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

Heather Morrison heatherm at eln.bc.ca
Mon Dec 12 05:30:31 UTC 2011


hi Sridhar,


On 11-Dec-11, at 8:34 PM, Sridhar Gutam wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> I am giving my quick comments/suggestions on the subject... shall we  
> ask the author to choose his own terms of license as per his/her  
> institution requirement?

Comment: I agree that it is optimal to give the author a chance to  
select the license. For one thing, this element is part of a broader  
transformation in scholarly communication. We want authors to think  
about, and assert, their rights when publishing. Giving them the  
option to choose the license is empowering for the author. Journals  
will likely want to have a default license, as many authors will  
decide to accept this.

If scholarly authors get involved in selecting their own licenses,  
this may help to encourage more scholars to give serious thought to  
this recently invented notion of "intellectual property". Even if in  
the short term we have a plethora of incompatible licenses, this is  
such an important area for society as a whole that we should aim to do  
it right, not quickly.

It would be great, from my perspective, if we heard more from scholars  
in developing countries and our own First Nations peoples to help us  
all figure out the best solutions for a global commons. For example, I  
understand that Latin America has a much stronger history of sharing,  
a copyleft perspective, that we in North America should listen to  
carefully before making too many decisions about intellectual  
property. Greg Young-Ing, in his thesis on traditional knowledge,  
talked about a concept of the knowledge belonging both to the people  
and to the environment that makes a lot of sense to me. For example,  
knowledge about a species cannot just belong to any researcher; it  
belongs to the species, and to the other species with which it shares  
an ecosystem (paraphrasing a lot here). If we want to develop the  
kinds of knowledge that will best serve us to live in harmony with the  
planet, we need to seek out perspectives like these, and ask ourselves  
what is lacking in Western thought. For all our scientific and  
technological development, surely the mess we have made of the world  
should tell all of us that we in the West are not exactly perfect when  
it comes to wisdom about things like knowledge.

best,

Heather

>
> I am sorry I have not gone thru the discussion... I shall be doing  
> the same now..
>
> as the author addendum is only a format... while educating the  
> authors about various licenses, if the format allows the author to  
> choose the best license, it would be better...
>
> what others may say?
>
> Thanks & Regards
> Sridhar
> _________________________________________________________________________
> Sridhar Gutam PhD, ARS, PG Dip Patent Laws (NALSAR), IP &  
> Biotechnology (WIPO)
> Senior Scientist (Plant Physiology) & Joint Secretary, ARSSF
> Central Institute for Subtropical Horticulture (CISH)
> Rehmankhera, P.O.Kakori, Lucknow 227107, Uttar Pradesh, India
> Fax: +91-522-2841025, Phone: +91-522-2841022/23/24; Mobile: 
> +91-9005760036
>
> CISH http://www.cishlko.org
> ARSSF http://www.arssf.co.nr
> My site http://www.gutam.co.nr
> My Publications http://works.bepress.com/sridhar_gutam/
> My Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/gutam2000
> My Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gutamsridhar
> My LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/sridhargutam
>
>
> On 12 December 2011 09:54, Heather Morrison <heatherm at eln.bc.ca>  
> wrote:
>
> On 11-Dec-11, at 3:07 PM, Thomas Kluyver wrote:
>
> On 11 December 2011 22:14, Heather Morrison <heatherm at eln.bc.ca>  
> wrote:
> CC, NC, and scholarly blogs - an emerging format that we need to  
> think about, and would be impacted if CC were to drop NC. Someone  
> please correct me if I am wrong: I assume that if my blog license  
> were changed to CC-BY, then someone else could set up a mirror site,  
> turn on Adsense, and keep the revenue for themselves. To me, this  
> would be offensive, take away a source of potential revenue I might  
> actually need someday, and quite possibly decrease my own blog stats  
> - a measure that some of us might wish to use to show the value of  
> this more open approach. For all these reasons, if CC-NC disappears,  
> then CC will disappear from my blog, and I will happily go back to  
> automatic copyright or a more restrictive license, as these would be  
> my best options.
>
> But:
> * These hypothetical stealing bloggers still need to say where it's  
> come from, and if you do a decent job at promoting your own site, it  
> should get most of the visitors, appear higher in search rankings,  
> and so on. There are sites out there that just mirror Wikipedia for  
> profit, but none of them have made much of an impact, as far as I  
> know.
>
> Comment: why would I want to put myself in a position where I might  
> have to compete with someone copying my blog? Much easier to license  
> NC - or all rights restricted, if CC takes this option away from me.  
> This won't necessarily stop people, but at least it tells anyone who  
> pays attention that this is not okay.
>
>
> * No other blogger can repost any copyrightable part of your work  
> (like a diagram you've drawn) if their blog is also ad supported. To  
> my mind, this sort of reuse is a key part of what open access aims  
> to allow.
>
> Comment: if I have licensed my work as CC-BY, then re-use is  
> allowed, and for commercial purposes. Does this not mean that others  
> can take my work and create derivates, such as an ad-filled copy?  
> How so?
>
>
> * Tools such as RSS aggregators or Readability will already deprive  
> you of ad revenue, however you license your content. It's impossible  
> to force people to read things on your site, with your ads beside  
> them.
>
> Comment: this is an interesting point. At any rate, my reasons for  
> preferring NC are not restricted to web ads. For example, I might  
> want to create and sell a book.
>
>
> best,
>
> Heather Morrison
>
>
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