[open-science] [Open-access] Elsevier: some facts, by Tim Gowers

Fri May 2 13:33:42 UTC 2014

Hi all,

If Tom is compiling the per country comparisons, I thought I would give an
update on Hong Kong. As I mentioned previously, Hong Kong has "Code on
Access to Information" legislation cunningly brought in by the British just
before they left. The Universities grants agency (UGC) is bound by this,
but unfortunately the individual universities are not. My first FOI request
to the UGC confirmed that while they do cover journal subscription costs in
HK through block grants, the individual institutions are given flexibility
in their deployment, and so they do not possess information on how they are
administered. On top of some other information I'm collecting I thought I'd
try to ask the individual universities nicely, and so far Hong Kong
University (the oldest and highest ranked institution here with ~27,000
students) were quick to respond and provide me with information on their
library budgets (~200M HKD or £15M), and that 78.4% of their acquisition
budget is spent on electronic journals. Asking for more detail on what the
exact acquisition spending was, and if there are any figures on what
proportion of these are split by the big publishers, they said they
unfortunately find they cannot release these numbers.

I'll continue to try the other universities and investigate if there are
any other ways to find out this information, but I'm not optimistic that
this will be easy to determine here. I hope those of you in countries with
more rigorous and widely covering FOI laws have more luck.

Cheers,

Scott

On 2 May 2014 21:08, Fabiana Kubke <mf.kubke at gmail.com> wrote:

> That is correct, Tom. There is a substantial amount that goes into
> licencing. I don't know how that is dealt elsewhere, but at the University
> of Auckland those licences do not come out of the libraries budget. (which
> is why they don't show in the libraries' expenditures). One would need to
> find out for different institutions what office is in charge of negotiating
> and paying for Copyright Clearing house costs. Although I would suspect
> that even with a Freedom of Information request the actual costs would be
> very hard to disclose.
> -F
>
>
> On Sat, May 3, 2014 at 12:26 AM, Tom Olijhoek <tom.olijhoek at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> So it seems that apart from subscription fees a large amount of money is
>> spend by universities on re-use rights for education. And the situation is
>> far from transparent because different countries have different rules and
>> interpretations.
>> It is not clear to me whether the data that we have seen up to now
>> include those extra fees.
>> Obviously if we are trying to get an overview of publication costs per
>> country we have to include these.
>> As Michelle said  it would be very good to gather all the data in one
>> spot for easy access.
>> An overview could be on the open access website, and the raw data on
>> Figshare.
>> I can make time to help with the coordination
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 1:28 PM, Fabiana Kubke <mf.kubke at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> TPM: Technological protection measure != TMR= Technological Murray Rust
>>>
>>> Now careful, peter, CC0 is a TLA :)
>>> So says MFK.... :)
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 11:19 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>wrote:
>>>
>>>> TPM = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_Platform_Module ??  I
>>>> assume (roughly == Digital Rights Management DRM)
>>>> TPP is specific to Pacific. The US has reinvented this as TTIP for
>>>> Europe.
>>>>
>>>> All these TLAs scare me and they act directly against Open
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 12:02 PM, Fabiana Kubke <mf.kubke at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> And by TMR I meant TPM - I am conflating TPM and PMR! :)
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 10:56 PM, Fabiana Kubke <mf.kubke at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> New zealand does not have fair use - it has fair dealing. Fair use in
>>>>>> the US (and I think Canada) allow I think for 10% reproduction of
>>>>>> copyrighted material for "fair use".
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The way this was explained to me by my copyright officer is that for
>>>>>> at least some works the education provisions of the copyright act are below
>>>>>> the 10% reproduction allowed by fair use so we pay to get the 10%
>>>>>> allowance.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> When libraries buy serial subscriptions (or textbooks), sometimes the
>>>>>> contracts have included the reuse of the material for educational purposes
>>>>>> (eg in students lecture notes, class slides etc). Some material we purchase
>>>>>> does not include this allowance.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The university purchases several licences, to the movie industry, the
>>>>>> recording industry and the copyright body (I think equivalent to the
>>>>>> Clearing House in the US and Canada) that extends the allowance for
>>>>>> reproduction for educational use - in essence letting us reach (legally)
>>>>>> the 10% (which ouf course US already has through fair use!)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If I estimate correctly the UoAuckland would be paying somewhere
>>>>>> between 1-2 M NZD p.a. for that privilege. We are lucky that our copyright
>>>>>> law has other useful allowances (Like breaking TMR for legal purposes)
>>>>>> which saves us a lot of money, althought he TransPacific Partnership
>>>>>> agreement may change that . BUt that is a diff story :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Hope that clarifies
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 10:01 PM, Tom Olijhoek <tom.olijhoek at gmail.com
>>>>>> > wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 11:52 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Fri, May 2, 2014 at 10:15 AM, Fabiana Kubke <mf.kubke at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I am a bit late to the discussion - but if anyone is interested
>>>>>>>>> there is interesting data on library expenditures in New Zealand and
>>>>>>>>> Australia here http://statistics.caul.edu.au/inst_data.php
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> You're not late... :-) this is very welcome.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>  If I read hte data correctly, New Zealand spends about 50 million
>>>>>>>>> p.a. (NZ Dollars) in serial subscriptions. This does not include the
>>>>>>>>> copyright licencing fees that allow the reuse for education (as far as I
>>>>>>>>> understand).
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Can you expand on the re-use fees? This is an additional cost to
>>>>>>>> subscriptions. Re-use payments are at least as problematic as
>>>>>>>> subscriptions. But even harder to get a handle on. (?more FOIs?)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I would think that copyright law always includes fair use policy
>>>>>>> which applies especially to use for educational purposes?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>  _______________________________________________
>>>>>>>> open-science mailing list
>>>>>>>> open-science at lists.okfn.org
>>>>>>>> https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/open-science
>>>>>>>> Unsubscribe: https://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/open-science
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>> Tom Olijhoek
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> coordinator @ccess open access working group  at OKF
>>>>>>> DOAJ  member of Advisory Board
>>>>>>> freelance advisor for the WorldBank Publishing Group
>>>>>>> TEL +(31)645540804
>>>>>>> SKYPE tom.olijhoek
>>>>>>> Twitter   @ccess
>>>>>>> LinkedIn  http://nl.linkedin.com/in/tomolijhoek/
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> M Fabiana Kubke
>>>>>> Chair Advisory Panel Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand<http://www.creativecommons.org.nz/>
>>>>>> Department of Anatomy | University of Auckland | New Zealand
>>>>>> (+64) 9 373-7599 Ext 86002 | (+64)9 923 6002 (direct) | Mobile: (+64)
>>>>>> 210 437 121
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Skype: superfabs | http://twitter.com/Kubke |
>>>>>> http://twitter.com/DrKupcake | http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/ |
>>>>>> http://kubke.wordpress.com |
>>>>>> http://buildingblogsofscience.wordpress.com |
>>>>>> http://sciblogs.co.nz/building-blogs-of-science |
>>>>>> http://popscinz.wordpress.com | http://talkingteaching.wordpress.com
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> M Fabiana Kubke
>>>>> Chair Advisory Panel Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand<http://www.creativecommons.org.nz/>
>>>>> Department of Anatomy | University of Auckland | New Zealand
>>>>> (+64) 9 373-7599 Ext 86002 | (+64)9 923 6002 (direct) | Mobile: (+64)
>>>>> 210 437 121
>>>>>
>>>>> Skype: superfabs | http://twitter.com/Kubke |
>>>>> http://twitter.com/DrKupcake | http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/ |
>>>>> http://kubke.wordpress.com |
>>>>> http://buildingblogsofscience.wordpress.com |
>>>>> http://sciblogs.co.nz/building-blogs-of-science |
>>>>> http://popscinz.wordpress.com | http://talkingteaching.wordpress.com
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Peter Murray-Rust
>>>> Reader in Molecular Informatics
>>>> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
>>>> University of Cambridge
>>>> CB2 1EW, UK
>>>> +44-1223-763069
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> M Fabiana Kubke
>>> Chair Advisory Panel Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand<http://www.creativecommons.org.nz/>
>>> Department of Anatomy | University of Auckland | New Zealand
>>> (+64) 9 373-7599 Ext 86002 | (+64)9 923 6002 (direct) | Mobile: (+64)
>>> 210 437 121
>>>
>>> Skype: superfabs | http://twitter.com/Kubke |
>>> http://twitter.com/DrKupcake | http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/ |
>>> http://kubke.wordpress.com | http://buildingblogsofscience.wordpress.com|
>>> http://sciblogs.co.nz/building-blogs-of-science |
>>> http://popscinz.wordpress.com | http://talkingteaching.wordpress.com
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Tom Olijhoek
>> Codex Consult
>> www.codexconsult.eu
>>  coordinator @ccess open access working group  at OKF
>> DOAJ  member of Advisory Board
>> freelance advisor for the WorldBank Publishing Group
>> TEL +(31)645540804
>> SKYPE tom.olijhoek
>>  Twitter   @ccess
>> LinkedIn  http://nl.linkedin.com/in/tomolijhoek/
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> M Fabiana Kubke
> Chair Advisory Panel Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand<http://www.creativecommons.org.nz/>
> Department of Anatomy | University of Auckland | New Zealand
> (+64) 9 373-7599 Ext 86002 | (+64)9 923 6002 (direct) | Mobile: (+64) 210
> 437 121
>
> Skype: superfabs | http://twitter.com/Kubke | http://twitter.com/DrKupcake|
> http://blogs.plos.org/mindthebrain/ | http://kubke.wordpress.com |
> http://buildingblogsofscience.wordpress.com |
> http://sciblogs.co.nz/building-blogs-of-science |
> http://popscinz.wordpress.com | http://talkingteaching.wordpress.com
>
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>

-- 
Scott Edmunds, PhD
*GigaScience*
/Open Data Hong Kong
BGI-Hong Kong Ltd.

Twitter: @GigaScience <http://twitter.com/GigaScience>
ORCID: 0000-0001-6444-1436 <http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6444-1436>
scott at gigasciencejournal.com
http://www.gigasciencejournal.com/
http://opendatahk.com/
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