On Mon, 15 Oct 2007, Frederick Friend wrote:
> I also agree with
> Peter S, Peter M-R and Robert K that the UKPMC re-use agreement is vital
> for
> future academic developments. With hindsight we were too slow to pick up
> on
> the significance of the changes to copyright transfer agreements in the
> 1990s by which authors now assign all electronic rights to publishers.
> Blanket assigning of electronic rights has created and is still creating
> barriers in the electronic re-use of subscription content. We cannot
> afford
> to make the same mistake of neglect on the arrangements for academic
> re-use
> of OA content, whether green or gold.
I am afraid that this is more a matter of misunderstanding than of
disagreement:
(1) The disagreement (with PS, PM-R and RK) was *not* about
whether or not it is a good idea for the author to retain
certain electronic rights. (It *is* a good idea for the author
to do so, wherever possible. However, rights-retention is not a
*necessary* prerequisite for Green OA self-archiving or for Green
OA self-archiving mandates. Hence it would be a big mistake to
imply otherwise: to imply that authors cannot self-archive, and/or
their institutions/funders cannot mandate that they self-archive,
until/unless the author successfully negotiates rights-retention. That
would not only be incorrect, but it would be a gratuitous deterrent
to self-archiving and to self-archiving mandates, hence to OA.)
(2) The disagreement was instead about:
(2a) whether or not certain electronic rights (not the same
ones as in (1), above, by the way!), provided by certain Gold OA
copyright agreements, were indeed necessary in order for research
and researchers to derive the full benefits of OA (they are not.)
and
(2b) whether or not there existed any further necessary rights
or capabilities over and above those already inherent in Green
OA self-archiving, that therefore either had to be successfully
negotiated with a non-OA publisher or had to be purchased from
a Gold OA publisher in order to render an article OA (there
are none)
I am sorry to sound like a pedant, but these details are devilishly
important, and need to be understood quite explicitly:
For (1) (rights retention as a prerequisite to Green OA self-archiving),
what I said was that for the 62% of articles published in Green
journals -- i.e., those that have explicitly endorsed the immediate
OA self-archiving of the postprint (whether final draft or PDF) --
no further rights are needed to self-archive them, hence no further
rights need to be negotiated as a precondition for self-archiving. The
self-archived work is "protected" by standard copyright, and it is also
OA, with all the attendant usage capabilities (of which I listed nine,
covering all uses that research and researchers require, which are also
all the self-same uses for which OA itself was proposed).
I also said that for the 38% of articles published in non-Green journals
-- i.e., those journals that have not yet explicitly endorsed the
immediate OA self-archiving of the postprint (whether final draft or PDF)
by the author -- the strategy that I recommend is (a) mandated Immediate
Deposit, Optional Closed Access and reliance on the semi-automatic
"Email Eprint Request" Button to cover usage needs during the embargo.
I agreed that it was possible to disagree on this strategic point, and
to prefer (b) to try to negotiate rights retention with the non-Green
publisher or else to (c) publish instead with a Gold OA publisher that
provides the requisite rights. There is of course nothing at all wrong
with strategy (b/c) as a matter of individual choice in each case.
But strategy (a) is intended to facilitate exception-free self-archiving,
and especially to facilitate the adoption of legal objection-free,
exception-free self-archiving mandates.
So far, the only "right" at issue is the right to self-archive -- the
right to provide immediate Green OA. It is that Green OA that I was
arguing was sufficient to provide full OA (and the 62% of journals
that are Green have already endorsed it.)
But now we come to (2): certain "re-use" rights and capabilities that
purportedly go beyond those that already come with the territory, with
Green OA self-archiving. Now we are no longer speaking of the right to
self-archive, obviously, but about the right to create certain kinds of
"derivative works" that one may re-publish (and perhaps even re-sell).
What I said there was that the right to re-publish, re-sell, and
create derivative works for re-publication or re-sale is not part
of OA. It is something extra (approaching certain kinds of Creative
Commons Licenses). Most important, those extra rights are not necessary
for research and researchers, they go far beyond OA, and they would
handicap OA's already too-slow progress towards universality if added
as a gratuitous extra precondition for "full-blooded OA."
The very idea that these extra rights are needed comes not from the
intuitions of the library community about how to include subscription
content in course-packs -- those needs are trivially fulfilled by
inserting the URLs of Green OA postprints in the course-packs, instead
of inserting the documents themselves! -- but from intuitions about
data-mining from (some sectors) of the biological and chemical community
(inspired largely by the data-sharing of the human genome project as
well as similar chemical-structure data-sharing in chemistry).
There are very valid concerns about research data sharing: note that
such data are typically not contained in published articles, but are
*supplements* to them that until the online era had no way of being
published at all, because the data-sets were too big. So the concern is
about licensing these data to make them openly accessible and to prevent
their ever becoming subject to the same access-barriers as subscription
content.
This is a very important and valid goal but, strictly speaking, it is not
an OA matter, because these research data are not part of the published
content of journal articles! So, yes, providing online access to these
data does definitely require explicit rights licensing, but no one is
stopping their authors (the holders of the data) from adopting those
licenses! (The appropriate CC licenses exist.) And there's certainly
no reason to pay a Gold OA publisher for those extra rights or rights
agreements for data, which are hitherto unpublished content that can
now be licensed and self-archived directly.
This brings us to the second case, the case that I suspect those who
see an extra rights problem here have most in mind: It concerns the
content of published journal articles, both inasmuch as the articles
may indeed contain some primary data, as opposed to merely summaries,
descriptions and analyses, and inasmuch as the article texts themselves
can be seen as constituting potential data. This is where data-mining
rights and derivative-works rights come in: "Naked" Green OA -- simply
making these published full-texts accessible online, free for all -- is
not enough (think these theorists) to guarantee that robots can data-mine
their contents and that the results can be made accessible (published,
or re-published) as "derivative works," unless these extra "rights"
(to data-mine and create derivative works) are explicitly licensed.
