The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics

Open Access and Copyright Issues Related to Knowledge Translation and Transfer for the OMAFRA-UofG Partnership

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Fri, 25 May 2012 23:29:00 +0000

This post notes some reflections from a recent meeting of the Community of Practice of the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) / University of Guelph's Knowledge Translation and Transfer (KTT) group. My role in this group is that of open access consultant. The OMAFRA / KTT group is doing some very interesting work in the area of developing intellectual property practices to support innovation, including both open access and patenting. Researchers include academics and also grower groups.

One of the projects involves growing the Ontario vegetable crop research repository in the University of Guelph's ATRIUM repository. The University of Guelph's Ridgetown Campus produces a lot of agricultural research, some of which has world level impact, particularly in the area of pesticide management for control of fusarium in corn which is published in the scientific literature. Many other research findings, however, remain in unpublished research reports stuck in filing cabinets. If these reports were digitized and made available through ATRIUM, the research would be useful to many people - including Ministry staff for developing policy and local farmers and gardeners wondering whether to use black plastic on their strawberries.

One of the challenges to developing the repository is dealing with rights issues. Much of this research is owned by growers' groups, who conducted the research for their own community. As agricultural entrepreneurs, the growers will want to retain an edge for competition and so are likely to want to retain commercial rights. Similarly, faculty members at Guelph own their own IP and may want to retain the rights for commercialization when applicable. Strategies to address these issues could include such tactics as defensive publishing.

My thoughts so far as shared in the meeting:

Engaging the growers' groups in open access is a strategy that I would highly recommend in this situation. Don't just ask for the license to their works, rather do some workshops or provide information to link people to some of the many open access resources that are already available to them. A message of people everywhere are sharing their work; won't you join us? strikes me as a message that is a little bit easier to listen to than won't you share your work? Include open access peer-reviewed journals on agriculture, of course - but don't neglect to mention some of the high-quality magazines written largely by people similar to the growers' groups, such as BC Grasslands. Focus on agriculture for sure, but not necessarily just agriculture - farmers and their families are people too, and are as likely as anyone to benefit from all the freely available health information or enjoy the many free texts, movies, and music available from the Internet Archive. Flickr can be a good resource for developing marketing materials, and open government resources can be useful, too.

One challenge for farmers in this area is that many still rely on dial-up access. This suggests to me another avenue for illustrating the benefits of open approaches. It can be difficult for people in rural communities to get the rest of us to pay attention to their issues (such as lack of broadband) and hence to gain political support. This is one area where the internet creates the possibility for a more level playing field; a rural newspaper can create an online presence with the same potential audience as an urban newspaper, and rural individuals, families and community groups can similarly create an online presence with the same potential impact as urban people.

Some potential venues for information sharing include practioners' peer-reviewed journals using tools such as Open Journal Systems - although the growers' groups might be more interested in using social networking tools like ning.

Our Community of Practice is just getting started! Watch for further posts on this topic.

Black Out Speak Out June 4th

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Mon, 07 May 2012 22:08:00 +0000

Canadians: it is time to take a stand and speak out for nature and democracy. Please join this event coordinated by a number of environmental groups - and spread the word! http://www.blackoutspeakout.ca/

Journal price increases: the costlier the journal the more important smaller percentage increase

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Wed, 02 May 2012 19:27:00 +0000

To state the obvious: the more expensive a journal is, the more an increase costs in dollars given the same percentage. A journal price increase for a costly journal can look small from a percentage perspective, but actually be quite large from a dollars perspective.

To illustrate, consider this hypothetical (but realistic) scenario):

Small society journal (SSJ) has been charging a subscription fee of $100. Unlike the large commercial scholarly publishers, this society has not raised prices every year. This fee has not covered costs for several years, and so the society has decided to increase the subscription rate for this year to $150.

Original cost: $100
New price: $150
Increase in %: 50%
Increase in $: $50

Commercial publisher journal (CPJ) has been charging a subscription fee of $10,000. One of the reasons for this high fee is that prices have been raised every year for the last few decades at rates above inflation. This year, CPJ is raising their prices again by 5%, to $10,500.

Original cost: $10,000
New price: $10,500
Increase in %: 5%
Increase in $: $500

Discussion: a 5% increase for a costly journal can easily cost ten times more, in dollar terms, than a 50% increase for an inexpensive journal.

