Presentation done in the course HSB806F Ethics of Science and Research at University of Iceland, March 16, 2018. In the slides there are ethical issues related to intellectual property of research, open access, authorship and if it is possible that the open access publication model is maybe more ethical than the traditional publication model. There are also discussions about high price of articles from publishers and Alexandra Elbakyan the founder of Sci-Hub. It seems to be that Sci-Hub is having huge influence on the scholarly publishing market and some people say it is the beginning of the end of the traditional models. People seems to believe that the Open Access model is the solution. These slides are with cc by 4.0 licence from Creative Commons except some photos in it are having its own copyright and different authors.

1. The Ethics of Owning Ideas:
“Intellectual Property” vs. Open Access:
Whose “Property” is it Anyway?
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
4.0
HSP806F Ethics of Science and Research
University of Iceland, Árnagarður 301
March 16, 2018
Sigurbjörg Jóhannesdóttir

2. What is intellectual property
and what is its relationship to research?
“Intellectual property (or "IP") is a category of property that
includes intangible creations of the human intellect, and primarily
encompasses copyrights, patents, and trademarks. It also includes
other types of rights, such as trade secrets, publicity rights, moral
rights, and rights against unfair competition. ”
According to the English Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_property

3. Authorship and Intellectual Property
• The moral rights
as an author
• Economics rights
Intellectual Property rights help to ensure that a
property is not used without the permission of
the rights holder.
The author can decide to keep the moral rights
but choose to give away the economic rights
by, for ex., giving it to a publisher.

4. The researcher give
the publisher his article
and the copyright to it
Volunteers provide
peer-review
The publisher
The publisher do publish the article in a
journal and/or online.
The publishers sell subscriptions to the
journal and/or sell access online to the
full-text of the article.
The researcher and/or his institution have to pay the
publisher to get access to the published article
© ©
The most common model in scholarly publishing

5. A TYPICAL PROBLEM
You need certain article for your dissertation/theses but
access to it for 24 hours costs $42.50 USD and 30 days
access costs $105 USD.
This article is not accessible through the Iceland Consortium for
electronic subscriptions.
No legal copy of this article is accessible on the Internet.
What would you do?
1. You pay the access fee for 24 hours or 30 days.
2. You try to get a illegal copy of it from the Internet.
3. You skip the project/research you need this article for.

6. THE PROBLEM GETS WORSE
Now let us say that you need 10-20 articles, for your
dissertation/theses, that are all locked behind paywalls.
If the 24 hours access is between $30 to $50 USD for each article, the
total cost could be from $300 to $1000 USD. If 30 days access the
total cost could be $1000 to $4000 USD.
However, you know about this website with pirated research papers,
where you can probably download all those articles as pdfs (to keep)
and it will not cost you anything. They are all FREE.
What would you do now?

7. Is it ethically right to keep scientific
knowledge (paid for by public tax
money) locked behind pricewalls of
publishers?
Can it be ethically right to download
pirated research articles? (That is, illegal
copies of scholarly papers?)
By Source, Fair use,
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48743375
This is a logo owned by Alexandra Elbakyan for Sci-Hub.
Two Guiding Questions
By Frits Ahlefeldt

8. THE ETHICS OF STEALING?
In other words, is it ever ethical to steal?
At least one person thinks so.
Are you stealing if you get
illegal papers from the Internet?
Is it ethically right of you to go and get
those papers on the Internet even when
you know it is illegal (according to U.S.
laws and/or Icelandic law); and by doing so
knowing that you are not giving money to
the copyright holders (the
publishers/owners)?

9. Ljósmyndari Krassotkin – 2016
(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8b/Wiki-award_2016_114.JPG)
(Own work) [CC0], í gegnum Wikimedia Commons
Alexandra Elbakyan, founder of SCI-HUB
put 64.5 million stolen research articles online
and she will do so until all scientific knowledge
will be available for everyone.
She´s even been compared to Robin Hood,
although she said, “Sometimes I think it is not a
good comparison, since what he was doing was
illegal. And sharing books and research
articles should not be illegal.”*
*Rosenwald, M. S. (2016, 30. mars). This student put 50 million stolen research
articles online. And they’re free. Washington Post. Sótt af
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/this-student-put-50-million-stolen-res
earch-articles-online-and-theyre-free/2016/03/30/7714ffb4-eaf7-11e5-b0fd-07
3d5930a7b7_story.html
THE ROBIN HOOD FROM KAZAKHSTAN

10. "...this is the beginning of the
end for subscription scholarly
publishing. I think it is at this
point inevitable that the
subscription model is going to
fail and more open models will
be necessitated. "
THE BEGINNING OF THE END?
McKenzie, L. (2017, júlí 26). Sci-Hub’s cache of pirated papers is so big, subscription journals are doomed, data analyst suggests. Sótt af
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/sci-hub-s-cache-pirated-papers-so-big-subscription-journals-are-doomed-data-analyst
Given that Sci-Hub has access to almost every
paper a scientist would ever want to read, and
can quickly obtain requested papers it doesn’t
have, could the website truly topple traditional
publishing? In a chat with ScienceInsider,
Himmelstein concludes that the results of his
study could mark “the beginning of the end” for
paywalled research.

11. OPEN ACCESS AS A SOLUTION?
Suber, P. (2012). Open Access. Cambridge: The Mit Press
● Sci-Hub project supports OA.
● Research should be available for
everyone and at least be free to
read.
● Sci-Hub say that Open Access is
the new and advanced form of
scientific communication which
will replace traditional outdated
subscription models.
"Open Access (OA) literature
is digital, online, free of charge,
and free of most copyright and
licensing restrictions"
Sci-Hub. (2018). Open Access.
Sótt af http://80.82.77.83

12. Intellectual Property -- Open Access
In Open Access publishing
● The author keeps their moral rights.
● The author keeps their economics
rights.
● The author keeps the copyright.
● The author decides with the licence
they choose, what permission they
are giving to users of their property.
Is it possible that the OA model is
more ethical than the traditional
one?
In the traditional publishing model
● The author keeps their moral rights.
● But gives away their economic rights.
● The author doesn´t keep the copyright.
● The author has nothing to say about
how their ex-property is used. They also
need to ask for permission to use it.
What are the ethics of giving away
authorship when the research is paid
for by a third party? (How can I give
away what actually isn´t mine?)

13. These slides are published by Sigurbjörg Jóhannesdóttir under a
Creative Commons licence (CC BY 4.0).
Pay attention thought that some of the photos, used in the slides,
do have a different licence. Please respect that. If it is no text
under or beside the photo about who owns it then it is by Sibba
Jóa and are published by the same licence as the slides are.
The authors give anyone the right to reuse these slides, edit,
share, adopt and create derivative works in any media.
The condition is that the authors gets a credit and that the slides
are used in a creative work that increases the knowledgeable
value of it.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
4.0