My reply is very simple: robotic harvesting and data-mining come with
the free online territory as surely as individual use does. Remember that
we are talking about authors' self-archived postprints here, not the
publishers' proprietary PDFs, whether Gray or Gold. If the journal is
Green, it endorses the author's right to deposit the postprint in his
OA IR. The rest (individual accessibility, Google, Scirus, OAIster,
robotic harvestability, and data-mining) all come with that Green OA
territory. So the contention is not about the Green OA self-archiving of
the postprints published in the 62% of journals that are Green.
Is the contention then about the 38% of articles published in non-Green
journals? I agree at once that if the author feels he cannot make those
articles Green OA immediately, and instead deposits them as Closed Access,
then, with the help of the IR's "Email Eprint Request" Button, only
re-use capabilities (1)-(7) [(1) accessing, (2) reading, (3) downloading,
(4) storing (5) printing, (6) individual data-mining, and (7) re-using
content (but not text) in further publications] are possible.
This is definitely not OA, only almost-OA. Missing is full-text (8*)
robotic harvesting and (9*) robotic data-mining. If, to try to avoid
this outcome, an author who fully intends to deposit his postprint
immediately upon acceptance regardless of the outcome, first elects to
try to negotiate the retention of more rights with his publisher -- or
even elects to publish with a paid Gold publisher rather than deposit as
Closed Access, with almost-OA, that's just fine!That author is intent
on self-archiving either way. The problem with holding out for and
insisting upon more rights is the author who would *not* deposit except
if the publisher was Green (or Gold), and -- even more important -- the
institutions that would not mandate depositing except if all publishers
were already Green (or Gold).
And it is those authors and those institutions that are the problem
today. If most universities already mandated immediate-deposit either way
(OA or CA), I would do nothing but applaud the efforts to negotiate the
retention of more rights -- even unnecessary ones! But it would remain
true that no rights retention at all was necessary in order to deposit
(and attain almost-OA), and only an endorsement of Green OA self-archiving
was needed to attain full OA (1-9*).
And that re-publication, re-sale and "derivative-works" rights had
nothing to do with either OA or the real needs of research and
researchers.
[I am not, by the way, dear readers, "adulterating" OA
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/4351742/
I am accelerating it, whereas those who are needlessly raising the
barriers are (unintentionally) retarding it. Nor do, did or will I ever --
even should the string of B's get still longer! -- accept those parts of
the increasingly gilded BBB "definition" of OA that are and ever have
been unnecessary or incoherent, although I shame-facedly confess to
having failed to pick up on that incoherence immediately in B1. That's
what comes of being slow-witted. Blackballed from B2, I (with many
others) was merely window-dressing at B3, which was really just, by now,
ritually reiterating B2. If there is any "permission" barrier at all,
it is a psychological one, and it pertains only to the "permission" to
provide Green OA, no more -- something I always carefully call "endorse"
(or sometimes "bless") rather than "permit" or "allow," because I think
that's all just a matter of Wizard of Ozery too, and will be seen to
have been such in hindsight...]
One last point, made in full respect and admiration, for Peter
Suber. Peter understands every word I am saying. His position, of all
the people on this planet, is closest to my own. But Peter in fact has
broader goals than I do. His "FOS" (Free Online Scholarship) movement
predated OA, and had a much bigger goal: It targeted no less than all of
scholarship, online: not just journal articles, but books, multimedia,
teaching materials, everything.
I greatly value, and fully support Peter's wider goals. But I don't think
they are OA. They are FOS. And OA has the virtue of being the easier,
nearer, surer goal.
I think that every time a little divergence arises between Peter and me,
it is always a variant of this: He still has his heart and mind set on
FOS, and it is good that he does. Someone eventually has to fight that
fight too. But OA is less than that, it is nearer, indeed it is within
reach. And hence it is ever so important that we should not over-reach,
trying to attain something that is further, and more complicated than OA,
when we don't yet have OA. For we thereby risk complicating the already
absurdly overdue attainment of OA.
I think that is what is behind our strategic difference on whether OA
requires the elimination of all "permission" barriers, or whether, after
all, the elimination of all "price" barriers (via Green OA self-archiving
-- which is and always has been my model, and my ever-faithful "intuition
pump") does give us all the capabilities worth having, and worth holding
out for. Re-publication rights and the right to create derivative works
may be essential for FOS, and for the Creative Commons. But they are not
essential for OA; and it would be an unnecessary, self-imposed handicap
to insist that they should be. That would merely raise barriers for OA
where there are none.
Stevan Harnad
AMERICAN SCIENTIST OPEN ACCESS FORUM:
http://amsci-forum.amsci.org/archives/American-Scientist-Open-Access-Forum.h
tml
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/
UNIVERSITIES and RESEARCH FUNDERS:
If you have adopted or plan to adopt a policy of providing Open Access
to your own research article output, please describe your policy at:
http://www.eprints.org/signup/sign.php
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html
OPEN-ACCESS-PROVISION POLICY:
BOAI-1 ("Green"): Publish your article in a suitable toll-access journal
http://romeo.eprints.org/
OR
BOAI-2 ("Gold"): Publish your article in an open-access journal if/when
a suitable one exists.
http://www.doaj.org/
AND
in BOTH cases self-archive a supplementary version of your article
in your own institutional repository.
http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/
http://archives.eprints.org/
http://openaccess.eprints.org/
Received on Tue Oct 16 2007 - 03:06:59 BST