Note that this analysis does not necessarily fit other formats such as scholarly monographs, where the diversion of funding from monographs to journals has distorted the market (less money for monographs means fewer copies bought and printed, raising prices on a per-copy basis).

Conclusion: when considering journal prices increases, dollar amounts are more important than percentages. Also, the more expensive the journal, the more important it is to negotiate lower or no price increases.

Sent to Liblicense-l May 2, 2012.

About 30% of peer-reviewed scholarly journals are now open access

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Wed, 02 May 2012 18:16:00 +0000

Ass Professor Laura Czerniewicz of the University of Cape Town recently asked about the percentage of scholarly peer-reviewed journals that are now open access. In brief, my response is "about 30%" (apparently Heather Joseph from SPARC gave almost exactly the same response). This figure needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt, though. My full response illustrates why:

Any such figure would be a very rough ballpark, because we don't have a count of how many peer-reviewed journals there are in the world. We tend to use Ulrich's as a surrogate, however this list reflects a strong English-language / western bias, e.g. Ulrich's would only include a very
tiny fraction of the academic journals from China.

Something else to keep in mind is that is has become more difficult to assess the number of peer-reviewed journals in Ulrich's, because the default search does not deduplicate for multiple formats (i.e. a quick search for academic / peer-reviewed / scholarly journals will yield two titles when a journal is produced in both print and electronic form).

My latest count of active, peer-reviewed scholarly journals from Ulrich's using deduplication from Dec. 1, 2011 is 26,746. My method and calculations are shown here, in this appendix of my draft thesis:
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/appendix-c-how-many-active-scholarly-peer-reviewed-journals/

If we take the DOAJ current figure of 7,665 journals as the number of OA journals, this gives a rough guesstimate of 28% of scholarly peer-reviewed journals that are fully open access. I would like to
emphasize that these numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt - my Ulrich's deduplication exercise is a quick and dirty one, and not all OA journals are necessarily in DOAJ (e.g. there is generally a delay in adding titles due to the vetting process).

Unlock our knowledge about alternative energy and renewable technologies - now!

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 03:43:00 +0000

It is scandalous that much of our collective knowledge about alternative energy and renewable technologies is kept locked behind an Elsevier paywall! This is one area where clearly everyone anywhere on the planet with the inclination to read about the possibilities and push for solutions, whether through developing more basic knowledge or transferring knowledge to the business sector, should have immediate, barrier-free access. This is one area where the need is too great to permit for ANY embargo period.

Science works in step-wise fashion, like a detective mystery. One scientist discovers a clue; another builds on the discovery, until we have a new body of knowledge or real-world implementations, or both. If a useful discovery sequence takes six steps, with about 6 months of research for each step, then with no embargoes, the process takes 3 years. With a one-year embargo at each step, the whole sequence takes 9 years (3 years for research, 6 years for embargoes). Consider the impact of 6 more years of increasing greenhouse gases on climate change, and it is easy to see why the public good of rapid advancement in this area far outweighs an outmoded, print-based business model.

Here are the 29 journals Elsevier publishes in this area, from this page:

Algal Research

Applied Energy

Biomass & Bioenergy

Bioresource Technology

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability

Electric Power Systems Research

Energy

Energy and Buildings

Energy Conversion and Management

Energy Strategy Reviews

Fuel

Fuel and Energy Abstracts

Fuel Cell Virtual Journal

Fuel Cells Bulletin

Fuel Processing Technology

Geographical Abstracts: Human Geography

Geothermics

International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems

International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control

International Journal of Hydrogen Energy

Journal of Power Sources

Journal of Wind Engineering & Industrial Aerodynamics

Ocean Engineering

Refocus

Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews

Renewable Energy

Renewable Energy Focus

Solar Energy

Solar Energy Materials & Solar Cells

If funders are considering different embargoes for different fields, let's argue for immediate open access in this one - and let's call on the editors and authors of these journals to revolt and move to an open access publisher and model.

Total impact: a critical perspective

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 02:57:00 +0000

Total impact is a set of alternative metrics for scholarship. Total impact looks at a number of factors, including social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter. As a research tool, Total Impact has a lot of potential, to explore how works are used and what impact they have. As an alternative metric to evaluate the quality of scholarship - an alternative to impact factor - there are a number of potential serious problems to consider.

