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<TITLE>RE: [Open-access] [open-science] Open Science Anthology published</TITLE>
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<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">I've been following this with interest and just wanted to draw your attention to a</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-gb"> </SPAN><A HREF="http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2013/12/24/pubmed-central-revealed-reviewing-and-interpreting-the-findings-of-a-surprising-2013/"><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Calibri">debate</FONT></U></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-gb"></SPAN></A><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri"> I had with Kent Anderson at the Scholarly Kitchen</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-gb"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">(see towards the end of the comments)</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-gb"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">- he feels very strongl</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">y 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</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-gb"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">against</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri"></FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-gb"> <FONT FACE="Calibri">this kind of thinking from traditional publishers again and again</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-us"><FONT FACE="Calibri">-----Original Message-----<BR>
From: open-access [<A HREF="mailto:open-access-bounces@lists.okfn.org">mailto:open-access-bounces@lists.okfn.org</A>] On Behalf Of Bjoern Brembs<BR>
Sent: 27 January 2014 12:41<BR>
To: Heather Morrison<BR>
Cc: open-access@lists.okfn.org; open-science@lists.okfn.org; Emanuil Tolev<BR>
Subject: Re: [Open-access] [open-science] Open Science Anthology published</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-gb"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">On Sunday, January 26, 2014, 10:30:41 PM, you wrote:</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> 1. If the work of scholars is not their work, but</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> rather the taxpayers' work, then scholars have no rights to grant </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> copyright to publishers, period, no rights to obtain patents or to </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> work with commercial companies or universities to help them to achieve </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> patents. I think a good argument could be made that this is how things </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> should work, but in reality this is not how the system works now.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> FYI, this would be an argument AGAINST CC-BY, as CC licenses are a </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> partial waiver of copyright, and from this perspective scholars have </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> no copyright to grant. If you would like to advocate for this position </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> I very much encourage you to do so!</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">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.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">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.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> 2. If the work of scholars is 100% paid for by</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> taxpayers where you work and live, what an excellent model</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> - please write about how this works!</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">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.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">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.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">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.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">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.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> For example, would you propose that taxpayers should claim copyright? </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">To combat abuse by whom? Tax-evaders? Maybe :-) Aliens? I don't know if copyright should be our top priority in this case :-)</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">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).</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Clearly, this sort of "knowledge protectionism" is a perspective we should try and prevent.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">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. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> What this means is that a very large percentage of research is </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> conducted without taxpayer funding.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">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.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">I don't think anybody ever proposed making something public by default which wasn't public to begin with?</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> 5. Research often involves other parties besides</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> funders and researchers. An argument can be made that research on </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> First Nations groups properly belongs to them (in Canada, some of our </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> First Nations groups do make such claims). Businesses, medical </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> subjects, organizations that help to facilitate the research - many </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> people participate in research projects. This illustrates an issue </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> with the "funder copyright" scenario - if rich people are able to fund </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> research conducted on poor people does this mean that rich people </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> should own the results? I would argue no, that others who have </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">> contributed to works have rights as well.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">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.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">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.</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">All the best,</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Bjoern</FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">--</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Björn Brembs</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">---------------------------------------------</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"></SPAN><A HREF="http://brembs.net"><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">http://brembs.net</FONT></SPAN><SPAN LANG="en-gb"></SPAN></A><SPAN LANG="en-gb"></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Neurogenetics</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Universität Regensburg</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">Germany</FONT></SPAN></P>
<P DIR=LTR><SPAN LANG="en-gb"><FONT FACE="Calibri">_______________________________________________</FONT></SPAN></P>
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