Copyright on academic and scientific publications (papers, articles, essays, books etc.) is the result of the interaction between formal rules (copyright law), social norms (norms of science) and technology (printing press, digital technologies). Prior to the digital age, academic copyright has had two main functions. a) Priority. The acknowledgment of a paternity (or attribution) right on the scientific publication has facilitated the certification of priority of the scientific discovery described in the text. b) Dissemination. The protection of economic rights (reproduction, distribution etc.) has enabled the alliance between scientific authors and publishers finalized to distribute scientific publications to the public. Usually, scientific authors transfer their economic rights to the publisher because the latter has the economic and technological power to disseminate scientific publications. Nevertheless, scientific authors are mostly interested in reputation and not in the economic return derived from the commercialization of copyright. According to Robert Merton's theory, the norms of science are Communism, Universalism, Disinterestedness, and Organized Skepticism (CUDOS). Scientists compete for priority but they put their ideas and information in the public domain. The ultimate scope is to share ideas and information because the progress of science depends on "communism" and "organized skepticism". In other terms, scientific publications are part of the public and critical dialogue. In this perspective, formal law and social norms, normally stating that the original ownership of copyright belongs to the authors and not to their academic or scientific institutions, mirror freedom of speech and academic liberty. The current scenario however seems completely different. In theory, Internet represents an extraordinary opportunity to strengthen the scientific debate. But reality tells a very different story. In the digital age, scientific publications are only "products". The changing nature of scientific publications is the effect of the commodification of academic research. While the interaction between commodification of academic research and university patents has been deeply investigated and discussed, scholars have paid relatively little attention to the commodification of academic copyright. In the market of scientific publications, bibliometrics and digitization distort the two functions (priority and dissemination) of academic copyright.

1. Poisonous Science: the Dark
Side of Academic Copyright in
the Digital Age
CREATe's IP Summer Summit
June 28, 2017
Roberto Caso
University of Trento
Faculty of Law
LawTech Group

2. Work in progress
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3. A previous work
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4. ?
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5. ??
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6. Monsters University: be competitive!
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7. View your Ranking!
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8. Science as Market
• Commdification of academic research
• Academic capitalism
• Commercialization of university
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9. Max Weber: “Science as Vocation”,
1918
• “Of late we can observe distinctly that the German
universities in the broad fields of science develop in
the direction of the American system. The large
institutes of medicine or natural science are 'state
capitalist' enterprises” […]
• “Thus the assistant's position is often as precarious
as is that of any 'quasi-proletarian' existence and
just as precarious as the position of the assistant in
the American university”
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10. Academic copyright
• Papers, articles, essays, books, etc.
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11. Copyright: two souls
• Right of paternity (attribution)
• “Economic rights”: right of reproduction, right
of distribution etc.
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12. Taking seriously the “scope of
copyright”
Progress of science,
progress of knowledge?
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13. Outline
1. The way we were
2. Poisonous science (part I): corrupting right of
paternity
3. Poisonous science (part II): corrupting
economic rights
4. Conclusions
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14. 1
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15. The Way We Were
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16. Three factors
• Technology
• Social norms
• Formal law (copyright law)
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17. E.g.: Newton vs. Leibniz
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18. Printing press and priority: 1665
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19. Freedom, authonomy, reputation
and responsability
• A connection between a name and a text
• Reputation (scientific reward)
• Responsability (e.g., in terms of scientific
misconduct, fraud, plagiarism etc.)
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20. Robert King Merton
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21. Robert King Merton
• 1938, 1942, CUDOS, authonomy, democracy
• 1957, 1968, 1988, originality, priority,
symbolism of “intellectual property”
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22. Merton: 1988 “Mattew effect II”
• “it is only a seeming paradox that, in science, one's
private property is established by giving its
substance away […]”
• “That crucial element of free and open
communication is what I have described as the norm
of "communism" in the social institution of science”
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23. Merton: 1988 “Mattew effect II”
• “Since positive recognition by peers is the
basic form of extrinsic reward in science, all
other extrinsic rewards, such as monetary
income from science-connected activities,
advancement in the hierarchy of scientists,
and enlarged access to human and material
scientific capital, derive from it”.
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24. Merton: 1988 “Mattew effect II”
• “This system of open publication that makes for the
advancement of scientific knowledge requires normatively
guided reciprocities. It can operate effectively only if the
practice of making one's work communally accessible is
supported by the correlative practice in which scientists who
make use of that work acknowl-edge having done so. In
effect, they thus reaffirm the property rights of the scientist
to whom they are then and there indebted. This amounts to
a pattern of legitimate appropriation as opposed to the
pattern of illegitimate expropriation (plagiary)”.
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25. Standing on the shoulders of giants
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26. Tension: norms of science vs
copyright
• Attribution of ideas (recognition by peers) vs
idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law
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27. 2
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28. Big science era: scientists
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29. Poisonous science (part I)
Corrupting right of paternity
(attribution)
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30. The rise of “Impact factor” logic
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31. Sintoms: e.g., plagiarism
• Gaming metrics
• Plagiarism: stealing ideas through peer
reviewing; CV - Mario Biagioli: “impact or
perish!”
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32. 3
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33. The empire strikes back
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34. Poisonous science (part II)
Corrupting economic rights
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35. Open Access 2001: a new hope?
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36. Oligopoly (EPRIST)
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37. Open Access???
