[open-bibliography] Openbiblio Principles was: Virtual meeting today

[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Sun, Dec 19, 2010 at 7:14 PM, Adrian Pohl <adrian.pohl at okfn.org> wrote:

> Hello Karen,
>

Thanks very much for your input Karen,

As is probably clear it is not easy to get this right. The word
"bibliography" itself means different things to different people

>
> thanks for your valuable input. I'm commenting inline. Here is a link
> to the discussed document: http://bit.ly/gIfB11
>
> 2010/12/7 Karen Coyle <kcoyle at kcoyle.net>:
>
> > First, there are wording changes that I would normally like to make.
> > However, because there is the UK/US language difference, if a native UK
> > speaker has already gone over this, then we should discuss before I
> suggest
> > those changes.
>
> Definitely someone should align the wording as soon as we have agreed
> on the content.
>
> What I think has happened is:
* a number of us wrote the Panton Principles for Scientific Data
* Adrian used this to create  the Bibliography equivalent and some of the
the phrases are probably fairly intact
* Adrian has translated our discussion into the current document.

So it should not be regarded as finished

> > Other comments:
> >
> > 1. Do not use "free", which is ambiguous. Use "without cost" or "without
> > restriction" as appropriate.
>
> There is only one instance of "free", in the "preamble" bit.
> Personally, I don't mind using "free" there. "Without restriction"
> would be wrong (because we say attribution and share-alike are ok too)
> but please change it if you've got a good better wording.
>
> The Open Source terms are "gratis" and "libre" which work well there. They
have finally been carried over to Open Access where they also work well. (If
this had been done 10 years agao I beleieve that freedom of data would be
much advanced)


> > 2. Do not use "record" -- the citations created by authors are not
> records.
> > Can we find another term, such as "bibliographic description",
> > "bibliographic data"?
>
> I changed it to "bibliographic description".
>
> I think at this time this is the best we have arrived at


> >
> > 3. "addressing" does not work for me... I want to use something based on
> the
> > term "location"
>
> We have to make clear what we are talking about. I don't exactly know
> what Peter actually had in mind when he proposed this definition of a
> bibliographic record/description. I always thought he meant locating a
> resource in the context of a journal, an edited volume etc.


Yes


> On the
> other side locating may mean locating in a collection, indicating a
> place on the shelf.


No :-)

> Maybe you think - as well as I do - about holdings
> information and call number that adress a specific book. We certainly
> should make this clear in the text.
>
It may be helpful to visualize my motivation as from a scientist who until
recently had no interaction with mainstream library practice. The motivation
springs from the fact that secondary publishers use metadata to control our
actions and also charge us money for it. We live in occupied territory.

In science the action location or condition of an artifact is irrelevant
unlike monographs and incunabula. The article is platonic and there is a
platonic abstraction of the route to find and identify it - that's what I
mean by scientific bibliography. "Current contents" (does it still exist?)
is bibliography which should be ours by right.


> > 4. I don't think the list of data elements in the first second is
> helpful,
> > and I don't think it necessarily serves both functions (identification
> and
> > location).


I think I mean something different by "location" - I mean the ability to
find any copy of the platonic article whereas for a physical book this is
different for each exemplar. That is valuable for a particularly library and
I'm happy for it to be considered but it's not part of my struggle. (BTW I
am supportive of all aspects of bibliography - I'm just keener on one part!)


> Perhaps for actual identification of a publication we can refer
> > to library catalog entries and citation rules like MLA without needing a
> > list of data elements. For the location function (assuming this means
> > actually getting your hands or eyes on the item) you need a library
> catalog
> > entry or a URL (for online documents).
>
> I think the enumeration is valuable but need not be in the main body - it
could be an addendum. The purpose was to point out that these were things
that belonged by right to the commons. The great mistake of Open Access was
not spelling out in detail what they wanted and it was confused with
meaningless terms such as "light green". So we must not allow the publishers
to grab bits of our territory. The principles must - somewhere - address
that.

This is not quibbling. Failure to free bibliography costs academia hundreds
of millions of dollars a year



> Refering to catalog entries and citation rules sounds good. It also
> would shorten the text quite a bit. Would you change that bit?
>

I am agnostic about individual catalogues so long as they are controlled by
the creators and not third parties monopolising and constricting us. The
Libray of XYZ university should hold the rights to its own catalogue of
physical holdings. The rights to bibliography of electronic artifacts should
belong to the commons


> Regarding the location function we must first make clear what we mean
> by that (see above). I think Peter had something other in mind when he
> proposed this.
>
> > 5. I'm not sure why the heading in this first section is "Bibliographic
> data
> > already in the public domain", unless the intention is "Why we maintain
> that
> > bibliographic data is not covered by copyright." The wording does not say
> > that to me.
>
> The wording isn't clear but I couldn't think of anything better. It
> should indicate that the  section covers those parts of bibliographic
> descriptions which are not copyrightable and thus from the point of
> their creation in the public domain. Any ideas for a better wording?
> Then please change it.
>
> Yes, please do Karen! Adrian and I have wrestled with this and it reflects
our backgrounds. A third party would be valuable here. You need to try to
get into both our brains!


