[open-science] SPARC author addendum uses CC-NC licence and now all hybrid publishers have followed

[Michael Nielsen]

On Sun, 11 Dec 2011, Heather Morrison wrote:

>> I'm well aware copyright law isn't intended to apply to ideas.  The 
>> intent of my remark was to summarize part of the reason I am broadly in 
>> favour of the general principle that publicly funded science should be 
>> open science. The use of non-NC licenses seems to me to follow as a 
>> very specific instance of this broad general principle.  I hope that 
>> clarifies the intent of my remarks.
>
> Comment: this does clarify your intent - and it is a noble intent - with 
> respect to this one issue. I don't agree that the one follows from the other, 
> except in a simplistic sense.

I don't see how a journal article can be regarded as fully open when it 
can't be reused for commercial purposes.  It's such a huge restriction, as 
others have pointed out.

> Question for you: your comments here are on publicly funded science. The 
> discussion on the list has been about scholarly publishing CC licensing in 
> general - what I understand as a plan to pressure all OA publishers to adopt 
> CC-BY licenses, as well as about eliminating the NC option from CC licensing. 
> Can you comment on these two broader issues? Do you have an intent here, and 
> if so, what is it?

Just to be clear, and as I said in an earlier comment, I have no problem 
of principle if privately-funded actors (either individuals or companies) 
want to publish in less open or closed forms (including NC).

As regards the two issues you mention above, I haven't thought either 
through in enough detail to have a principled opinion.  As a practical 
matter, insofar as many OA journals mostly publish publicly-funded 
research, I hope those journals will publish without the NC restriction.

Michael