[open-science] [Open-access] Open Science Anthology published

Tue Jan 28 12:01:14 UTC 2014

I completely agree with all that Jan Velterop said..
copyright has nothing to do in the scientific enterprise today
The benefits of having all information accessible without any restrictions,
and re-usable, the same, are enormous.
When we look at knowledge as something we have to protect, you have to ask
protect from what? From risking the chance that your work is improved by
being licensed under CC-BY?
If I remember correctly Mike Taylor at Berlin11 argued that many more
billions of dollars are in fact wasted by not being able to share
information to the full extent, than can be earned by protecting pieces of
info in order to be able to sell them.
I also particularly oppose the notion of protecting the taxpayers property
in one country from being used freely by citizens in other countries. The
idea of open access restricted to one country is non-sense. How
shortsighted can you be? People playing with these ideas probably
implicitly suppose that their country will produce all (the good science).
The problem with any licenses is that they can be abused and that people
can and will find ways to serve their own interests best. But as said
somewhere in this thread that is not the problem of the licensing, but more
of quality assurance in science.
Having open access CC-BY fully unrestricted , reusable etc in itself
however is not enough to speed up and improve science to the extent
possible, we do need networks (of scientist, citizen scientists) and ways
to access the open access information more easily and efficiently.
for this a service like described by Mark MacGillivray would be great value
and in my view even indispensable As well as the fact that we urgently need
a better framework for quality assurance in science..

On Mon, Jan 27, 2014 at 9:46 PM, Jan Velterop <velterop at gmail.com> wrote:

> I've been following this discussion with increasing bemusement. Frankly,
> it's getting ridiculous, at least in my humble opinion. A discussion such
> as this one about licensing and copyright only serves to demonstrate that
> copyright, once conceived as a way to stimulate and enable science and the
> arts, has degenerated into a way to frustrate, derange and debilitate
> knowledge exchange.
>
> I'm not the first one to point out that absolutely anything, under any
> copyright licence or none, could be abused for evil purposes or, in more
> mild circumstances, lead to misunderstandings and accidental abuse. I agree
> with all those who said it.
>
> The issue here is what science and scientific results stand for. Their
> purpose is emphatically not "to be copyrightable items". Copyright,
> invented to combat commercial abuse, has become a means of commercial
> abuse. The purpose of science and scientific results is to enrich the
> world's knowledge. Any commercial advantage - appropriate for industrially
> funded research - can be had by 1) keeping results secret (i.e. not
> publishing them), or 2) getting a patent. Science, particularly modern
> science, is nothing without a liberal exchange of ideas and information.
>
> Ideally, scientific publications are not copyrightable at all, and
> community standards take care of proper acknowledgement. We don't live in
> an ideal world, so we have to get as close as we can to that ideal, and
> that is by ameliorating the insidious pernicious effects of copyright with
> CC-Zero and CC-BY licences.
>
> The existence of the NC rider or stipulation for CC licences is
> unfortunate and quite damaging. Mainly because of the vagueness and
> ambiguity of what 'commercial use' means. Ideas in published articles can
> be freely used for commercial purposes of any kind, as ideas are not
> copyrightable. Only "the way the ideas have been formulated" is covered by
> copyright, and thus by the NC clause in copyright licences. In my
> interpretation that means that most usage of published material that is not
> a straightforward selling of text or images can be freely done. But that's
> my interpretation. And that's exactly where it rubs, because all the NC
> clause does is introduce hypothetical difficulties and liabilities. As a
> result of which, NC practically means: "stay away from using this material,
> because you never know with all those predatory legal eagles around". In
> other words, it's virtually useless for modern, sophisticated scientific
> knowledge discovery, which doesn't just consist of reading papers any
> longer, but increasingly relies on the ability to machine-process large
> amounts of relevant information, as human ocular reading of even a fraction
> of the information is not possible anymore. At least not in most
> fast-moving areas of the sciences. Read this article, or similar ones, if
> you want to be convinced: "On the impossibility of being expert"  BMJ
> 2010; 341 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.c6815 (Published 14 December
> 2010 - unfortunately behind a paywall).
>
> The taxpayer angle ("must be open because the taxpayer paid for it"),
> leading to Kent Andersonian notions of knowledge protectionism ("results of
> research paid by US taxpayers should not be available to non-US citizens
> unless they pay for it"), is a most unfortunate, visceral and primitive
> reaction and a complete red herring. For many reasons, not least because
> the taxpayer, or vicariously the taxman, isn't the party that pockets any
> money payed for paywalled information. Besides, how far do you go?
> Americans not being allowed to stay alive due to a cure that was developed
> with public money in Switzerland unless they pay through the nose for it to
> the Swiss tax authorities? The
> "as-long-as-I-am-well-the-rest-of-you-can-go-to-hell" personality disorder.
> The whole idea is so against the ethos of science that those even thinking
> in that direction must be taken to be utterly and entirely unsuitable to
> any role in the scientific community.
>
> Access control and restriction via copyright was at best a necessary evil
> in the print era; the 'necessary', though, has disappeared in the web
> environment.
>
> Have a nice day!
>
> Jan Velterop
>
>
> On 27 Jan 2014, at 18:55, Heather Morrison <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>
> wrote:
>
>  hi Mark,
>
>  Under automatic copyright a copyright holder has the exclusive right to
> authorize derivatives. Mike's e-mail to the list falls under copyright, so
> yes, you could make the argument that I have infringed his rights (both the
> exclusive right to authorize derivatives and possibly his moral rights). On
> the other hand, an argument can be made that this use is perfectly
> legitimate under fair use / fair dealing as quotation for the purpose of
> criticism.
>
>  The situation would be similar with this quotation, a derivative of
> Bjoern's words copied below:
>
>  Brembs, B. on "Mike Taylor words with Heather Morrison's good manners":
> "This is a perfect example of why we should NOT have CC-BY. It's not
> working!"
>
>  My purpose in creating and sharing this example is scholarly criticism.
> I understand that my example does not reflect the meaning Brembs intended.
> However, if people are using CC licenses to grant blanket rights to create
> derivatives of their works to anyone, anywhere, it is possible that people
> creating adaptations may think they understand the words of the original
> author but the original author might not agree with their interpretation. I
> am using this illustration to explain why not every scholar is keen to
> grant blanket permission to anyone, anywhere to create derivatives of their
> work.
>
>  When discussing open access policy with respect to derivatives, it may
> be helpful to realize that "derivative" is not the same as "good, useful
> derivative". A derivative work can be an improvement, benign, or harmful.
> Either improvements or harms can be negligible or significant.
>
>  If some scholars and publishers wish to experiment with blanket
> derivatives, that's their right. What I object to is policy requiring
> everyone to participate in the experiment.
>
>  best,
>
>  Heather MOrrison
>
>
>
>  On 2014-01-27, at 12:03 PM, Mark MacGillivray <mark at cottagelabs.com>
>  wrote:
>
>
> On 27 Jan 2014 16:58, "Bjoern Brembs" <b.brembs at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Monday, January 27, 2014, 5:27:45 PM, you wrote:
> >
> > > Mike Taylor wrote:  "Heather, with all due respect this is complete
> nonsense".
> >
> > >
> > > The actually respectful derivative:  ""Heather, with all
> > > due respect I disagree". (attribution: Mike Taylor, good
> > > manners contributed by Heather Morrison).
> >
> > Perfect! If this is this an example of why we should NOT have CC BY,
> it's not working.
>
> Indeed. And now I am free to compare the two, and decide if Heather was
> correct to imply that Mike was disrespectful, or if she misrepresented him.
>
> Although, did Heather just infringe Mikes reserved rights?
>
> Mark
>
> >
> > Bjoern
> >
> >
> > --
> > Björn Brembs
> > ---------------------------------------------
> > http://brembs.net
> > Neurogenetics
> > Universität Regensburg
> > Germany
> >
>
>
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-- 
Tom Olijhoek
Codex Consult
www.codexconsult.eu
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