First, there is the question of whether the current push towards quantitative metrics makes any sense at all. I have talked about the problems of this kind of instrumental rationality is my book chapter, The implications of usage statistics as an economic factor in scholarly communication https://circle.ubc.ca/handle/2429/954 (In brief, usage stats are likely to have significant negative impacts, from discouraging use to discouraging important but not necessarily popular entire fields of research); and the second chapter of my draft thesis http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/chapter-two-scholarly-communication-in-crisis/ (search for irrational rationalization).

One example, from an interview study of scholarly monograph publishers I did recently, is the impact of pushing scholars to publish more books to obtain tenure. This pressure is not consistent with the time it takes to write books that are really worth publishing and reading; so in this instance, we have a quantitative metric intended to improve quality and productivity (of our academic staff) which appears to be lowering quality (more mediocre books, more book production when the problem for all of us is not enough reading material, but rather not enough time to read).

Research, both quantitative and qualitative, is my recommendation before putting too much stock in Total Impact or other alternative metrics as a replacement for Impact Factor in evaluating the quality of scholarship. Note that I do not recommend retaining Impact Factor, but rather minimizing or eliminating quantitative approaches to evaluating the quality of scholarship.

The use of social networking tools may be particularly problematic. One research area that I recommend is examining the effects of traditional biases. I would hypothesize that social networking tools would be likely to exhibit the following biases prevalent in modern society:

men would show more impact than women
minorities would have lower impact
developing country authors would have lower impact
introverts would have lower impact than extraverts
authors adept at social networking tools would have more impact than authors less comfortable with these media

In addition, I would suggest that metrics based on social networking tools could easily be manipulated, not only by authors but also by interested others. It doesn't take much to imagine corporate polluters in favor of climate denial upping the impact of their preferred pseudo-science, or for drug companies to drive up the impact of studies making the drugs that they sell look good.

Another area to consider (for all kinds of tools, not just social networking tools), is the impact of funding considerations. If universities are relying more on corporate funders at a time in society such as today when the political will seems to be on the side of the wealthy who wish to cut spending on social justice, it is reasonable to hypothesize that there will be a smaller proportion of funding for social justice issues. What happens to research on poverty issues and its impact if there is less funding for research and academic positions in this area (hence fewer researchers), at the same time that there is less funding for government services and social workers (fewer potential readers and tweeters), and many of those poverty research is meant to help have lost their homes and jobs and may find it difficult to get internet access?

Accelerating small business in BC: celebrating the success of enterpreneur / philanthropist Irving K. Barber

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:40:00 +0000

This week British Columbia is mourning the passing of notable citizen and philanthropist Irving K. Barber. This post celebrates a small part of the achievements made possible by his generosity, the Small Business Accelerator program of the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.

The Small Business Accelerator program is a highly innovative program and partnership of the University of British Columbia with BC's public and other libraries and the BC business community.

From the website:

Business success depends on obtaining access to reliable information. The Small Business Accelerator is curated by business librarians and is your gateway to freely available business information, education, and assistance that is both current and trustworthy.

It is my hope that this small token of appreciation will encourage others to consider this model of cooperation, which is also a great model to illustrate how libraries and the business community can work together cooperatively, making use of open access resources, to benefit business and local communities (by making business accelerator programs available throughout the province.

[Disclosure: the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre is a key partner of the BC Electronic Library Network where I serve as Coordinator].

The impact of funding agency open access policies (March 31, 2012 Dramatic Growth of Open Access)

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:48:00 +0000

This post highlights a few bits of data suggesting the impact of selected funding agencies' open access mandate policies. We're definitely making some progress! By my method of calculation, compliance with the NIH Public Access Policy stands at 73%. On the other hand, there is still room for improvement - for example, how is it possible that more than a quarter of NIH funded authors have yet to comply with a requirement of their research grants? SURF has just posted a report showing that open access provision rates in the Netherlands are stagnating.

This chart suggests that the N.I.H. Public Access policy may be having a transformative effect beyond the works that authors actually are required to make publicly accessible. Since the N.I.H. policy came into effect, the number of journals voluntarily making all of their articles freely available immediately has nearly tripled, from 321 in March 2008 to 897 today. In the first quarter of 2012, the number of journals actively participating in PMC grew by 58; 56 more journals began making their articles freely available immediately; and 44 more journals made all articles open access.