> > 6. the section on URIs seems to be aimed at online resources, not
> > bibliographic data in the web environment. We have bib data in the web
> > environment that does not have URIs or URLs.
>
> ...on the other side we can identify print resources with URIs. I
> think the text in this part is ok because of being vague enough ("can
> be achieved" and now "is possible").
>
> I am a practising TBList and believe that all Web data *should* carry
URIs==URLs


> > 7. I would not assert that user-generated tags are public domain. We
> can't
> > make that decision for all users who contribute tags. I agree that it is
> a
> > good idea to get users to agree that use of their tags is unrestricted,
> but
> > the circumstances in which users tag things varies greatly, so this broad
> > statement is problematic.
>


>
> In the first draft tags and subject headings were in the group of
> legally uncertain data as you suggest. I don't know why the act of
> tagging and indexing should be creative enough to gain copyright over
> taggings... But to be safe we might (again) put it into the next
> section.
>

If a third party wishes to take Open (libre) bibliography and tag it and
posses the result, fine. What we have to avoid is the use of tagging to
restrict us from our common right


>
> > 7a. Rather than asserting that things are public domain, I would rather
> > assert that these things are not covered by intellectual property rights.
> > It's a language quibble, but I feel that "public domain" is a legal term
> and
> > not a description. That may just be me.
>
> Hmm, I don't see this problem. We could contribute to making "public
> domain" a common term. I think it is already used quite often.
>
> The Pantonistas spent 2 years on this. It's not easy, but Jordan hatcher
and John Wilbanks converged on Public Domain being the only workable
solution for science data. This is because it *has* to conform with laws and
while these vary between jurisdictions the Public Domain was a universal
solution.

PD doesn't apply to - say - scholarly content because *automatically* that
carries copyright - by law. In contrast we argued that scientific data did
NOT, de facto, carry copyright. However to make this abundantly clear we
need to go through a conscious (but now simple) process of dedicating the
content to the PD - the PDDL. My guess is that this works for bibliography
as well - it is not, de facto, copyright.


> > 8. Subject headings and classification notations may be considered
> creative
> > work on the part of the cataloger. I would put them in the second
> category
> > of data elements to which rights may apply.
>
> See above.
>
> I'd agree


> > 9. "Sponsorship" -- is this sponsorship of the content or the
> publication? I
> > assume that it refers to the sponsorship of research that is often cited.
>
> You are right.
>
> > 10. This is more of a general concept, but in my  own mind I am unclear
> on
> > the rights status of name authority data. Selecting one fact to represent
> a
> > display of many similar facts does not seem to meet the creativity
> > requirement (that US law requires). But I agree that it belongs in this
> > "grey area" category in the document.
>
> I agree that name authority data might as well be public domain.
>

Anything we can manage to argue here will help


>
> > 11. #3 of the recommendations should refer to ANY restrictions on the
> data,
> > including attribution. Once we start mashing up data, anything but pure
> open
> > use becomes impossible. So perhaps this point should be about ANY
> > restrictions, of which non-commercial is one, attribution is another, and
> > even share-alike is another. (Note, if W3C provenance work becomes a
> > reality, we could say that people should pass on provenance data that is
> > received. This wouldn't so much be for the rights issue, in my mind, but
> so
> > that people can make selections based on whose data they trust most. One
> > issue with provenance is that is could give people a way to attempt to
> > control their data, and we will probably need to address that if it
> becomes
> > a reality.)
>
> I don't agree with this. The recommendations built on each other and
> it's #4 which says what you propose for #3. So you basically are
> proposing deleting #3 and - if we do so - we could also delete #1 and
> #2 because anybody who complies to #4 also complies to the three
> principles before that.
>
> > I hope this all doesn't sound harsh -- I didn't take the time to soften
> my
> > language :-) in my haste to get this down. I can make the purely
> editorial
> > corrections on the Google doc if you would like. The other bits we may
> need
> > to discuss. Another option would be that I make changes -- perhaps in
> > another copy of the document? (I can't remember off-hand if Google docs
> has
> > a "revert" function) And then we can discuss that version.
>
> Everybody's free to add comments to the document and change the
> content. Actually, google docs does versionizing.
>
> All the best
> Adrian
>
> P.

FWIW I am stuck in Barcelona because of the snow

>
> --
> 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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