Peter Murray-Rust [PM-R] replied:
"Stevan Harnad... has been consistent in arguing
the logic [of what comes with the OA
territory]... and I agree with the logic...
[but]... several repository managers at the JISC
meeting [said] I could not have permission to do
[such things] with their current content. I asked
'can my robots download and mine the content in
your current open access repository of theses?' -
No. 'Can you let me have some chemistry theses
from your open access collection so I can
data-mine them?' - No - you will have to ask the
permission of each author individually.
The OpenDOAR repository policies tool tends to act towards
over-cautiousness in the policies that they suggest for data and document
reuse.
The current policies that they produce have options to explicitly allow
services that do full text indexing and citation analysis, BUT THAT IS
ALL.
By enumerating the potential allowable services they are effectively
stifling innovation and research, and that is a BAD thing. The last thing
that OA advocates ought to do is build up ANOTHER rights-withholding
infrastructure.
I do hope that this a a short-sighted transition phenomenon, but it
should certainly be addressed now (and strongly).
--
Les Carr
Received on Tue Jun 12 2007 - 19:01:57 BST