[Posted with permission]
On Tue, 28 Nov 2006, Donat Agosti wrote:
> I understand the separation between textbooks and pubs. At the same
> time, the open courseware movement is stepping into this field, similar to
> OA for pubs. With such a rapid increase in knowledge, textbooks become
> obsolete much faster and thus need new editions, so they are also
> increasingly outdated as a model.
It is a good idea to look at a few analogies between textbook/courseware
writing and research writing and their respective motivational and reward
structures.
Research is conducted and funded to make contributions to knowledge and
applications to human benefit. It is rewarded via academic salary and research
funding, as well as by prizes and honours. These rewards depend on the importance,
uptake and impact of the findings. Citations (and soon downloads) are counted
as "metrics" of this impact. The users that generate the downloads and
citations are mostly researchers (scholars/scientists) and only secondarily
teachers. (Textbook citations of articles could be counted too, and should be,
but they are not yet counted.)
Teaching is conducted and funded to provide public education as well as to
produce a new generation of contributors to knowledge (scholarly and scientific
researchers and teachers). It is rewarded via academic salary, prizes and
honours *and* via textbook writing. These rewards also depend, in a sense, on
the "importance, uptake and impact" of the education provided, and its metrics
are student marks, student numbers, student ratings, completed degree counts,
etc. plus royalty revenues.
An obvious way to make the similarity greater would be to develop
online metrics of the uptake and influence of online courseware
(including textbooks). I am certain that once links and usage are
measured systematically, the academic world will begin to reward those
too, as indices of individual and institutional teaching impact and of
the return on public investment in education. Then, for textbooks and
other courseware, toll-barriers will be seen as obstacles to the usage
and impact the authors seek (and their employers and funders reward)
as they are already seen for research usage and impact, and then the OA
movement will extend to this wider domain too. (It will depend on how
these rewarded metrics stack up against textbook sales revenues.)
This has been discussed in the Forum:
"Distance Learning and Copyright" (began Dec 2002)
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/subject.html#2524
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stevan Harnad
> Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 10:52 AM
> To: Donat Agosti
> Cc: 'Peter Suber'
> Subject: Re: FW: [Taxacom] PUBLISHERS CRITICIZE PROFESSORS FOR
> COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS
>
> Dear Donat,
>
> I'm afraid the access story with textbooks is profoundly different,
> and that is why textbooks (and books in general) are not part of the
> official target of OA (or OA mandates): The reason is simple. Journal
> articles are author give-aways, written solely for the sake of usage
> and impact, not royalties of fees, whereas this is not true of
> textbooks (or books in general):
>
> http://cogprints.org/1639/01/resolution.htm#1.1
>
> Of course whatever authors wish to make freely available online is
> welcome. But it is critically important that the OA movement make a
> distinction between its primary target (and the target of OA
> mandates), namely, the 2.5 million articles a year that are published
> in the world's 24,000 peer-reviewed journals. Otherwise, the OA
> movement inherits the obvious obstacles of non-give-away writing
> (including those if its authors!).
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Stevan
>
> On Tue, 28 Nov 2006, Donat Agosti wrote:
>
> > Hi Peter and Stevan
> >
> > I tried to figure out open access issues related to textbooks in your
> > archives but couldn't easily find relevant answers.
> >
> > Do you have any hints on where to start to get in this issue? My reply to
> > this is just below.
> >
> > Thanks for a brief note
> >
> > Donat
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Donat Agosti
> > Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 10:00 AM
> > To: 'Robert K. Peet'; 'Neal Evenhuis'
> > Subject: RE: [Taxacom] PUBLISHERS CRITICIZE PROFESSORS FOR
> > COPYRIGHTVIOLATIONS
> >
> > $20M seems not to be a huge loss in a $3.5 billion market with high profit
> > margins. And it also not clear, how many of those not buying would buy if
> > they would not have access to, and now many buy later, because they got to
> > know a textbook and later bought.
> >
> > As Robert points out, this is a case to adopt a liberal use policy, that
> is
> > to sign up on open access, and avoid in publishing in copyrighted
> journals.
> >
> > On Nov 27, the university of Zurich officially launched the Zurich Open
> > Access Respository aiming at http://www.zora.unizh.ch/zora/. The Uni
> Zurich
> > requires their researchers to deposit a copy of all their published and
> > refereed articles in the Institutional Repository of the University, if
> > there are no legal objections. UZ encourages and supports their authors to
> > publish their research articles in open access journals where a suitable
> > journal exists and provides the support to enable that to happen.