This chart shows the difference in availability of free full-text for PubMed articles within 6 months of publication, by funding support. There is no difference between N.I.H. Extramural researchers and all articles in PubMed; in both cases, 13% of items in PubMed lead to free full-text. CIHR funded researchers are only 1% better, in spite of the CIHR Policy on Access to Research Outputs requiring open access within 6 months of publication. Even N.I.H.'s own intramural researchers have a record of fast free access that is only slightly higher than the overall rate. Only the Wellcome Trust has a noticeably higher track record, with 39% of works connecting with free full text. Since CIHR and Wellcome Trust have policies with the same permitted embargo (6 months), the threefold difference in results likely comes from a source other than the policy per se, such as the assertive implementation of the policy Wellcome Trust is known for.

Noteworthy this quarter: the beginning of 2012 has definitely been dramatic, with the Research Works Act proposed in the U.S. and subsequently dropped, a remarkable turnaround. This came after Elsevier dropped its support for RWA, thanks to the still growing Elsevier boycott, with over 8,900 signatories. This pushback was likely inspired by the highly successful protests against SOPA and PIPA, particularly the January 18, 2012 Internet Blackout. Peter Suber wrote about RWA and the recently re-introduced Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA) in the March 2012 SPARC Open Access Newsletter. The Research Councils UK, an early leader in open access policy, is moving to the next level with a consultation underway on their draft new open access policy - my comments can be found here.

Growth this quarter (selected)

Open access journals

DOAJ: 7,607 journals. Up by 235 this quarter, a growth rate of 2.6 titles per day (a lower growth rate than the average for the past year of 4 titles per day).

Electronic Journals Library: 33,984 free journals, an increase of 1,600 this quarter (growth rate 18 titles per day).

DOAJ searchable articles increased by 62,831. Highwire added 17,226 free articles, about 17% of the total of 97,017 articles added by Highwire in total.

Open access archives

OpenDOAR added 22 repositories, for a total of 2,186.
The Registry of Open Access Repositories added 124 repositories, for a total of 2,734.

A Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE) search encompassed close to 7 hundred thousand more documents, for a total of over 34 million documents.

arXiv added 20,000 documents for a total of 745,000.

RePEC has changed their statistics approach this quarter; to obtain numbers, I had to go to the LogEC site, download (messy) and calculate a total of 31,466 downloadable fulltext, for a total of over a million.

The Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN) added over 16,000 papers, for a total of close to 400,000 papers.

The number of Open Journal Systems installations hit 11,500 sometime last December.

The Internet Archive now makes freely available more than 600,000 moving images, 100,000 concerts, 1.2 million audio recordings, and 3.3 million texts.

This post is part of the Dramatic Growth of Open Access series.To download the data see google docs for the current full data version and the current show growth version. The Dramatic Growth of Open Access dataverse is the place to look for archived data versions.

Housekeeping: if anyone would like to use the charts from this post, I recommend getting in touch with me - for technical not permissions reasons.

Housekeeping: Dramatic Growth of Open Access timing

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 20:12:00 +0000

Today (March 31) is data capture day, however in exception to my usual practice, release will be delayed until next week. This step is meant to help me, and everyone else, fully participate in Earth Hour.

Elsevier Cell Reports OA: confused or fake?

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 00:31:00 +0000

Update: a closer look suggests genuine confusion.

When I click on the most recent article in Cell Reports, the following picture is what I see - on the left hand side, it says [copyright sign] The Authors 2012. On the right hand side, there is a "Permissions" link which goes to Rightslink. The only other copyright related note I see on this page (not in the picture below) is the [copyright sign] Elsevier 2012. All rights reserved. In the actual article, at the very bottom of the article under "licensing information" is the Creative Commons license. The author copyright notice is also there - at the bottom of the page, not co-located with licensing information. A google search for a paragraph within the actual text immediately directs me to this article, which suggests that this Elsevier version of a no-derivatives article is available for text mining. (Details below).

