[open-bibliography] Fwd: News release: Referencing made easy

[Tom Morris]

On Tue, May 18, 2010 at 4:44 AM, Owen Stephens <o.stephens at open.ac.uk> wrote:

> In terms of the RefWorks T&C, your interpretation differs from mine, and the one
> implicitly supported by RefWorks. I believe the line you quote is about the use of the
> system, not the data stored in the system. I interpret the line to mean that we are
> unable to resell (or otherwise offer) the RefWorks service/software to others outside
> our organisation. However I do not believe this extends in any way to the bibliographic
> data stored in the system, and none of our discussions with RefWorks have indicated
> this is the case. As RefWorks supports the open publication of bibliographies as RSS
> (with the reference included as xml) it would seem that they do not intend your
> interpretation of the T&C either.

Jim provided a link to the full T&Cs, but for those who didn't follow
the link and are trying to form an opinion whether RefWorks data could
be reused in any remotely "open" context, consider:

"RefShare allows for viewing of shared data, by individuals outside of
a university or institution, subject to the following limitations:
(1) 30,000 records per database, and (2) maximum of 1,000 accesses
(hits) per month per shared database or folder.  Usage in excess of
these limits requires RefWorks-COS’ advance written permission and may
require the payment of additional fees."

Since there's no practical way to meter accesses outside of a closed
system, this effectively means that the data can not be reused outside
of the customer university.  At least that's my reading of it.  If one
were to find a way to satisfy or avoid this clause, you'd have a whole
additional round of due diligence to do with the database providers
because of:

"Customer must bear in mind that the Service allows downloading,
sharing and storing of information from bibliographic databases and
other sources that may be copyright protected. Customer should check
with the appropriate database provider(s) to ensure compliance with
any restrictions such provider(s) may impose."

If RefWorks really does intend the data to be reused, they should
change their license agreement to reflect that intent.

Tom