[open-science] Contracts for open access (was: Elsevier are telling "mis-truths" ...

[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

I took the liberty of changing the thread title, as the mix of
subjects was making things more difficult.

On Tue, Feb 21, 2017 at 6:31 PM, Cameron Neylon <cn at cameronneylon.net> wrote:
> Hi All
>
> I've been following along but not wishing to stick an oar in, but given that
> I think I'm in pretty close to full agreement with Heather – which doesn't
> happen that often – it seemed worth dropping in at this point.
>
> I've (I think) always argued that for OA publishing that CC BY is necessary,
> but not sufficient.

Right - as Puneet said earlier, it doesn't matter what license I give
my document if there's no way to access the document.  So there is no
way any particular set of license terms could be sufficient to make an
article open access.

> In part that was driven by precisely the same concerns;
> to ensure that the rights are in place to allow for public archiving,
> repurposing and dissemination so as to avoid the risks of enclosure that
> leaving discovery/dissemination purely in the hands of a contracted
> publisher creates.
>
> FWIW my view on the minimum provision for arrangements for OA are:
>
> A license to publish between authors and publishers that:
>
> Is non-exclusive
> Does not transfer copyright
> Obliges the publisher to make a digital online version (ideally in specified
> format) available in perpetuity (i.e. to include an archival plan in the
> even to publisher failure)
> Requires publication under a CC BY license (and grants the right to release
> under future versions) but is not itself a CC BY license
> Requires publisher-mediated deposition in a robust repository (eg [Eu]PMC)
>
> That the author/institution in addition have archival level systems in place
> to preserve their outputs and that the final published version is deposited
> in such a repository (this doesn't address the needs of either poorer
> institutions or non-university based scholars of course but there's a good
> argument for the possibilities of shared provision as demonstrated by eg
> SciELO etc)
>
> The lack of clarity on good practice in the "license to publish" area
> remains something that bothers me a great deal. It's a horrendous mess but I
> ran out of energy to complain about that long ago. A lot would be solved if
> there was a standard contract that institutions and funders put in place as
> the basis for agreeing to pay for anything (in whatever form, whether thats
> APCs, membership style schemes, or internal support for scholar-publishers).
>
> Wellcome have gone the closest to this but haven't quite taken that final
> step. Gates foundation are also pushing on this, but not currently drawing
> in others to share contract conditions.

Thanks for this.  So I think this new thread might be about desirable
features for a contract between the publisher and author, which would
include both licensing and guarantees of access.   Are there any good
bases you can recommend for the standard contract you mentioned above,
that might become a draft?

Best,

Matthew