Here is the paragraph within the text that a google search immediately connected with the actual article:

Next, we expressed an AMPAR subunit (GluA1, GluA2, or
GluA3) fused to Super Ecliptic pHluorin (SEP), a pH-sensitive
variant of EGFP, in hippocampal neurons cultured on the NRXcoated
glass in order to observe changes of the subunits during
LTP. SEP fluorescence is quenched by low pH inside cytoplasmic
vesicles such as endosomes

Elsevier's Cell Reports has announced that they are offering authors two options for real open access in the form of two Creative Common license options, CC-BY (attribution only) or CC-BY-NC-ND (attribution- non commercial-no derivatives). In both cases, it is the authors that retain copyright, according to the announcement. This is important, as it signifies that with this journal at least, Elsevier is recognizing their obligation to give up commercial sale rights when paid for article production services. However, when I look at articles in Cell Reports, I see copyright (c sign) Authors, and a permissions link - which goes to Rightslink, not Creative Commons. Is Elsevier confused, or is this more pseudo-OA like Elsevier's sponsored articles?

Why accelerate discovery? reasons why we need open access now

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 06:20:00 +0000

One of the benefits of open access is accelerating discovery. This benefit is most evident with libre open access (allowing for re-use and machine assistance via text and data mining), and particularly in evidence with little or no delay from time of discovery to time of sharing of work.

There are always many reasons for accelerating discovery - here are just a few examples of why we need full, immediate, libre, OA, and why we need it NOW:

Multiple drug resistance: we have developed a range of drugs that has worked for us in the past few decades to combat bacteria, tuberculosis, and other diseases. Now we are seeing increasing levels of resistance to antibiotics and others drugs, including anti-malarial drugs. Maintaining the health gains of the past few decades will take more than continuing with current solutions; we need more research, and the faster we can do this, the better the odds of staving off the next epidemic.

Another example of why we need to accelerate discovery, and we need to move to accelerated discovery fast, is the need to find solutions to climate change and cleaner, more efficient energy. We literally cannot afford to wait.

So as much as some of us might wish to give current scholarly publishers time to adjust to a full libre open access environment, this is a luxury that we cannot afford.

These examples of acceleration will likely provide new business opportunities, too. If this happens, it is a welcome, albeit secondary, benefit.

Copyright for expression of ideas; patent law for ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:38:00 +0000

This post is a second reply to a post David Prosser wrote on the GOAL list in response to my post on the RCUK consultation, highlighting the intellectual property issues. This post is a mixture of answers, my perspectives, and questions. In my opinion, David Prosser's brief example raises a number of issues which can help us to move forward with understanding libre open access. In brief, I argue that facilitating data and text mining and resulting works does not involve copyright at all (crawling text and data is simply normative in the context of the world wide web, for example), but rather making works openly available, and in a format that permits text and data mining.

On 18-Mar-12, at 5:07 AM, David Prosser wrote:

Say I wanted to data mine 10,000 articles. I'm at a university, but I am co-funded by a pharmaceutical company and there is a possibility that the research that I'm doing may result in a new drug discovery, which that company will want to take to market. The 10,000 articles are all 'open access', but they are under CC-BY-NC-SA licenses. What mechanism is there by which I can contact all 10,000 authors and gain permission for my research?

Comment

First, before I comment on intellectual property issues, I would like to point out that the concept of "intellectual property" is a relatively recent invention, and one that arguably should be challenged. For details, see the second chapter of my draft thesis; from here, search for: The invention of “intellectual property”: enclosure of knowledge. Also, a disclaimer that I am a scholar whose work intersects with intellectual property issues, but not a copyright lawyer or expert. Given that the arguably fictional "intellectual property" is legally nonfiction throughout most of the world, following are some reflections arising from David's example.

Copyright covers the expression of ideas, not the ideas themselves. If a researcher employed by a pharmaceutical firm were to read 10,000 articles and this research resulted in an idea for a new drug, the pharmaceutical firm would not need to seek permission from any of the authors of the articles in order to apply for a patent. Text-mining is merely an automated form of reading, so again, no need to seek permission from authors to apply for a patent. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) provides a brief overview of intellectual property which explains well the various forms. In brief, there are about 5 forms of intellectual property, many of which actually have opposing expectations. Patent law is a public declaration of rights to use an idea or procedure, and openness is appropriate. Patent law is designed to protect rights to private profit. Trade secret law is also designed to protect private property, however in this case the protection is achieved through secret, private means rather than a public, open process.

