Dear Paul and Colleagues,
Just one point regarding the issue of who should hold the copyright; this is
something I learned from the then Editor-in-Chief of the American Physical
Society, Martin Blume. Â He pointed out that if the journal that published the
article wants to make back issues available in some new format, e.g. some new
electronic means, and the authors hold the copyrights, then the journal must get
permission from every author to put their articles in the new format. Â Instead,
the APS now holds the copyrights but gives authors full permission to distribute
their articles with no constraint. This seems to achieve the situation for
authors that we'd like to see, yet does not constrain the publisher. Â But this
is quite a different matter from what is in Paul's point about ownership of
data.
Best to all,
Steve
On Feb 18, 2010, at 8:54 AM, Uhlir, Paul wrote:
Jean-Claude makes an important point about publishing as a service
vs the "productization" and proprietary control of the fruits of the
freely contributed research results. The publishers then control and
exploit the donated knowledge on "behalf" of the researchers, who
amazingly still usually sign away their copyright.
Â
I have written elsewhere about a similar practice by commercial data
providers vis-a-vis the U.S. federal government. For example, in the U.S.,
the Commercial Space Act of 1998 directed the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration to purchase space and earth science data collection
and dissemination services from the private sector and to treat data as
commercial commodities under federal procurement regulations, rather than
to buy the data collection platforms and own the data as a public good.
The meteorological data value-adding industry has directed similar
lobbying pressures at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The photogrammetric industry has likewise indicated a desire to expand the
licensing of data products to the U.S. Geological Survey and to other
federal agencies. This has huge implications for access, use, and reuse
terms and conditions, since information produced by or owned by the
federal government is in the public domain, without copyright restrictions
on reuse. Thus, if the government asserts ownership of the data, it can be
freely (re)disseminated and used, whereas if the government licenses
("rents") the data from private sector providers, the government becomes a
huge cash cow. The public domain status of vast data collections with
great research and public interest applications is thereby severely
compromised at the expense of the public that paid for it.
Â
PaulÂ
________________________________________________________________________________
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum on behalf of Guédon Jean-Claude
Sent: Wed 2/17/2010 6:24 AM
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Re: OA's Three Bogeymen
Alas, this whole discussion continues to assume that publishing must rest
mainly on organizations that behave like businesses (hence the call for
sustainability) and often are busineses. Why should they not be treated as
services integral to the research cycle of activities (which should
include publishing)? If so, they should simply be supported by public
money. Research is supported by public money and publishing is an integral
part of research. No one asks if research is sustainable, and they do not
for a good reason: it is not! If publishing is an integral part of
research, it follows that publishing should be supported by public money
and not be submitted to market rules which, in any case, can only distort
the "great conversation"of science and of scholarship more generally.
The discussion below is also about one kind of Gold Publishing, the
so-called "author-pay model". Personally, I am very skeptical about this
model, and increasingly so. It solves access for third world countries
only through humiliating, piecemeal, requests, and it has opened the door
to devious practices, some of which are precisely being discussed below.
Yet,I believe the Gold Road is viable if constructed correctly. Once
again, allow me to point to SciELO. To my mind, this is the best and most
coherent strategy for the Gold road. It also coincides well with national
science policies trying to promote science and, as SciELO's Abel Packer
would say, provide a place in the sun for Third World scientists.
This is why I support a public option for scientific and scholarly
publishing, but this public option should be international in nature to
avoid being too vulnerable to national politics. This said, I would rather
be vulnerable to national politics than to Elsevier or any other large,
private, publisher. I can vote in my country but I have no voice inside
the Elsevier (or Springer, or ...) structure.
Jean-Claude Guédon
PS And, as a reminder, this statement is not in support of the Gold Road
as the exclusive way to reach OA; it simply tries to tweak the Gold Road
to make it more viable. This is also and exactly what I do when I try
tweaking the Green Road by saying that repositories must get involved in
the generation of symbolic value. Both roads are needed, but they must be
conceived coherently and correctly.
________________________________
Van: American Scientist Open Access Forum namens Richard Poynder
Verzonden: di 16-2-2010 11:59
Aan: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Onderwerp: OA's Three Bogeymen
I am inclined to agree with Keith. However, it needs to be acknowledged
that researchers are not always very discerning when choosing a publisher.
I have had some say to me, "In an ideal world I would not opt to pay to
publish with this or that particular publisher, but I need to get my work
published urgently, so I am just going to bite the bullet."
For that reason some OA publishers seem quite content not to be part of
the OASPA community, and happy to operate by their own rules -- in the
knowledge that there is a ready market for their services. So while one
might argue that the research community can afford to ignore these
companies and simply carry on using subscription publishers and Green OA,
in the hope that the market will somehow create an optimal OA publishing
ecosystem, I am less confident.
From: American Scientist Open Access Forum
[mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG] On
Behalf Of keith.jeffery_at_STFC.AC.UK
Sent: 16 February 2010 12:00
To: AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM_at_LISTSERVER.SIGMAXI.ORG
Subject: Interview with Open Access publisher In-Tech/Sciy
All -
Richard Poynder recently suggested that there were three bogeymen haunting
the OA movement: (1) asking authors to pay to publish could turn scholarly
publishing into a vanity press; (2) OA publishing will in any case
inevitably lead to lax or even non-existent peer review; (3) OA publishing
is not financially sustainable.
http://poynder.blogspot.com/2010/02/oa-interviews-sciyo-aleksandar-lazinica.htm
l
In my opinion.....
There is already evidence of (1) with various publishers trying to scam
payment for publishing (fortunately very few cases to date).
As a consequence of (1), (2) inevitably happens - but hopefully only in
the case of a small number of so-called journals.
It may be that (3) is true; with all information to date indicating gold
OA costs 3 to 4 times more than current subscription models (the figure of
3 comes from our own estimates at STFC, 4 comes from the recent posting on
AMSCI concerning the ACM article).
But of course if current subscription models (maintaining peer review) are
backed up by green OA via IRs then everyone has the benefit of OA at a
much reduced cost.
In my opinion, the answer for academics - especially in these days of
financial stringency - is to keep with the subscription model and go green
OA and let future scholarship ecosystems develop.
Happy to discuss further...
Keith
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Received on Sat Feb 20 2010 - 17:56:51 GMT