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

Wed Oct 10 20:04:16 UTC 2012

THANK you, Cameron. I've seen a bunch of anti-CC BY articles recently
(many of them by Harnad) but just lacked the energy to slap them down.
I appreciate your taking the time to do it so effectively ... not to
mention much more tactfully than I would have.

-- Mike.

On 10 October 2012 17:13, cameronneylon.net <cn at cameronneylon.net> wrote:
> 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
>
>
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> --
>
> 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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> --
>
> Jonathan Gray
>
>
> Head of Community
>
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
>
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> http://twitter.com/jwyg
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> --
>
> Jonathan Gray
>
>
> Head of Community
>
> The Open Knowledge Foundation
>
> http://www.okfn.org
>
>
> http://twitter.com/jwyg
>
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