[Open-access] [open-science] how open is it

Wed Oct 10 16:13:58 UTC 2012

Heather

I can't help but feel you are attacking a straw person here. No one has ever argued that CC BY *defines* Open Access. Many of us argue that is a necessary *part* of open access as defined by the original BOAI and Peter Suber has explicitly said that was the originally intended meaning. The distinction between gratis and libre came later (see Postscript2 in http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/06-02-12.htm).

Under the BOAI Open Access is the free, immediate, and unencumbered ability to access, read, use, re-use, and re-mix a work. The license is merely a tool to help ensure that we meet these conditions. It is not sufficient and I don't think anyone has suggested it was but it is precisely as part of the mechanism for ensuring that commercial publishers do reach the standard that we want when they provide open access that it is most useful. DRM is a red herring. No policy would accept anything with DRM on it as acceptable OA. It's actually an argument for repositories as part of OA policy that it creates a testable functional definition - if you can put it in the repo under a specified licence then you're compliant with the policy.

What you are proposing as open access is some form of free access for certain defined purposes but it doesn't quality as "open" in any of the senses the word has been used by either the Open Source Definition, the Open Knowledge Definition, or the definition of Free (as defined by FSF and the Free Culture movement). That's fine, and you're free to argue for these things but there is a reason why these definitions converge (and a reason why they differ on specific details).

On 5 Oct 2012, at 01:22, Heather Morrison wrote:

> 4.	There are GOOD reasons for scholars not to want to allow derivatives. Scholars need to specify NoDerivs.

I can't even begin to understand this. A primary part of my definition of research is that people can and will build on it. This might be through mining, aggregation, indexing, critique, translation, summary, all of which are derivative works. If you can't re-use work it isn't research in my view. It may be art, and perhaps more humanities scholarlship generates artistic rather than research outputs. But the public funding of art is a very different argument to the public funding of resaerch.

I'm not going to tackle the non-commercial issue point by point except to say that funders have an obligation to globally optimise outcome on investment and that is why they are shifting to requiring CC-BY. A major driver of the RCUK policy is the aim of supporting innovation including commercialisation and that's why thhe policy is structured the way it is. Infrastructure funding is an issue but the one thing we've learnt from study after study of the effect of restrictions on re-use is that requiring (or even encouraging measures to support) cost recovery is one of the best way of reducing the overall impact of your research investment. Many of the criticisms of various UK and EU initiatives have completely failed to engage with the aims of those governments which I think is unfortunate. I can see people disagree with whether the aims are correct but failing to engage with major stakeholders on their own terms is just bad politics.

If people want to do cost recovery on privately or personally funded research then that's their business. I think it's misguided in most cases because it generally leads to less local income as well as less global impact but that's something to look at on a case by case basis. But funders and particularly government funders are well within their rights to place requirements on the money they disburse. Researchers are free to not ask for money if they don't like the conditions. As with the NIH mandate there is always a choice - no-one is forced to do anything here but there are always conditions to accepting money, whether it be research funds or a salary.

> 9.   The CC-BY universe is MUCH smaller than the open access universe. Attempts to force CC-BY on all are, in my opinion, highly likely to cause a major divide in the open access movement.

Actually not true. I've been doing some analysis using DOAJ and Crossref as a data source and CC BY dominates the published OA journal literature. The numbers aren't perfect but as a percentage of all OA in journals that have a registered licence type with DOAJ that have DOI registrations CC BY is about 80% of the total. CC-BY numbers are growing around 20% year on year whereas CC-NC/CC-NC-SA are not. Obviously there are a lot of journals with no licence but they actually don't publish that many articles. 

As far as divides go, I actually think it's inevitable. As the movement succeeds  and changes policy it is inevitable that all the cracks in what was always a lot of different groups pointing in roughly the same direction will start to emerge. It's the nature of revolutions. In one sense its a good thing. It means we've won. That we disagree on implementation should come as a surprise to no-one, the agendas and aims are far too different for agreement to hold right across the movement.

