On Thu, 15 Jan 2004, Michael Eisen wrote:
> While D-Lib Magazine allows free access to their articles, and grants
> limited rights to non-commercial users (all good things), their articles are
> not open access, at least not by any of the widely accepted definitions.
>
> The D-Lib Magazine Access Terms and Conditions read:
>
> Materials contained in D-Lib and D-Lib Magazine are subject to copyright
> claims and other proprietary rights. Permission is hereby given for the
> material in D-Lib and D-Lib Magazine to be used for research purposes or
> more general non-commercial purposes. We ask that you observe the following
> conditions:
> a.. Please cite individual author and D-Lib or D-Lib Magazine when using
> the materials.
> b.. Please do not abridge, alter, or edit material in any way that alters
> the author's intentions.
> Any commercial use of these materials requires explicit, prior authorization
> from CNRI.
>
> While acknowledging that "there are many degrees and kinds of wider and
> easier access to" the literature, the BOAI definition of open access could
> not be clearer:
>
> By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the
> public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute,
> print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for
> indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful
> purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those
> inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint
> on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this
> domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work
> and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.
>
> Stevan seems intent on grossly diluting this definition:
Not grossly diluting it. Just distilling out the necessary conditions
from the non-necessary ones. And I am very happy to stand with the above
comparison. The access provided by D-Lib is all that is necessary, and
definitely meets my own understanding of the BOAI definition at the time
we drafted it:
(1) free availability on the public internet
(2) permitting users to read the full texts
(3) download the full texts
(4) copy the full texts (i.e., make copies for themselves, and anyone
else with access to the public internet to make copies for themselves
(5) distribute the full texts locally, otherwise distribute the URLs
so anyone else with access to the internet can access the full texts
(6) print the full texts
(7) search the full texts
(8) link to the full texts
(9) crawl the full texts for indexing (as google does)
(10) pass the full texts to software
(11) or use them for any lawful purpose
(12) without any financial, legal or technical barriers other than
those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.
ALL of those are fully covered by the D-Lib's list of capabilities.
(The second sentence in the BOAI definition is, as I said before, vague,
and cast as a "should" rather than a "must": At the time, I took it to
be a summary of the capabilities that should follow from the above
list, and a reaffirmation that authorship and text integrity should be
respected. [Can anyone legislate that you *must* acknowledge and cite
me properly?])
And I never -- ever -- equated OA with either the necessity of copyright
retention by the author, or copyright renunciation by the author. Not
for a moment. I have always thought of OA as just that: Open Access to
the full text: immediate, permanent, toll-free, ungerrymandred, full-text
online access for everyone, any time, webwide.
It is not legal for someone, commercial or otherwise, to republish my
article, online or on paper, without my (or the copyright holder's)
permission, or to redistribute it in any other way than the way it is
already distributed: openly accessible to everyone on the internet.
The right to republish and reprint is an extra, possibly useful
capability, but not a necessary condition for OA.
> > This also happens to be what a user can normally do with everything else
> > he finds on the web (that is not behind a toll-barrier). He may do all
> > the above, but he may not (1) republish it (or an altered version of it),
> > either in a paper edition or online on the web or an email list and (2)
> > may not pass it off as his own. He may, however, insert links to its
> > URL in other published materials.
> >
> > That's the default option on the web; it's what comes with the territory
> > when one can access digital material with a click. More requires
> > permissions.
> >
> > It is also the default condition for Open Access.
>
> So everything that is on a website anywhere is open access so long as its
> not behind a toll barrier? That's absurd.
It is not absurd at all. Everything is OA if it is put on the website
legally (i.e., not napster consumer-theft but producer give-away) and
permanently (i.e., not a here-today-gone-tomorrow advertising gimmick),
and without any technical barriers (e.g., required registration or
ebrary-style gerrymandered download) preventing any of the above list
of capabilities.
But I wouldn't bother using the term "OA" to describe everything on the
web (including D-Lib), because OA was coined for the specific case of
peer-reviewed research: the annual 2.5 million articles in the world's
24,000 journals (before and after peer review: preprints and postprints).
The idea was to make all that content as openly accessible as the rest
of the content of the web, because presently (I must remind you) it most
certainly is not!
> The default condition for open access is not simply being able to access
> digital material with a click. The term open access was coined specifically
> to describe a higher form of freedom - one that went beyond the default
> rights granted to users of web content by explicitly permiting
> redistribution and reuse without the need to get permission. While YOU may
> think these rights are superfluous, many supporters of open access disagree,
> it only confuses things and damages our common cause if we conflate posting
> something on the web with open access.
I do not think republishing/reprinting rights are superfluous. Sometimes
they may be useful. But they are not necessary conditions for OA. My
own concern is that these "default rights," "lower forms of freedom"
though they may be, are today glaringly *absent* from most of the 2.5
million articles in the 24,000 journals; and it is and always has been
for the sake of at last winning these "lower forms of freedom" that
I have been fighting. And it is these absent "lower forms of freedom"
to which I believed we were giving a name when we dubbed them "OA."