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38. New intermediaries
• Google Scholar & Google Books
• Academia.edu, ResearchGate
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39. Publishing, indexing and evaluation
power
• E.g. Scopus (Elesevier)
• SSRN
• Google Scholar
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40. Side effects
• Serial crisis
• Risks in terms of preservation
• The death of libraries
• Commercial control of science
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41. 4
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42. The last line of defense: Openness
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43. Openness: what does it mean?
• Right to access
• Right to use (copy, modify, distribute, etc.)
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44. Open Access on the legal forefront
• OA mandates
• More exceptions and limitations (fair use)
• Abuse of copyright (copyright misuse)
• Right to republish
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45. Useless strategy
• Withouth a radical change of the system it is
impossible to have real openness
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46. Opennes: what does it mean?
• Democracy, pluralism, transparency
• Science authonomy
• Academic freedom
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47. Rethinking the evaluation
system
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48. Aaron Swartz
“Legacy” 2006
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49. Legacy, 2006
“So what jobs do leave a real legacy? […]
But one good source of them is trying to do things that change
the system instead of following it. For example, the university
system encourages people to become professors who do
research in certain areas (and thus many people do this); it
discourages people from trying to change the nature of the
university itself.
Naturally, doing things like changing the university are much
harder than simply becoming yet another professor. But for
those who genuinely care about their legacies, it doesn’t seem
like there’s much choice”.
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50. References
• Adeney E., Medical and Scientific Authorship: A Conflict between
Discipline Rules and the Law (December 1, 2015). Journal of Law and
Medicine, vol 23, pt 2, pp 413-426. Available at SSRN:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=2853171
• Biagioli M. et al., Gaming Metrics: Innovation & Surveillance in Academic
Misconduct, Conference at UC Davis, February 4-5, 2016,
https://video.ucdavis.edu/media/Gaming+Metrics+-+Mario-Biagioli+
%2802-04-2016%29/0_0wcg4w9l
• Biagioli M., Recycling Texts or Stealing Time?: Plagiarism, Authorship, and
Credit in Science (2012). International Journal of Cultural Property, 19:
453-476, 2012. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2427955
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51. References
• Guédon J.C., Open Access: Toward the Internet of the Mind, Budapest
Open Access Initiative, 2017,
http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/open-access-toward-the-
internet-of-the-mind
• Guédon J.C., In Oldenburg's Long Shadow: Librarians, Research Scientists,
Publishers, and the Control of Scientific Publishing, Association of
Research Libraries, Washinghton D.C., 2001, ISBN 0-918006-81-3,
http://www.arl.org/storage/documents/publications/in-oldenburgs-long-
shadow.pdf
• Guibault L., Owning the Right to Open Up Access to Scientific Publications,
in L. Guibault and C. Angelopoulos (ed.), Open Content Licensing: from
Theory to Practice, Amsterdam University Press, 2011. Available at SSRN:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=1829889
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52. References
• Merton R. K., The Matthew Effect in Science, II: Cumulative Advantage
and the Symbolism of Intellectual Property, Isis, Vol. 79, No. 4 (Dec.,
1988), 606
• Merton R. K., The Matthew Effect in Science, Science, New Series, Vol.
159, No. 3810. (Jan. 5, 1968), 56
• Merton R. K., Priorities in Scientific Discovery: A Chapter in the Sociology
of Science, American Sociological Review, Vol. 22, No. 6 (Dec., 1957), 635
• Merton R. K., Science and Technology in a Democratic Order, Journal of
Legal and Politcal Sociology, 1 (1942), 115
• Merton R. K., Science and Social Order, Philosophy of Science, 5 (1938),
321
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53. References
• Moscon V., Academic Freedom, Copyright, and Accessto Scholarly Works:
A Comparative Perspective, in Caso R., Giovanella F., Balancing copyright
law in the digital age: some comparative perspectives, Springer, 2015, 99
• Priest E., Copyright and the Harvard Open Access Mandate (August 1,
2012). Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, Vol.
10, p. 377, 2012. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1890467
• Rahmatian A., University Academics as Employees and Creators of
Copyright Works: University Academics as Owners of Copyright? (June 10,
2015). A. Rahmatian (2015), ‘University academics as employees and
creators of copyright works: university academics as owners of copyright?’
37(6) European Intellectual Property Review, 355-358.. Available at SSRN:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=2755532
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54. References
• Reichman J. H., Okediji R., When Copyright Law and Science Collide:
Empowering Digitally Integrated Research Methods on a Global Scale
(September 19, 2012). Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 96, No. 4, 2012;
Minnesota Legal Studies Research Paper 12-54. Available at SSRN:
https://ssrn.com/abstract=2149218
• Shavell S., Should Copyright of Academic Works be Abolished?. The
Journal of Legal Analysis, Forthcoming; Harvard Law and Economics
Discussion Paper No. 655; Harvard Public Law Working Paper No. 10-10.
Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1525667
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55. E-mail:
roberto.caso@unitn.it
presidente@aisascienzaperta.org
Web:
http://www.lawtech.jus.unitn.it/index.php/people/rob
erto-caso
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56. LawTech Trento
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57. Copyright
Copyright by Roberto Caso
Licenza Creative Commons
Quest'opera è distribuita con Licenza Creative
Commons Attribuzione - Condividi allo stesso
modo 4.0 Internazionale
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