[Open-access] Unhelpful post from Heather Morrison

Tue Feb 14 13:57:52 UTC 2012

Hi all,

On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 2:28 PM, Jenny Molloy <jcmcoppice12 at gmail.com>wrote:

> >* list the advantages of formal @ccess-compliance
> >* provide stories of user success and frustration
> Don't forget the web content sprint tomorrow from 2pm! We can hopefully
> get some good things together on this.
>
> >* discover more @ccess-compliant  resources
> >* build automated ingestion and annotaion
>
> While we're discovering more at ccess compliant resources, it might also be
> good to combine some of the tools, ideas and data we already have to create
> a database/permissions clarification request service (along the lines of
> isitopendata.org) called isitopenaccess.org?
>
> We could load it with as extensive a list of journals as we think
> appropriate, input all the data from Ross' spreadsheet on permissions and
> attempt to crowdsource more. There could also be a IIOD? style button so
> the publisher can be contacted regarding unclear policies.
>
> This would eventually allow faceted browsing by license/permission. It
> performs a different role to the OpenBib based service at the article level.
>
> It wouldn't be a trivial exercise but I think it could be quite useful as
> it seems that at the moment it's not easy for scientists when deciding
> where to publish to work out exactly how open access different journals
> really are and it could be a helpful selection tool without forcing people
> to visit every journal website individually.
>
> Does anyone think this would be worthwhile and/or used? I'm really keen to
> get all the great work Ross did more visible than on the googledoc where it
> currently resides.
>
> I think this would be *very useful*. the @ccess site would gain
definitely in value when we could provide guidance for users not only for
purposes of clarification in all matters concerning open access,  but also
as a helpful resource to find the real open access journals.
TOM

> Jenny
>
>
>
> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 12:46 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Feb 14, 2012 at 9:38 AM, Mike Taylor <mike at indexdata.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Heather Morrison writes the often fascinating blog The Imaginary
>>> Journal of Poetic Economics
>>>        http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/
>>>
>>> But today's BOAI 10th Anniversary post is problematic:
>>>
>>> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2012/02/way-of-saying-this-is-open-access.html
>>>
>>> She quotes from BOAI, which is clearly (from her own quoting)
>>> describing a regime compatible with CC-BY, but asserts that her own
>>> CC-BY-NC-SA blog complies.  Despite this, from the BOAI: "By "open
>>> access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the
>>> public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy,
>>> distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these
>>> articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or
>>> use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or
>>> technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to
>>> the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and
>>> distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should
>>> be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the
>>> right to be properly acknowledged and cited."
>>>
>>> We all agree that CC-NC-SA is not BOAI-compliant. Beware of my
>> generalizations but many statements in OA tend to be political rather than
>> logical. I have suffered a lot because I ask logical questions and give
>> logical answers and there is a large community who doesn't worry about
>> contradictions and inaccuracies.
>>
>> I have found this in trying to work out what I can and can't do about
>> text-mining and get responses (this from Stevan Harnad) "data-crunch green
>> OA as much as you like". This is a meaningless, semi-illiterate response in
>> that text != data and no wild assurancies free you from legal constraints.
>> So in my experience the "Green" branch of OA is riddled with
>> inconsistencies, lack of information, etc.
>>
>>
>>> I am not suggesting that we need to do anything in response to this --
>>> because of Heather's odd choice not to allow comments on her blog it
>>> rarely generates a lot of buzz -- but to illustrate the magnitude of
>>> the difficulty we face when even so committed an OA advocate as her
>>> can make such a mistake about licensing.
>>>
>>> So I am more and more thinking that before we plough too much effort
>>> into trying to get people to change their licensing terms, we have
>>> some work to do just getting them to say what those terms are: see for
>>> example this on Elsevier's "sponsored article" terms, which despite
>>> having been brought to the attention of both Alice Wise and Tom Reller
>>> has yet to receive anything resembling a meaningful answer:
>>>
>>> http://svpow.wordpress.com/2012/02/02/what-actually-is-elseviers-open-access-licence/
>>>
>>> The worst licences are the home-grown ones - try and work out what you
>> can legally do from, say, the RSC page on "Open Science". (That's another
>> problem - every publisher uses different terms).
>>
>> My suggestion is that at present we:
>> * list the advantages of formal @ccess-compliance
>> * provide stories of user success and frustration
>> * discover more @ccess-compliant  resources
>> * build automated ingestion and annotaion
>>
>> So I think we should concentrate on the positive and only change the
>> details of current practice where it is likely to succeed. For example we
>> might prepare a universal approach to mailing all non-compliant publishers
>>
>> --
>> 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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>>
>>
>
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