As an aside I think its ironic that the objections that  often frame the discussion as how actually paying the costs of publication or requiring CC BY are inimical to the needs of the humanities, yet humanists (and social scientists) are always concerned that funders and government don't appreciate the impact they have. Actually I think the arguments are even stronger in the humanities that maximising impact through enabling re-use will help make the case for continued appropriate funding.

Cheers

Cameron

> best,
> 
> Heather Morrison
> Open Access Advocate / Opponent of Forced CC-BY
> 
> On 2012-09-25, at 11:59 AM, Jonathan Gray wrote:
> 
>> On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 8:54 PM, cameronneylon.net <cn at cameronneylon.net> wrote:
>>> On 25 Sep 2012, at 19:03, Jonathan Gray wrote:
>>>> * "Generous reuse & remixing rights (CC-BY license)" - The allusion
>>>> to CC-BY is helpful, but it would also be good if this box explicitly
>>>> mentioned OpenDefinition.org as a standard for fully open licenses -
>>>> e.g. for cases where there may be bespoke or custom licenses.
>>> 
>>> Without wishing to re-open old wounds, the OpenDefinition isn't really appropriate in this context as it isn't strong enough as a definition for interoperability of bespoke licences. We're adopting the BOAI original definition alongside the recommendations of BOAI10 here that CC-BY is best practice (for journal *articles*...not really referring strongly to data here) ie share-alike is not "open enough" in this domain.
>> 
>> Point very much taken Cameron. In which case - what about
>> "OpenDefinition compliant 'attribution style' licensing" which
>> shouldn't cause interoperability issues?
>> 
>> Or perhaps it isn't worth broadening from CC-BY (as it might have been
>> a few years ago) as people are much more likely to use CC-BY than to
>> roll their own, which of course should be encouraged.
>> 
>> J.
>> 
>>> But feel free to comment!
>>> 
>>> Cheers
>>> 
>>> Cameron
>>> 
>>>> J.
>>>> 
>>>> On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 6:54 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Tom Olijhoek <tom.olijhoek at gmail.com>
>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> A very important announcement I think
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> judge for yourself
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> http://www.arl.org/sparc/media/HowOpenIsIt.shtml
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> YES. It's about time something like this happened - SPARC has been quiet and
>>>>> I look to them for some guidance. I haven't read the booklet, but comment on
>>>>> the abstract
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> • Move the conversation from “Is It Open Access?” to “How Open Is It?”
>>>>> • Clarify the definition of OA
>>>>> • Standardize terminology
>>>>> • Illustrate a continuum of “more open” versus “less open”
>>>>> • Enable people to compare and contrast publications and policies
>>>>> • Broaden the understanding of OA to a wider audience
>>>>> 
>>>>> These are all critical. Until recently there was nowhere they could be
>>>>> discussed without the discussion being destroyed.
>>>>> 
>>>>> But now we have OKF open-access !!
>>>>> 
>>>>> Let's offer this organ to the world and let's finally try to get a decent
>>>>> discussion going.
>>>>> 
>>>>> P.
>>>>> 
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> TOM
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>>> open-access mailing list
>>>>>> open-access at lists.okfn.org
>>>>>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access
>>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
>>>>> Peter Murray-Rust
>>>>> Reader in Molecular Informatics
>>>>> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
>>>>> University of Cambridge
>>>>> CB2 1EW, UK
>>>>> +44-1223-763069
>>>>> 
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> open-access mailing list
>>>>> open-access at lists.okfn.org
>>>>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access
>>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> Jonathan Gray
>>>> 
>>>> Head of Community
>>>> The Open Knowledge Foundation
>>>> http://www.okfn.org
>>>> 
>>>> http://twitter.com/jwyg
>>>> 
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> open-access mailing list
>>>> open-access at lists.okfn.org
>>>> http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-access
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> -- 
>> Jonathan Gray
>> 
>> Head of Community
>> The Open Knowledge Foundation
>> http://www.okfn.org
>> 
>> http://twitter.com/jwyg
>> 
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> 

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