The question of whether copyright permissions are, or should be, necessary for data or text mining is an important issue to address when considering libre open access (including broader re-use rights in contrast to the free-to-read gratis open access). I argue that no special copyright related permissions are necessary. As evidence, here is a quick illustration:

Try a google search for: "To pursue, within the limits of the STM Association's aims and objectives, the highest possible level of international protection of copyright works and of the services of publishers in making these works available" and it should be quite easy to find the Introduction to Copyright & Legal Affairs of the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM): http://www.stm-assoc.org/copyright-legal-introduction/ There is nothing on the STM website to indicate that special rights have been granted for text mining. STM is certainly not naive or neutral about intellectual property rights; the founding reason for the existence of STM in protection of IP. Yet clearly Google, a commercial company, is crawling this site and returning results. There is nothing the slightest bit exceptional about this example. This is how the world wide web works! If anyone wants to post things on the web but not make them available for crawling, it is up to the website owner to opt out by indicating that they do not want their site crawled.

Some subscription-based scholarly publishers do not allow text or data mining of their databases. It seems likely that they are interpreting the multiple downloads often involved as pirating of their copyrighted content. That is, the basis for refusing to allow text or data mining is interpretation of the activity as a violation of copyright - or fear that the publisher cannot allow text or data mining while simultaneously preventing copyright violation - not because text or data mining actually violates copyright. If publishers' products contain DRM preventing text or data mining, that is a different matter. Legal protection for the publishers in this instance involves DMCA style laws and contract law - not copyright law. Within the context of library subscriptions, data and text mining can be included in contracts. Here is the relevant text from the BC Electronic Library Network model license: 3.1.11 "DATA and TEXT MINING. Members and Authorized Users may conduct research employing data or text mining of the Licensed Materials". This language is not original with BC ELN, but rather developed based on research on other model licenses, including those of JISC, CRKN, and OCUL. In the real world, copying this kind of work with informal permission but without attribution is actually the norm, as we all want to work towards standards and avoid re-inventing the wheel.

What is needed to provide for data and text mining, I argue, is not changes to copyright but rather content made available in formats that are easily crawled for these purposes, such as xhtml rather than locked-down PDFs, and made openly available over the World Wide Web.

I understand that Europe (as a whole, or just some countries) may have some odd laws that would prohibit text and data mining. This may help to explain why people are trying to use copyright law as a means of ensuring permissions for text and data mining. I would like to know more about this; if anyone can provide details, links, etc., that would be most helpful for all of us to really understand the issues.

My first response to David Prosser's question, challenging the underlying assumption that increasing corporatization of the university is acceptable, can be found here.

Discussion is welcome.

Is the purpose of scholarship private profits?

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 18:13:00 +0000

This post is a reply to a post David Prosser wrote on the GOAL list in response to my post on the RCUK consultation.

On 18-Mar-12, at 5:07 AM, David Prosser wrote:

Say I wanted to data mine 10,000 articles. I'm at a university, but I am co-funded by a pharmaceutical company and there is a possibility that the research that I'm doing may result in a new drug discovery, which that company will want to take to market. The 10,000 articles are all 'open access', but they are under CC-BY-NC-SA licenses. What mechanism is there by which I can contact all 10,000 authors and gain permission for my research?

Comment:

Many thanks for raising this question, David, which brings up a number of interesting points. There is one that I would like to highlight first off as a basic underlying assumption that from my perspective should be challenged. That is the assumption that the increasing corporate involvement in universities is desirable. I argue that it is not. Co-funding of university research by pharmaceutical companies is problematic. What I would recommend instead is reversal of the corporate and high income earner tax breaks brought in, in many countries, over the past few decades as part of the neoliberal ideology*. That way, the public will have enough resources so that universities can be funded by the public to conduct research in the public interest. This would likely need to happen at a global level - an appropriate role for international bodies, from my perspective - to avoid the current risk of capital flight (companies pick up and move to wherever tax rates, employment and environmental standards are lowest to achieve the highest profits) which is undermining western democracy as a whole.