> > This is one of an increasing number of institution worldwide implementing
> > open access.
> >
> > A similar initiative is the MIT Open Course Ware project
> > http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html
> >
> > Since our knowledge is so important to a very wide number of fields, we
> > really ought to follow suit and make taxonomy a member of open access
> > community.
> >
> > The more we also push for open access, the more likely NSF and other
> > research funding agencies, including our own institutions will allocate
> the
> > respective resources needed. Even if some of it is diverting from research
> > budgets, open access is a huge gain for research: you do not have to spend
> > time in libraries and interlibrary loans, but can get all of this from
> your
> > own pc, plus questions can be asked they couldn't before.
> >
> > Donat Agosti
> >
> >
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Robert K. Peet
> > Sent: Tuesday, November 28, 2006 2:46 AM
> > To: Neal Evenhuis
> > Subject: Re: [Taxacom] PUBLISHERS CRITICIZE PROFESSORS FOR
> > COPYRIGHTVIOLATIONS
> >
> >
> > The question of whether you can post copyrighted material on class
> > websites without paying fees is far from trivial and there is no agreement
>
> > among university lawyers. Here in North Carolina we have both ends of the
> > spectrum represented by two major research universities a mere 15km part.
> > Duke University lawyers assert it is perfectly legal for faculty to post
> > anything held in the university library on their class websites, provided
> > the material is password protected and only available to the specific
> > class. At the University of North Carolina our lawyers assert we have to
> > pay royalties for what Duke faculty do for free, and the University pays
> > almost $100,000 per year to implement this policy. Until the lawyers can
> > decide, it is silly to emphasize education of faculty.
> >
> > A way around this problem is for professional organizations to adopt
> > liberal use policies, and for authors to preferentially select to publish
> > in the journals of such organizations. For example, the Ecological
> > Society of America explicitly allows posting of articles from its journals
>
> > to a class websites (see http://esapubs.org/esapubs/permissions.htm) with
> > no fee. I encourage all of you to work with your professional societies
> > to adopt similar policies, and then to preferentially publish in those
> > journals.
> >
> >
> > ======================================================================
> > Robert K. Peet, Professor & Chair Phone: 919-962-6942
> > Curriculum in Ecology, CB#3275 Fax: 919-962-6930
> > University of North Carolina Cell: 919-368-4971
> > Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3275 USA
> > http://www.unc.edu/depts/ecology/
> > http://www.bio.unc.edu/faculty/peet/
> > ======================================================================
> >
> > On Mon, 27 Nov 2006, Neal Evenhuis wrote:
> >
> > > FYI.
> > >
> > > From the EDUCAUSE listserve:
> > >
> > >
> > > PUBLISHERS CRITICIZE PROFESSORS FOR COPYRIGHT VIOLATIONS
> > > The Association of American Publishers (AAP) is calling on colleges and
> > > universities to take steps to address what they see as rampant
> > > copyright abuse by faculty. According to the AAP, faculty who post
> > > protected content online for use in their courses cost the publishing
> > > industry at least $20 million each year in lost revenues. Before the
> > > advent of online reserves, faculty would often place hard-copy
> > > materials in the library for students to view. That practice has been
> > > largely replaced by making digital copies of course materials available
> > > online. The publishing industry objects, saying faculty who do this go
> > > beyond the scope of fair use. Allan Adler, vice president for legal and
> > > governmental affairs with AAP, said, "We can't compete with free." The
> > > organization pointed to a recent agreement with Cornell University in
> > > which the institution works to educate faculty on appropriate uses of
> > > copyrighted material and on best practices to avoid infringing uses.
> > > The AAP hopes that other institutions will implement programs similar
> > > to the one Cornell has adopted.
> > > Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 20 November 2006
> > > http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/292898_copyright20.html
> > >
> > > -Neal
> > > --
> > > Dr. Neal L. Evenhuis
> > > Chairman, Department of Natural Sciences
> > > Bishop Museum
> > > 1525 Bernice Street
> > > Honolulu, Hawaii 96817-2704
Received on Tue Nov 28 2006 - 12:33:15 GMT