On Thu, 10 Apr 2008, Robert Kiley [Wellcome Trust] wrote:
> Conscious that this licence only extends to "gold" OA articles, the
> Trust is continuing to work with publishers to explore the possibility
> of developing a similar licence for author manuscripts.
It's important that everyone understand clearly what is at issue here:
(1) The Wellcome Trust, the world's first research funder to mandate OA,
has not only mandated Green OA self-archiving, but has also made funds
available to authors to pay their publishers to make their articles Gold
OA, in order to make them not just price-barrier-free (Green OA) but
also permissions-barrier-free.
(2) This means that non-OA publishers, while continuing to receive full
subscription revenue, are paid extra fees by Wellcome in exchange for
the extra usage rights.
(3) There is no question that these extra usage rights are welcome
and useful.
(4) The question is whether they are worth the extra money at this time.
(5) The problem is not only that the extra money is being diverted from
research funds (at a time when research funds are getting ever scarcer
and harder to come by).
(6) The problem is also that paying the publishers extra money is not a
solution that scales: Wellcome may be able to afford it, but what about
all the rest of the world's research output, unfunded by Wellcome?
(7) Can all funders afford (and do they wish) to divert scarce research
funds to pay for extra publisher costs?
(8) And what about unfunded research?
(9) Can universities afford (and do they wish) to adopt OA mandates that
also entail paying publishers extra fees? Should they want to?
(10) Perhaps most important: Are these extra (welcome, useful) usage
rights worth making a fuss about just now, when we do not yet even have
universal Green OA, or universal Green OA mandates?
(11) Will fussing about "fair use is not enough" at this time increase
or decrease the probability that the world's research institutions and
funders converge on a scaleable strategy that will at least deliver
universal Green OA (at long last)?
(12) To repeat: It is not that the extra usage rights are not useful,
desirable and welcome, nor that a large private research funder like
Wellcome is not to be commended for being willing to put both their
efforts and their money behind securing them.
(13) It is that this is not the time to focus on what universal Green OA
mandates will *not* deliver.
(14) It is the time to put our full collective weight behind the
solution that will scale up to deliver universal Green OA.
(15) (It is virtually certain that universal Green OA itself will then go
on to usher in the extra usage rights -- at no extra charge.)
Stevan Harnad
> At the Wellcome Trust we also believe that "fair use is not enough" if
> the benefits of text and data-mining - with its promise of discovering
> new knowledge - are to be fully realised.
>
> Consequently, as a condition of paying an open access fee, the Trust
> requires publishers to licence these articles such that they may be
> freely copied, distributed, displayed, performed and modified into
> derivative works by any user. Publishers may impose conditions on users
> in relation to attribution (i.e. users must attribute the work in the
> manner specified by the author or licensor) and commercial use (i.e.
> specify that the work must not be used for commercial purposes.
>
> All publishers which offer a "Wellcome compliant" OA option - which
> includes, Elsevier, Wiley-Blackwell, Springer, OUP etc - now include
> this licence information in the XML they deposit in PMC. Some
> publishers (e.g. Springer, OUP) use the CC-BY-NC, and others (e.g.
> Elsevier, T&F, Society for Endocrinology) have defined their own
> licences, but again they explicitly allow text-mining and the creation
> of derivative works.
>
> These articles are also made available through PMC's OAI interface, and
> as such can be downloaded and exposed to text and data-mining services.
>
> Conscious that this licence only extends to "gold" OA articles, the
> Trust is continuing to work with publishers to explore the possibility
> of developing a similar licence for author manuscripts.
>
> 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 -- wellcome.ac.uk
> Library Web site: http://library.wellcome.ac.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: Wed, 9 Apr 2008 23:40:54 +0200
> From: Klaus Graf <klausgraf -- GOOGLEMAIL.COM>
> Subject: We do NOT need to update the BBB definition
>
> http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/386-Dont-Risk-Getting-
> Les=
> s-By-Needlessly-Demanding-More.html
>
> Peter Suber has answered at
> http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/price-and-permission-barriers
> -ag=
> ain.html
>
> Peter Murray-Rust (and I) have often argued that permission barriers
> must be removed. See e.g.
>
> http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/4409408/
> http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/4356023/ (and earlyer posts)
>
> See also
> MacCallum CJ (2007) When Is Open Access Not Open Access? PLoS Biol
> 5(10): e285 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050285
>
> On the recent discussion on textmining and PubMedCentral:
> http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/text-mining-licensed-non-oa-l
> ite=
> rature.html
> http://researchremix.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/non-oa-full-text-for-text-
> min=
> ing/
> http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=3D1026
>
> Harnad writes: "OA is free online access. With that comes,
> automatically, the individual capability of linking, reading,
> downloading, storing, printing off, and data-mining (locally)."
>
> "Data-mining (locally)" is nonsense. If I have to mine 1000 articles and
> are allowed to downlad automatically 10 articles/day I have to wait 100
> days.
