[okfn-discuss] "Open Access" publications under CC-NC licences

Thu Dec 8 09:55:17 UTC 2011

Also +1.

Open Access and Open Educational Resources converging on NC is galling.

Pieter Colpaert <pieter.colpaert at gmail.com> wrote:

+1

On 12/08/2011 12:56 AM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote: 

There has been considerable recent discussion about CC-NC licences being used for "Open Access" papers by scholarly publishers. I have written a few blog posts (

http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/11/29/scientists-should-never-use-cc-nc-this-explains-why/ 
 http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/12/04/more-on-how-commercial-publishers-use-non-commercial-licensing-funders-are-you-really-getting-your-money%E2%80%99s-worth-many-are-not/ 
, http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/12/06/acceptance-of-cc-nc-has-sold-readers-and-authors-seriously-short/ 
) and responded to comments. I have summarised this in 
http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/12/07/%E2%80%9Copen-access%E2%80%9D-and-non-commercial-licences-summary/

Ross Mounce has summarised this as:
this mess has caused irreparable damage to the re-usability of the literature
with which I completely agree. I think it's so serious that it should not be discussed on my blog but brought here.

It took me by surprise that authorPays "Open Access" seems to be almost completely CC-NC. (The main open Access publishers such as PLoSONE and BMC have complete OKD-compliance by using CC-BY). CC-NC places so many restrictions on re-use that it is almost useless in science. 

I believe that the OKFN should take this issue very seriously and with great urgency. We know that multi-author organizations which start using CC-NC find it impossible to chnage later without approaching every author and with scholpub this is out of the question, so the longer this goes on the worse the problem.

I believe that OKFN should put together a group which draws together resource material which makes the case against NC and then promotoes this case to publishers and funders. Any aproaches to funders or publishers could be done through IsItOpenData. 

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069

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