[Open-access] [open-science] Elsevier: some facts, by Tim Gowers

Fri May 2 13:00:48 UTC 2014

Hello,

On 02.05.2014 12:33, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
>
> On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 11:01 AM, Tom Olijhoek <tom.olijhoek at gmail.com 
> <mailto:tom.olijhoek at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>         Can you expand on the re-use fees? This is an additional cost
>         to subscriptions. Re-use payments are at least as problematic
>         as subscriptions. But even harder to get a handle on. (?more
>         FOIs?)
>
>     I would think that copyright law always includes fair use policy
>     which applies especially to use for educational purposes?
>
>
> Not as I understand it. There is no Fair Use in UK. Is there in NL? 
> Using photocopies of articles from journals, even if you subscribe, 
> could land you in court. University librarians often stick warning 
> notices to photocopiers in UK warning that (at best) it's purely 
> private use.
No, there isn't, but there is equivalent law that allows particular 
types of re-use, including citation, criticism, parody, etc., which 
roughly covers what is covered by fair use in the states. If my memory 
serves me, this includes an educational exception; I'm not sure about 
re-use.

Here in Germany (I am originally Dutch), the laws are a bit more 
restictive -- we were told that republication of content (technically 
including things like images on lecture slides) is restricted to a 
classroom group (up to 30 people, if memory serves). I don't know about 
research in this case.

While reading this thread, something occurred to me: what exactly is 
covered by 're-use'? When I cite an article, say from Elsevier, do I 
have to have paid for it (or obtained it under some other license) to be 
allowed to cite it? In computer science literature, I sometimes see a 
tendency to 'cite the original source', even when this is an old book 
that noone has access to. Ideologically there's the obvious problem that 
you should read everything you cite, but aside from that: does copyright 
law really have any say in that, or am I just being paranoid?

As an aside: thanks to everyone for their sharing and the interesting 
discussions, I've been quietly reading and enjoying this discussion for 
quite some time now.

Greetings,
Rens van der Heijden
PhD candidate
Institute of distributed systems
University of Ulm
>
> Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use and weep.
>
> -- 
> 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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