[Open-access] [open-science] Open Science Anthology published

[Mike Taylor]

Actually, Kent Anderson feels very strongly that he should be allowed
to keep printing money by paywalling the work of others. Everything
else he says follows from that.

-- Mike.


On 27 January 2014 14:34, Katie Foxall <katie at ecancer.org> wrote:
> I've been following this with interest and just wanted to draw your
> attention to a debate I had with Kent Anderson at the Scholarly Kitchen (see
> towards the end of the comments) - he feels very strongly that American
> taxpayers should not be paying for other countries to have access to
> research (specifically through PMC in this case).  I have come up against
> this kind of thinking from traditional publishers again and again.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: open-access [mailto:open-access-bounces at lists.okfn.org] On Behalf Of
> Bjoern Brembs
> Sent: 27 January 2014 12:41
> To: Heather Morrison
> Cc: open-access at lists.okfn.org; open-science at lists.okfn.org; Emanuil Tolev
> Subject: Re: [Open-access] [open-science] Open Science Anthology published
>
> On Sunday, January 26, 2014, 10:30:41 PM, you wrote:
>
>> 1.      If the work of scholars is not their work, but
>
>> rather the taxpayers' work, then scholars have no rights to grant
>
>> copyright to publishers, period, no rights to obtain patents or to
>
>> work with commercial companies or universities to help them to achieve
>
>> patents. I think a good argument could be made that this is how things
>
>> should work, but in reality this is not how the system works now.
>
>> FYI, this would be an argument AGAINST CC-BY, as CC licenses are a
>
>> partial waiver of copyright, and from this perspective scholars have
>
>> no copyright to grant. If you would like to advocate for this position
>
>> I very much encourage you to do so!
>
> It's actually quite close to my perspective, as I do take issue with
> university-applied patents and 'spin-off' companies by (public) university
> scholars, etc.
>
> Thus, I try to make all my research CC0 or CC BY or public domain and argue
> that this is what all people in similar positions should do.
>
>> 2.      If the work of scholars is 100% paid for by
>
>> taxpayers where you work and live, what an excellent model
>
>> - please write about how this works!
>
> That's how it is here. The state pays my university which pays my salary,
> that of my technician and that of my postdoc, plus a yearly budget which (in
> my rather special case) covers almost my entire research budget, if the two
> people I mentioned remained by sole co-workers.
>
> The model (which is slowly becoming outdated as research becomes more
> expensive) is that state universities cover all baseline aspects of research
> and teaching, while the federal government only pays for the extra-ordinary
> research projects for which one needs grants.
>
> In my case, there is only public money involved, from beginning to end.
> Student tuitions existed here only a for a few years, went 100% into
> teaching and were abolished last year. Private donations happen essentially
> only at institutions with corporate interests such as technical universities
> or in fields such as economics or some such.
>
> From an international perspective, perhaps this makes my case special, I
> don't know, but at least for most of Europe and the US (public universities)
> in my field of research, I get the impression it's at least very similar.
>
>> For example, would you propose that taxpayers should claim copyright?
>
> To combat abuse by whom? Tax-evaders? Maybe :-) Aliens? I don't know if
> copyright should be our top priority in this case :-)
>
> Seriously, though, I've seen the issue mentioned of tax-payers from one
> country protecting their investment against tax-payers from other countries.
> This is something that the current mantra of "the tax payer paid for it, so
> the tax payer should be able to access and re-use it" would, IMHO, cover.
> One country could, in principle, make all their research OA only for that
> country (more tricky in practice, obviously).
>
> Clearly, this sort of "knowledge protectionism" is a perspective we should
> try and prevent.
>
> However, I don't really have a good idea on how to defend "let's give away
> the research we paid for to those who didn't pay" against politicians who
> already begrudge poor people their social security.
>
>> What this means is that a very large percentage of research is
>
>> conducted without taxpayer funding.
>
> As with all research that is not tax payer funded, the open access rationale
> doesn't apply - it applies the rationale of either the scholar, if they are
> self-funded, or of the entity paying the scholar.
>
> I don't think anybody ever proposed making something public by default which
> wasn't public to begin with?
>
>> 5.      Research often involves other parties besides
>
>> funders and researchers. An argument can be made that research on
>
>> First Nations groups properly belongs to them (in Canada, some of our
>
>> First Nations groups do make such claims). Businesses, medical
>
>> subjects, organizations that help to facilitate the research - many
>
>> people participate in research projects. This illustrates an issue
>
>> with the "funder copyright" scenario - if rich people are able to fund
>
>> research conducted on poor people does this mean that rich people
>
>> should own the results? I would argue no, that others who have
>
>> contributed to works have rights as well.
>
> I don't think issues such as these are relevant for this discussion, as
> human rights always trump *any* form of license or copyright (at least for
> me as a non-lawyer), i.e., whatever license were ever established as a
> "default", there would always be larger reasons (e.g., privacy, your
> examples, or biological safety, etc.) which necessitate exceptions.
>
> For instance, I'm not sure I would favor a CC BY license for a paper which
> happened to describe the construction of an H-bomb with household
> ingredients, but I wouldn't find this particular example an obstacle to OA
> in general.
>
> All the best,
>
> Bjoern
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> Björn Brembs
>
> ---------------------------------------------
>
> http://brembs.net
>
> Neurogenetics
>
> Universität Regensburg
>
> Germany
>
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