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

Mon Jan 27 16:33:56 UTC 2014

There will always be reasons for people to *worry*. This is completely
disconnected from reality though. I may worry about a lot of things which
will never happen, but I try to deal with reality in such a way that my
worries don't get in the way of others.

It just becomes a case of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
Somebody could print my paper and cause arson using the copy as kindling,
so let's license the copy under My Own License Attribution NoArson and make
indirect communication between millions of people (== licensing) more
difficult. Adding support for that license to the various systems which
deal with scholarship does cost *real* resources, others may not understand
if NoArson is compatible with other conditions in other licenses and it
just contributes to the chaos. I literally did nothing useful and managed
to make other people's lives more difficult for no good reason.

And scholars are free to do this, a right that I do support. They can
publish it under NoArson themselves on their own web page or anywhere they
can get it to. But they certainly can't expect the maintainers of widely
used systems like repositories, aggregators and so many others, to spend
resources on supporting this particular restriction.

If CC-BY works, then just use it. Doing otherwise has a direct negative
impact on the whole of the scholarly world. Forget any hypothetical
problems. When real problems arise, deal with them by actually talking to
the parties involved and starting discussions like this one. Any kind of
restrictive licensing will very, very, very rarely help you and will make
everybody's life more difficult, including yours, ALL the time. So the vast
majority of the time there's just no point in using anything else other
than CC-BY, worried or not.

Greetings,
Emanuil

On 27 January 2014 16:06, Heather Morrison <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>wrote:

>  hi Mark,
>
>  The point with respect to the potential for incorrect derivatives has to
> do with derivatives per se rather than how the derivatives are licensed.
> Any license that permits derivatives could just as easily permit incorrect
> derivatives as correct ones. My point is that there are valid scholarly
> reasons for hesitation about granting blanket permission to create
> derivatives.
>
>  best,
>
>  Heather Morrison
>
>  On 2014-01-27, at 10:44 AM, Mark MacGillivray <mark at cottagelabs.com>
>  wrote:
>
>  I can't let this particular piece of misinformation slip by. Just as
> well I have access to this discussion so that I, and others, may correct
> you.
>
> On 27 Jan 2014 14:49, "Heather Morrison" <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>
> wrote:
> >
> > Another reason why I think scholars and funding agencies alike should
> hesitate before demanding CC-BY is the potential for derivatives to cause
> harm through the spread of misinformation. My understanding of the study of
> toxicology is that a common saying, for good reason, is that the difference
> between a drug and a poison is a dose. Unleashing the creativity involved
> with automated derivatives may have benefits, but if a doctor is relying on
> a derivative that inserted a zero in the wrong place, the result could be
> death. Note that I am not demanding that derivatives be forbidden, rather
> suggesting that there are substantive reasons for hesitation about
> requiring that all scholarly works permit derivatives on a blanket basis.
>
> Your argument here has absolutely nothing to do with cc-by, and everything
> to do with quality of research and the ability to assess and correct it and
> to make it appropriate for consumption by particular user communities.
>
> You can tell by the fact that your example postulates an incorrect cc-by
> derivative and implies it is comparable to a non-cc-by but correct
> derivative. Thus you implicitly assume, and obfuscate from your reader the
> option to independently judge, that all non-cc-by works can somehow be
> taken to be correct by virtue of their license condition.
>
> However I could already take a piece of your work, regardless of license
> condition (and I could pay to access it if necessary), and write my own
> work with reference to and reliance upon yours. But my own work could be
> quality, or terrible, or purposeful fraud. I could succeed in publishing my
> new work under any form of copyright I desire, and in a highly reputable
> and expensive journal.
>
> My point being, you can spread misinformation as much as you like,
> regardless of copy rights.
>
> So the choice is, would you rather make it easier or harder for others to
> access and independently verify your claims?
>
> I would further argue that if particular forms of copy right are capable
> of imbuing quality as your argument suggests, despite the fact that nowhere
> do the definitions of any form of copy right make guarantees as to the
> quality of works to which they are attached, then the very concept of copy
> right is inappropriate for application to scholarly works.
>
> Mark
>
>
>
>
>  >
> > Now to explain just how fortunate Bjoern and others in his situation
> are:
> >
> > If your university and research are 100% publicly funded, then I would
> suggest that this is a special case. I would argue that this should be the
> norm - I favour fully publicly funded higher education. However, in much of
> the world this is not the case.
> >
> > Some reading:
> >
> > Denhart, Chris. Forbes July 2013: how the $1.2 trillion college debt
> crisis is crippling students, parents and the economy:
> >
> http://www.forbes.com/sites/specialfeatures/2013/08/07/how-the-college-debt-is-crippling-students-parents-and-the-economy/
> >
> > Freeman, Sunny, July 2013 Huffington Post Canada: Student Debt Canada:
> Post-Grads Delay Adult Life, Struggle with Payments, TD says:
> >
> http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/07/24/student-debt-canada-_n_3646153.html
> >
> > TD is Toronto Dominion, a very conservative Canadian bank. This is
> Forbes and TD explaining that student debt is a huge issue.
> >
> > In Canada and the US student debt is non-forgivable; it cannot be
> discharged in bankruptcy, no matter what. I argue that we are in effect
> asking the next generation to take on this burden to "invest" in their
> education then sign off on trade deals that have the effect of eliminating
> a large portion of the high-paying jobs for which they were investing. This
> is why I suggest that students, at least in North America, are in effect
> subsidizing both universities and taxpayers. For example, in the case of
> research, there are many grad students taking on a huge debt load some will
> never recover from in order to do research in the public interest.
> >
> > North America is not unique, however. For example, see this article from
> the Guardian on the desperate situation of universities in Greece:
> >
> > Smith, Helena, September 25, 2013. Austerity measures push Greek
> universities to point of collapse.
> >
> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/25/austerity-measures-push-greek-universities-collapse
> >
> > Meanwhile, in the UK:
> >
> > Malik, Shiv. November 25, 2013. The Guardian. Poorest students face
> £350m cut in grants.
> >
> http://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/nov/22/poorest-students-face-350m-cuts
> >
> > The cuts to student funding in the UK are particularly troubling to me
> in the context of UK's publisher-friendly open access policy. It strikes me
> that the UK is more concerned with the health of publisher profits than the
> prospects of the UK's own next generation.
> >
> > best,
> >
> > --
> > Dr. Heather Morrison
> > Assistant Professor
> > École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies
> > University of Ottawa
> > 613-562-5800 ext. 7634
> > http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
> > Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
>
>
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