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

Mon Dec 12 05:40:35 UTC 2011

On 11-Dec-11, at 9:15 PM, Michael Nielsen wrote:

>
>
> 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.

Let's agree to disagree on this. I am aware that there are many who  
think that open access is equivalent to CC-BY. I hope that after this  
discussion, all are aware that there is no consensus on this point  
among open access advocates. To be clear, I do not merely mean to say  
that sometimes we must compromise. From my perspective, CC-BY is a  
weaker form of open access, that superficially appears to map to the  
BOAI definition, but this will not work out in practice because of the  
world that we live and the things that people must do to survive in it.

>
>> 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).

Here is where I think we differ a little in perspective. Perhaps this  
could be because I come from a less intensively capitalist country? It  
would rarely make sense to me to refer to individuals as privately  
funded. Also, what about the not-for-profit publishers?

>
> 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.

If copyright rests with the author, it should be the author's  
decision, not the journals. This is my hope.

best,

Heather

>
> Michael