[open-bibliography] Compiling licence details for all open access journals in UK PubMedCentral (or PMC)

Jenny Molloy jenny.molloy at okfn.org
Tue Dec 13 00:02:48 UTC 2011


I've just had a look at the spreadsheet for the first time since Saturday -
wow! Amazing job Ross!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AtbO6mZEvieCdDFzdkVNQld6Mnc5NEpGWVlRUVhvM3c#gid=0

In terms of completeness, I agree it's really hard to ensure good coverage
of the publishers and we could do with a really good list including
licences to continue with and crowdsource just the more difficult to find
details like author pays charges. Also, from Ross' spreadsheet it looks
like in many cases the licensing is journal rather than publisher specific,
particularly so with the larger publishers. As this all started with a
discussion about articles in UK PubMedCentral, I wonder if we could take
their list of full or partial OA journals, get the license data for OA
articles published in them and then work from there. The way to do this
might be:

a) Ask someone at UK PMC for such a list - any volunteers with contacts?
This is preferable as it avoids a lot of work, but if not possible...

b) Compile a list of journals flagged as open access, then search the
article metadata for a few articles from that journal to find the licences

I've included the open-biblio list for technical advice if this is our only
option! Could we:
1) Take the list of PMC journals flagged as full or partial OA (PMC journal
list with open access indicator field available as CSV here
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/journals/#csvfile, UK PMC here
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/journalList#csvfile, probably as another format
somewhere...)
2) Query the PMC metadata (using the UKPMC-OIA tool) for OA articles (could
limit this to just a few (maybe even a single) records from each journal -
license type is an attribute so could query for license-type="open-access")
3) Extract licensing information (XML attribute
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/pmcdoc/tagging-guidelines/article/dobs.html#dob-license
)
4) Check for consistency (should be the same for all articles within a
journal) and tabulate the results alongside the journal record in the
journal list. We probably don't require all fields but obviously publisher
and others are vital.

We can then add in all of the excellent information Ross has collected
(which probably includes journals not indexed by PMC), which would already
cover a significant chunk

Technical people - is this feasible and is it possible in a short enough
time that it is worth it compared to crowdsourcing more content? This is
not my area of expertise so you may have a much better way of doing it than
the one I suggest above, I just worked backwards from what we want to end
up with.

Interestingly enough, the PMC XML guidance (
http://dtd.nlm.nih.gov/publishing/tag-library/) states:
The type of license, for example, “open-access” for a license permitting
*unrestricted* use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided
the original work is properly cited.
(my emphasis!)

Feel free to assert that this is entirely unecessary, it depends how
complete we want our coverage to be. Being able to generate evidence across
a recognised source of OA material such as PMC or UK PMC could be powerful.
We would need to cover more journals from the physical sciences in addition
to be representative across fields, but Ross has already made great
progress on this.

Jenny







On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 8:08 PM, Ross Mounce <ross.mounce at gmail.com> wrote:

> My original conception of the idea, was to look at every publisher that
> labels articles as "open access" - this exact phrase. From there, I
> assessed what licence (if any) could be found to support this self-applied
> label.
>
> It's technically challenging to do. I'm not too familiar with
> 'publisher-space' - it's a large unknown and relatively unmapped territory
> to me. I have no idea how complete my list is for instance WRT STM
> publishers.
>
> I could only find positive evidence that a few were truly Open Access (as
> per the Budapest Declaration), most in my interpretation are labelled "open
> access" and not really Open Access (i.e. they explicitly exclude some
> uses), and for others there's simply a lack of data - I can't determine
> what their policy is.
>
> I was just going to put BMC and PLoS on for clarity and completeness
> actually, and further sort out the spreadsheet to make things clearer.
> Apologies if any confusion was caused, the spreadsheet is far from finished
> - if you spot any errors or can make any additions, then please go ahead!
>
> The colour highlighting that PMR suggested indicates the true Open Access
> schemes / publishers I believe.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ross
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 6:22 PM, Graham Steel <steelgraham7 at googlemail.com
> > wrote:
>
>> Comment from Pete Binfield, PLoS ONE
>>
>> Graham Steel
>> 5:56 PM (24 minutes ago)
>>
>> to Peter, Liz
>> Good point.
>>
>> I'll flag this up.
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 5:53 PM, Peter Binfield <pbinfield at plos.org>wrote:
>>
>> That’s what I thought. So why are CC-BY journals on it? (e.g. Sage Open)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Graham Steel [mailto:steelgraham7 at googlemail.com]
>> *Sent:* Monday, December 12, 2011 9:53 AM
>> *To:* Peter Binfield
>> *Cc:* Liz Allen
>> *Subject:* Re: Fake OA Journals - Spreadsheet
>>
>>
>>
>> The main issue surrounds the type of license used.
>>
>> Peter Murray-Rust has been blogging about this, most recently here<http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/12/07/%E2%80%9Copen-access%E2%80%9D-and-non-commercial-licences-summary/>.
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 5:45 PM, Peter Binfield <pbinfield at plos.org>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks Graham
>>
>>
>>
>> What qualifies a journal to get onto this sheet?
>>
>>
>> Peter Binfield, PhD
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> *An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure" Benjamin
>> Franklin ~1800*
>>
>> H: +44 (0)141 422 1483 (after 6pm GMT)
>>
>> C: +44 (0)7827408070
>>
>> E: steelgraham7 at gmail.com
>>
>> U: http://www.plos.org - research made public
>>
>> Fb: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=709026752
>>
>> Blog: http://www.science3point0.com/mcblawg/
>>
>> Twitter: http://twitter.com/McDawg
>>
>> FriendFeed: http://friendfeed.com/steelgraham
>>
>> LIVESTREAMING : http://www.ustream.tv/user/McDawg
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
> --
> --
> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
> Ross Mounce
> PhD Student
> Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group
> University of Bath
> 4 South Building, Lab 1.07
> http://about.me/rossmounce
> -/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-
>
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