uk/iash/archive.conference.html
Edinburgh, March 20-23
* Institute of Mueum and Library Services. Building Digital Communities
http://webwise.mse.jhu.edu/
Baltimore, March 20-22
* Advanced Licensing Workshop
http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/advlic.html
Dallas, March 20-22
* Electronic Publishing Strategy
http://www.alpsp.org/tEPS220302.htm
London, March 22
* OCLC Institute. Steering by Standards. (A series of satellite
videoconferences.)
http://www.oclc.org/institute/events/sbs.htm
Cyberspace. OAI, March 26. OAIS, April 19. Metadata standards in the
future, May 29.
* WebSearch University
http://www.websearchu.com/
San Francisco, March 25-26; Stamford CT, April 30 - May 1; Washington DC,
September 23-24; Chicago, Octeober 22-23; Dallas, November 19-20.
* European Colloquium on Information Retrieval Research
http://www.cs.strath.ac.uk/ECIR02/
Glasgow, March 25-27
* e-Content: Discovering and Delivering Value
http://www.informationhighways.net/conf/cindex.html
Toronto, March 25-27
* New Developments in Digital Libraries
http://www.iceis.org/workshops/nddl/nddl-cfp.htm
Ciudad Real, Spain, April 2-3
* The New Information Order and the Future of the Archive
http://www.ed.ac.uk/iash/archive.conference.html
Edinburgh, March 20-23
* Copyright Management in Higher Education: Ownership, Access and Control
http://www.umuc.edu/distance/odell/cip/copy_manage2002/
Adelphi, Maryland, April 4-5
* International Conference on Information Technology: Coding and Computing
http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~srimani/itcc2002/cfp.html
Las Vegas, April 8-10
* NetLab and Friends: 10 Years of Digital Library Development
http://www.lub.lu.se/netlab/conf/
Lund, April 10-12
* E-Content 2002 (on ebooks)
http://litc.sbu.ac.uk/econtent/index.html
London, April 11
* International Learned Journals Seminar: We Can't Go On Like This: The
Future of Journals
http://www.alpsp.org/s120402.htm
London, April 12
* SIAM International Conference on Data Mining
http://www.siam.org/meetings/sdm02/
Arlington, Virginia, April 11-13
* Creating access to information: EBLIDA workshop on getting a better deal
from your information licences
http://www.eblida.org/conferences/licensing/licensing.htm
The Hague, April 12
* Licensing Electronic Resources to Libraries
http://www.arl.org/scomm/licensing/pworkshop.html
Philadelphia, April 15
* United Kingdom Serials Group Annual Conference and Exhibition
http://www.uksg.org/conference.htm
University of Warwick, April 15- 17
* EDUCAUSE Networking 2002
http://www.educause.edu/netatedu/events/net2002/
Washington, D.C., April 17-18
* Museums and the Web 2002
http://www.archimuse.com/mw2002/
Boston, April 17-20
* Information, Knowledges and Society: Challenges of A New Era
http://www.congreso-info.cu/venglish.htm
Havana, April 22-26
* The European Library: The Gate to Europe's Knowledge: Milestone Conference
http://www.europeanlibrary.org/
Frankfurt am Main, April 29-30
----------
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Copyright (c) 2002, Peter Suber
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Received on Thu Feb 07 2002 - 04:29:05 GMT