On behalf of the Wellcome Trust - one of the funders behind the UKPMC
Publishers Panel "Statement of Principle" - let me respond to this
posting and state that we do not believe that the re-use statement is
"stating the obvious in terms of re-use".
There are many publishers who currently offer a gold "open access"
option - but do **NOT** allow researchers to build upon and re-use such
content. Hence the need to make it clear that when an OA fee is paid,
it covers both free to read and free to re-use.
The Statement of Principle - which is endorsed by funders and publisher
trade associations - asserts the principle that "it is in the interests
of fostering and promoting research that such documents may be freely
copied and used for text and data mining purposes"...and that "other
re-use of the content, including but not limited to further
redistribution, adaptation and translation, is encouraged.."
Readers of this list may be interested in learn that the Elsevier OA
licence (available at:
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/supplementalterms)
explicitly allows users to "access, download, copy, display and
redistribute documents as well as adapt, translate, text and data mine
content contained in documents" for non-commercial purposes.
If we are going to enjoy the benefits of text mining, semantic web etc
(which may result in the creation of derivative works) then it is
essential that articles are licensed in ways which explicitly allows
re-use. By way of example, all articles for which the Wellcome Trust
pays an OA fee not only appear in PMC and UKPMC, but also are made
available (in XML format) through the OAI/FTP interface
(
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/about/oai.html) - thereby facilitating
text and data mining.
Open access has always been far more than the right to read published
research. The right to build upon and re-use this content is equally
important.
I'd also like to re-state that publication fees are a legitimate
research cost and as such are available from grant funds expended by
most of the main funders, including charities and Government --and of
course the NIH.
Regards
Robert Kiley
Head of e-Strategy
Wellcome Library
183, Euston Road, London. NW1 2BE
Tel: 020 7611 8338; Fax: 020 7611 8703; mailto:r.kiley_at_wellcome.ac.uk
Library Web site:
http://library.wellcome.ac.uk
For information about Wellcome Collection go to:
http://www.wellcomecollection.org.uk
The Wellcome Trust is a charity, registered in England, no. 210183. Its
sole Trustee is the Wellcome Trust Limited, a company registered in
England, no 2711000, whose registered office is 215 Euston Road, London,
NW1 2BE.
*****
Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 19:20:11 +0100
From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
Subject: On Paid Gold OA, Central Repositories, and "Re-Use" Rights
On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Albanese, Andrew (Library Journal) wrote:
> Hello Stevan: just writing to see if you have any thoughts on the
> UKPMC statement on re-use...seems a little unnecessary to me. Stating
> the obvious? Rather than say "copyright still applies," would it not
> have been more useful to issues guidelines on, say, how to craft a
> copyright clause that facilitates open access? Do these broad
> statements help anyone?
> http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX041316.html
Yes, Andrew, I too think the UKPMC re-use statement is unnecessary and
stating the obvious. (Even advice on amending copyright clauses to
facilitate Green OA self-archiving is not necessary as a precondition
for self-archiving, or for mandating self-archiving, although it is a
good idea to try to amend copyright where feasible and desired -- hence
good advice is always welcome.)
(1) To begin with, the UKPMC statement is about paid Gold OA, and (for
reasons I have adduced many times before) I believe that -- except for
those researchers and funders who are so well off that money is no
object
-- paying for Gold OA at this time is unnecessary and a waste of money
(until and unless most or all of the institutional money that is
currently being spent on subscriptions is released to pay for Gold OA).
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/
399we152.htm
(2) Successfully establishing a credible, high-quality fleet of paid
Gold OA journals was definitely useful to demonstrate the principle of
paid Gold OA as a feasible one (especially under the current financially
straitened circumstance, with most of the potential Gold OA funds still
tied up in subscriptions); but that does not change the fact that Gold
OA is far from being either the fastest or surest way to scale up to
100% OA today.
http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/
(3) The fastest and surest way to scale up to 100% OA today is for
authors to self-archive their articles (Green OA) in their own
Institutional Repositories [IRs] (not in Central Repositories [CRs] like
PubMed Central: CRs should harvest from IRs) -- and for their
institutions and funders to mandate that they do so.
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html
(4) Green OA self-archiving does not require the description or
assertion of any new "re-use rights": All the requisite uses already
come with the Green OA territory itself (i.e., the full text being made
freely accessible to all on the web).
http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind06&L=american-scientist-op
en-access-forum&F=l&P=102378
So this is a lot of fuss and fanfare about nothing: paid Gold OA, and
direct deposit in 3rd-party CRs like UKPMC. Not what the research
community urgently needs today, nor what will get us there.
Robert Kiley
Head of e-Strategy
Wellcome Library
183, Euston Road, London. NW1 2BE
Tel: 020 7611 8338; Fax: 020 7611 8703; mailto:r.kiley_at_wellcome.ac.uk
Library Web site:
http://library.wellcome.ac.uk
For information about Wellcome Collection go to:
http://www.wellcomecollection.org.uk
The Wellcome Trust is a charity, registered in England, no. 210183. Its
sole Trustee is the Wellcome Trust Limited, a company registered in
England, no 2711000, whose registered office is 215 Euston Road, London,
NW1 2BE.
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Received on Wed Oct 10 2007 - 22:09:03 BST