>
> Harnad repeats his ideas as mantras. We can do the same:
>
> FAIR USE IS NOT ENOUGH.
>
> There are scholars and scientists outside the U.S. under more rigid
> copyright regimes without Fair Use.
>
> Let's have a closer look on the German Copyright law:
>
> http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__53.html
>
> It is allowed to make copies for scholarly use if and only if
> (i) there are good reasons
> and
> (ii) there is no commercial goal ("keinen gewerblichen Zwecken dient").
>
> In my humble opinion medical research in a pharma business is
> (i) research according BBB
> (ii) commercial.
>
> A scientist in this company may according German law (since January 1,
> 2008=
> ) NOT
> (i) make copies of scholarly articles (=A7 53 Abs. 2 Nr. 2 UrhG) for
> schola= rly use
> (ii) data-mining.
>
> On the problems of the new commercial clausula for universities
> ("Drittmittelforschung") see (in German) the position of the
> Urheberrechtsb=FCndnis:
> http://www.dfn.de/fileadmin/3Beratung/Recht/Expertise-3-korb-urhg.pdf
>
> =A7 53 Abs. 2 Nr. 4 allows him making copies (of some articles in a
> journal issue) on paper or for non-digital use only. Because data mining
> needs digital use our German pharma scientist has only a chance to mine
> the CC-BY subset of OA publications (most hybrid journals have AFAIK
> CC-BY-NC).
>
> (i) OA is important for all researchers (including commercial research).
> (ii) Commercial medical research is important for world's health
> problems.
> (iii) Data-mining is a new scientific way to solve medical problems.
> (iii) Business companies engaged in commercial research cannot and will
> not afford journal licenses for large-scale data-mining.
>
> (SCNR: How many people must die because an OA guru says "There is a need
> to update BBB" and denies the need of re-use?)
>
> There is a simple solution (I will repeat it because it is important
> like a mantra):
>
> * MAKE ALL RESEARCH RESULTS CC-BY
> * MAKE ALL RESEARCH RESULTS CC-BY
> * MAKE ALL RESEARCH RESULTS CC-BY
>
> Klaus Graf
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:04:57 +0100
> From: Stevan Harnad <harnad -- ECS.SOTON.AC.UK>
> Subject: Re: We do NOT need to update the BBB definition
>
> This message is in MIME format. The first part should be readable
> text,
> while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware
> tools.
>
> --1318632772-364283164-1207779646=:7537
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> Content-Transfer-Encoding: QUOTED-PRINTABLE
> Content-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0804092324211.7537 -- login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>
>
> On Wed, 9 Apr 2008, Klaus Graf wrote:
>
> > How many people must die because an OA guru says "There is a need to
> > update BBB" and denies the need of re-use?
>
> Ummm, a bit shrill! But here's my (6-step) answer:
>
> (1) We have neither price-freedom nor permission-freedom today. (So
> if people are dying because of that, they're dying.)
>
> (2) I am as sure as I am of anything (short of Cartesian certainty)
> that universal price-freedom (Green OA) not only fulfills most of
> the immediate needs of researchers, but that it is also the fastest
> and surest way of eventually achieving permission-freedom too
> (let's
> call that Gold OA, for simplicity -- it's not, but it'll do).
>
> (3) Now price-freedom can be achieved by self-archiving, and
> self-archiving can be (and is being) mandated.
>
> (4) Insisting now on wrapping permission-freedom into the mandate
> (copyright-retention) makes it much more difficult and much less
> likely that consesnus will be reached to adopt a mandate at all --
> and if adopted, this stronger p&p mandate seems to require an
> opt-out
> option as a compromise (as in Harvard's p&p mandate), which means
> it
> is no longer a mandate at all, and compliance is not assured.
>
> (5) But (as Peter Suber has very fully understood) I have no
> reservations at all about stronger mandates (Green price-freedom
> plus Gold permission-freedom mandates) *if they can be successfully
> agreed upon, adopted, implemented and fulfilled*. More is always
> better than less if it can indeed be had; more is only an obstacle
> if it stands in the way of the less that is already within reach.
>
> (6) Harvard's p&p copyright-retention mandate, with an opt-out, is
> not a mandate. If it nevertheless proves, in 3 years, to deliver
> nearly 100% p&p OA, then it will be a success (and I will have
> been wrong). If not, then yet another 3 years will have been lost
> by needlessly over-reaching -- because we already know that weaker
> Green deposit (price-freedom) mandates, without opt-out, deliver
> nearly 100% (Green) OA within 3 years. (And if Harvard's p&p
> mandate
> is widely imitated in the meanwhile, instead of a deposit mandate,
> without even knowing whether it is destined to succeed or fail,
> then a lot more years of OA will be needlessly lost.)
