AddamsMoring 2007 CC Licenses in Scholarly and Scientific Publishing in PPT

Creative Commons licenses in scholarly and scientific publishing – an idea whose time has come Ronja Addams-Moring ISCRAM2007 conference Round Table presentation

Disclaimer

The views, interpretations and opinions expressed in this presentation are mine

There certainly are similarities with some other persons' views but that is not their responsibility

Feel free to copy, distribute, criticize, ignore or form derivative opinions as you see fit



Presentation outline

Task analysis: What we researchers do

Requirements: What we need

Historical overview

Current practices

Choosing our approach

Which CC license(s) fit?

Task analysis

A simplified ”circle of life” of scientific-scholarly knowledge

Researcher A publishes a new result

Based on A’s result, other researchers create more new knowledge

Researcher A uses other researchers’ results as input for more research

The process repeats: Body of Knowledge grows larger and better with each ”round”

Requirements

The essential necessities

Access to previous publications

Visibility of own work

Plus a multitude of things not addressed here

Coffee!

Equipment!

Finding the relevant previous publications!

Funding

Colleagues, students and staff

etc

Historical overview 1(3)

Before 1886 only national laws

Problem: legal to print and sell e.g. a Belgian book in France without author’s permission

Solution: international copyright conventions

New problem: public domain only alternative

Copyright protects the form (wording, lay-out, typography, pictures, etc) for ca. 100 years

Copyright does not protect ideas or solution principles (that’s what patents are for)

1980ies: Richard M. Stallman: Emacs, GNU

Problem: RMS shared source code with a friend who developed it, sold it and the buyer forbade RMS to use any of the friend’s code

Solution: GNU GPL , first copyleft license

The copyleft innovation: share-alike

The license sticks to the work and its derivatives forever (”strong copyleft”)

Limitation of strong copyleft’s social acceptability: absolute, all-in-one, no degrees, no exceptions

Many other approaches; attempts to remedy strong copyleft’s shortcomings

2001 Creative Commons

authors choose which rights they license

Meanwhile, the cost for university libraries of offering journals has skyrocketed

1986-2005: +302% serial expenditures (ARL)

Economic possibilities of offering monographs are growing ever slimmer?

Current practices

Scholarly and scientific publishers

Many require that author gives away copyright

Each has own principles and practices

Each has own vocabulary (“dialect of legalese”)

Author must learn all or check every time what (s)he may do with own work

Creative Commons (CC) offers

Author keeps copyright , licenses work to users

Standardized vocabulary & ready-made legal jargon

Well-known ”brand”

Easy enough user interface for author and user

Example 1(4)

Springer, Natural Hazards (1 st issue March 1988)

“ An author

may self-archive an author-created version of his/her article on his/her own website and his/her institution's repository , including his/her final version ;

… may not use the publisher's PDF version which is posted on www.springerlink.com . Furthermore, the author may only post his/her version

provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com ".”

Example 2(4)

Blackwell Publishing, Disasters (1 st issue March 1997)

“ you may use the accepted version of the Article … updated … after peer review…

you may share print or electronic copies of the Article with colleagues;

you may use all or part of the Article and abstract, without revision or modification, in personal compilations or other publications of your own work;

you may use the Article within your employer’s institution or company for educational or research purposes, including use in course packs;

24 months after publication you may post an electronic version of the Article on your own personal website , on your employer’s website/repository and on free public servers in your subject area.”

Example 3(4)

Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency Management (1 st issue May 2003); semi-open

“ The following uses are always permitted to the author(s) ... provided … does not alter the articles …:

Storage and back-up of the article … provided that the article … is not readily accessible by persons other than the author(s);

Posting of the article on the author(s) personal website , provided that the website is non-commercial;

Posting of the article on the internet as part of a non-commercial open access institutional repository or other non-commercial open access publication site affiliated with the author(s)'s place of employment …;

Posting of the article on a non-commercial course website for a course being taught by the author at the university or college employing the author.”

Example 4(4)

Open Medicine (1 st issue 18 th April 2007)

“ Open Medicine applies the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike License …

because … there should be no financial barriers to access to information that can benefit medical practice. … authors should retain copyright to the article they have worked so hard to produce.”

What makes a great idea?

It is right , because

In case any of e.g. these apply

Research is done with public funds

The results influences public spending

Research addresses the well-being of the general public (medicine, social psychology, political science, ISCRAM…)

Then that research should be fully public

Available to be freely utilized

Open to critical comments from all

It is (often) profitable , because

Open access to electronic versions boosts sales of printed versions (National Academic Press, since 1994)

Open access -> higher impact (JHSEM)

Problem: funding of some academic societies

One solution: HTML is free, small(ish) sum for ”neater” PDF (Amer. Scientist)

It is fun! because

It really annoys an established industry who is making a lot of money

It’s legal

It gets you excited to get out of bed every morning

John Buckman (2007) How to piss off the Music Industry for Fun and Profit . PDF via: http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2007/05/how_to_piss_off.html

Choosing our approach

Why should we authorize anyone to ”hide” our work? (Blackwell, Elsevier & Co.)

Why would we agree to keep track of N different copyright systems?

Why would we pay or work extra to make our work fully public? (Kluver, ACM & Co.)

Why do we require reader identification? (ISCRAM, JHSEM & Co.)

What else needs to be considered?

Which CC license(s) fit?

The individual researcher

A professional community as publisher

The scientific-scholarly community

Attribution (by) – always included

NonCommercial (nc) – smart, realistic

ShareAlike (sa) or NoDerivatives (nd) – that is the question

My answer

I want my work to be used & I like to get paid

Therefore, this work is licensed under the Creative Commons license Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported

Attribution form: Ronja Addams-Moring (2007) ”Creative Commons licenses in scholarly and scientific publishing – an idea whose time has come”. Round Table presentation 14 th May at the ISCRAM2007 conference, Delft, NL, EU.