[open-science] Should scientific text be put in the public domain rather than licensed with CC-BY?

[Greg Grossmeier]

On 01/12/2011 01:25 PM, Michael Nielsen wrote:
> In 1997 and 1998 I worked for the US Government, and
> it was explained to me that the reason for the exemption was because
> those works were in the public domain. (An editor at a journal later
> confirmed this explanation.) However, I'm certainly not an expert on
> copyright, and it's possible I misunderstood.

That is correct. If there is no copyright protection on a work there is 
no copyright to transfer to another entity.

IANAL,

Greg