>
> So "How many people must die"? You think fewer if we over-reach, trying
> unnecessarily for both price-freedom and permission-freedom in the same
> swoop, at the risk of getting neither. I think fewer if we first grasp
> what is already within our reach, because it is not only sure to give us
> most of what we want and need immediately (price-freedom), but it is
> also the most likely way to get the rest (permission-freedom) thereafter
> too.
>
> (By the way, if we don't update BBB, then Green OA is not OA, and Green
> OA mandates are not providing what they say and think they are
> providing, but something else. Nor have I been talking about OA for a
> decade and a half now, but about something else. "If this be error and
> upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved...")
>
> "Kripke (1980) gives a good example of how "gold" might be baptized
> on the shiny yellow metal in question, used for trade, decoration
> and
> discourse, and then we might discover "fool's gold," which would
> make
> all the sensory features we had used until then inadequate, forcing
> us
> to find new ones. He points out that it is even possible in
> principle
> for "gold" to have been inadvertently baptized on "fool's gold"! Of
> interest here are not the ontological aspects of this possibility,
> but the epistemic ones: We could bootstrap successfully to real
> gold
> even if every prior case had been fool's gold. "Gold" would still
> be
> the right word for what we had been trying to pick out all along,
> and its original provisional features would still have provided a
> close enough approximation to ground it, even if later information
> were to pull the ground out from under it, so to speak."
> http://arxiv.org/html/cs/9906002
>
> Amen.
>
> Stevan Harnad
>
> On Wed, 9 Apr 2008, Klaus Graf wrote:
>
> > http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/386-Dont-Risk-Gettin
> > g-L=
> ess-By-Needlessly-Demanding-More.html
> >
> > Peter Suber has answered at
> > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/price-and-permission-barrie
> > rs-=
> again.html
> >
> > Peter Murray-Rust (and I) have often argued that permission barriers
> > must be removed. See e.g.
> >
> > http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/4409408/
> > http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/4356023/ (and earlyer posts)
> >
> > See also
> > MacCallum CJ (2007) When Is Open Access Not Open Access? PLoS Biol
> > 5(10): e285 doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0050285
> >
> > On the recent discussion on textmining and PubMedCentral:
> > http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2008/04/text-mining-licensed-non-oa
> > -li=
> terature.html
> > http://researchremix.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/non-oa-full-text-for-tex
> > t-m=
> ining/
> > http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=3D1026
> >
> > Harnad writes: "OA is free online access. With that comes,
> > automatically, the individual capability of linking, reading,
> > downloading, storing, printing off, and data-mining (locally)."
> >
> > "Data-mining (locally)" is nonsense. If I have to mine 1000 articles
> > and are allowed to downlad automatically 10 articles/day I have to
> > wait 100 days.
> >
> > Harnad repeats his ideas as mantras. We can do the same:
> >
> > FAIR USE IS NOT ENOUGH.
> >
> > There are scholars and scientists outside the U.S. under more rigid
> > copyright regimes without Fair Use.
> >
> > Let's have a closer look on the German Copyright law:
> >
> > http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/urhg/__53.html
> >
> > It is allowed to make copies for scholarly use if and only if
> > (i) there are good reasons
> > and
> > (ii) there is no commercial goal ("keinen gewerblichen Zwecken
> dient").
> >
> > In my humble opinion medical research in a pharma business is
> > (i) research according BBB
> > (ii) commercial.
> >
> > A scientist in this company may according German law (since January 1,
>
> > 20=
> 08) NOT
> > (i) make copies of scholarly articles (=A7 53 Abs. 2 Nr. 2 UrhG) for
> > scho=
> larly use
> > (ii) data-mining.
> >
> > On the problems of the new commercial clausula for universities
> > ("Drittmittelforschung") see (in German) the position of the
> > Urheberrechtsb=FCndnis:
> > http://www.dfn.de/fileadmin/3Beratung/Recht/Expertise-3-korb-urhg.pdf
> >
> > =A7 53 Abs. 2 Nr. 4 allows him making copies (of some articles in a
> > journal issue) on paper or for non-digital use only. Because data
> > mining needs digital use our German pharma scientist has only a chance
>
> > to mine the CC-BY subset of OA publications (most hybrid journals have
>
> > AFAIK CC-BY-NC).
> >
> > (i) OA is important for all researchers (including commercial
> research).
> > (ii) Commercial medical research is important for world's health
> > problems=
> =2E
> > (iii) Data-mining is a new scientific way to solve medical problems.
> > (iii) Business companies engaged in commercial research cannot and
> > will not afford journal licenses for large-scale data-mining.
> >
> > (SCNR: How many people must die because an OA guru says "There is a
> > need to update BBB" and denies the need of re-use?)
> >
> > There is a simple solution (I will repeat it because it is important
> > like a mantra):
> >
> > * MAKE ALL RESEARCH RESULTS CC-BY
> > * MAKE ALL RESEARCH RESULTS CC-BY
> > * MAKE ALL RESEARCH RESULTS CC-BY
> >
> > Klaus Graf
Received on Thu Apr 10 2008 - 14:50:46 BST