So please let's continue calling these "lower forms of freedom" OA -- at
least until we *have* them. Then we can start worrying about "higher forms
of freedom" (although I am dead-certain that all else worth having
will come with the territory of its own accord, quite naturally, once
most or all of this content is OA). Needlessly -- in fact gratuitously --
raising the goal-posts now, when the score is still so abysmally low,
can only serve to retard OA.
In short: I disagree with your interpretation of the BOAI definition of
OA that we jointly drafted, and if there is ambiguity about what is and
is not a necessary condition for OA, we should redraft the definition to
eliminate the ambiguity. I certainly would not (then or now) sign on
to any definition of OA that would leave the at least three times as
many journal articles that are being made OA annually by self-archiving
defined as anything other than OA! It is to OA provision via
self-archiving that most of my efforts are dedicated, because I am
certain that it is the fastest and surest road to universal OAI
I would be quite happy to add language about "higher forms of freedom"
that may be desirable -- but not necessary in order to meet the definition
of OA.
Stevan Harnad
> ----- Original Message -----
>
> From: "Stevan Harnad" <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
> To: <AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG>
> Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 7:06 AM
> Subject: Open Access Does Not require Republishing and Reprinting Rights
>
>
> > In an editorial entitled "Open Access and Public Domain,"
> > in D-Lib Magazine December 2003 Volume 9 Number
> > http://www.dlib.org/dlib/december03/12editorial.html
> > Editor Bonita Wilson wrote:
> >
> > "'open access'... is occasionally confused with public domain, i.e.,
> > that material easily accessible on the net is also freely available
> > for reuse of any kind... As an example of open access materials that
> > are not in the public domain, D-Lib Magazine content is available,
> > without charge, to anyone with an Internet connection; materials
> > contained in the magazine are subject to copyright claims and other
> > proprietary rights... Republication or reprinting of articles
> > requires permission from the... copyright [holders]... Most of
> > the material in D-Lib Magazine, though provided via "open access,"
> > is not in the public domain."
> >
> > I think this is entirely correct. D-Lib, not being a peer-reviewed
> > journal, does not fall within the scope of the Budapest Open Access
> > Initiative (BOAI), but if it *were* a peer-reviewed journal, it would
> > certainly be an open-access ("gold") journal, despite the fact that
> > republication and reprinting [note, this does not refer to printing
> > off a hard copy for one's own use, but pass printing and distribution]
> > require permission.
> >
> > There is absolutely no problem with this. The uses already permitted
> > include all those that research requires: reading, downloading, storing,
> > printing off, computer-processing and analyzing, and linking.
> >
> > This also happens to be what a user can normally do with everything else
> > he finds on the web (that is not behind a toll-barrier). He may do all
> > the above, but he may not (1) republish it (or an altered version of it),
> > either in a paper edition or online on the web or an email list and (2)
> > may not pass it off as his own. He may, however, insert links to its
> > URL in other published materials.
> >
> > That's the default option on the web; it's what comes with the territory
> > when one can access digital material with a click. More requires
> > permissions.
> >
> > It is also the default condition for Open Access.
> >
> > I would only make one slight correction: Granting those further rights
> > and permissions does not necessarily entail putting the material in the
> > public domain. As I understand it, an author who does the latter more
> > or less renounces all legal rights (including the requirement that his
> > authorship should be acknowledged in all republications and that the text
> > should not be corrupted). Various creative-commons licenses grant users
> > republishing and reprinting rights without having to put the material
> > in the public domain.
> >
> > "Re: The Urgent Need to Plan a Stable Transition"
> > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0078.html
> >
> > "Re: Science 4 September on Copyright"
> > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0092.html
> >
> > "Re: Legal ways around copyright for one's own giveaway texts"
> > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/0602.html
> >
> > "Re: Copyright: Form, Content, and Prepublication Incarnations"
> > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1612.html
> >
> > "Public Access to Science Act (Sabo Bill, H.R. 2613)"
> > http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/2977.htm
> >
> > But for the purposes of Open Access, the only thing that needs to
> > be noted is that the right to republish and reprint is not a necessary
> > condition for open access (though in some cases it may be a welcome
> > one).
> >
> > Stevan Harnad
> >
> > NOTE: A complete archive of the ongoing discussion of providing open
> > access to the peer-reviewed research literature online (1998-2004)
> > is available at the American Scientist Open Access Forum:
> > To join the Forum:
> >
> http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.html
> > Post discussion to:
> > american-scientist-open-access-forum_at_amsci.org
> > Hypermail Archive:
> > http://www.cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/index.html
> >
> > Unified Dual Open-Access-Provision Policy:
> > BOAI-2 ("gold"): Publish your article in a suitable open-access
> > journal whenever one exists.
> > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/boaifaq.htm#journals
> > BOAI-1 ("green"): Otherwise, publish your article in a suitable
> > toll-access journal and also self-archive it.
> > http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
> > http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
> > http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
> >
>
Received on Thu Jan 15 2004 - 23:21:39 GMT