To illustrate why I say that funding of university research by the corporate sector is problematic, here are just a few examples:

1.    Why would pharmaceutical companies want to fund research that might challenge the claims of their successful drugs?
2.    What incentive would a pharmaceutical company have to find a cheap or free alternative to their expensive drugs? For example, if a pharmaceutical company is making a lot of profit from selling drugs to combat colon cancer, why would it fund research on public campaigns to encourage preventive measures such as eating vegetables? In the U.K., my understanding is that recent cuts have hit the social sciences and humanities hard. This means universities need to rely more on funding sources such as pharmaceutical companies while at the same time there is less support for this kind of basic, public-oriented research.
3.    Should research on the environment be conducted by and for the public interest - or report to the companies responsible for pollution?

* Note on neoliberal ideology: think Thatcherism / Reaganism, the idea that the invisible hand of the market will take care of everything, if only we give it free reign. The "invisible hand of the market" comes from a superficial skim of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (superficial because proponents do not speak to Smith's simultaneous call for the strong hand of the state, or the basic underlying assumption of continuous growth, which many would argue is impossible given the real limits of our ecosphere). For more on neoliberalism, I recommend David Harvey's brief and highly readable "A brief history of neoliberalism". We've been giving this a try for four decades, and what are the results? The global financial crisis of 2008, the debt crisis in Greece (and other countries), the Citizens United decision in the U.S. giving corporate money a right to free speech - a significant blow to democracy. It is timely to question this basic assumption, not continue on our current path.

This message is posted here rather than to the GOAL list because this discussion is not permitted on the GOAL list. Further discussion is welcome from my perspective through many venues, however please note that I am no longer subscribing to GOAL

Research Councils UK draft new open access policy: my comments

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:55:00 +0000

Following are my comments to the Research Councils U.K. on the their proposed new open access policy

Dear RCUK Open Access Policy group,

First of all let me say congratulations and thank you to RCUK for your continuing inspiring leadership on open access policy. Following are my comments, based on many years of experience in open access policy advocacy, my work as a professional librarian and adjunct faculty at the University of British Columbia's School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, where I have developed and taught courses on scholarly communication, and my doctoral studies (communications, in progress) in the area of scholarly communication and open access.

Overall, from my perspective this draft policy introduces two important innovations: reducing the permitted embargo period, and pushing towards libre open access (e.g. allowing use for data and text-mining). In brief, I recommend strengthening the language on shortening embargo periods, and eliminating reference to CC-BY in favor of broader language against restrictions and requiring formats usable for text and data-mining purposes. Also, I recommend that the policy specify immediate deposit, with optional delayed release to accommodate the permitted embargoes.
With respect to the embargo period, I recommend strengthening the language indicating that any permitted embargo periods are designed as a temporary measure to give publishers time to adjust to an open access environment, with a view to eventually requiring open access immediately on publication. This language can be found on page 4, I recommend including this in the introductory language to underscore this point.

Kudos to RCUK for adopting a leadership position on libre open access. However, I would recommend against specifying the Creative Commons CC-BY license. While many open access advocates understandably see CC-BY as the expression of the BOAI definition of open access, my considered opinion is that CC-BY is a weak license for libre OA which fails to protect OA downstream and will not accomplish the Budapest vision of open access,. My perspective is that the best license for libre open access is Creative Commons - Attribution - Noncommercial - Sharealike (CC-BY-NC-SA), as this protects OA downstream (recognizing that the current CC NC definition is problematic, and noting that commercial rights should be retained by authors, not publishers). As one example of where open access might need such protection, because CC-BY allows for resale of open access materials: if all of PubMedCentral were CC-BY, a commercial company could copy the whole thing, perhaps add some value, and sell their version of PMC. They could not legally stop PMC from providing free access. However, I very much doubt that CC-BY could prevent such a company from lobbying to remove funding for the public version. If this sounds ludicrous and unconscionable, may I present as evidence that just such a scenario is realistic: 1) the efforts a few years ago by the American Chemical Society to prevent the U.S. government from providing PubChem on the grounds that this was competition with a private entity; 2) the Research Works Act, and 3) the current anti-FRPAA lobbying in the U.S., which, similarly to the Research Works Act, claims that published research funded by the public is "private research works" which should belong solely to the publisher.

Another reason for avoiding CC-BY is that while the contributions of funders are very important, so are the contributions of scholar authors. Many scholars do not wish to see others who have contributed nothing to a scholarly work sell their work and pocket the money; I certainly don't. For example, Peter Suber recently posted this note to the SPARC Open Access Forum which expresses the distress of an author who published CC-BY in a BMC journal and then found a bogus publisher selling her article for $3. https://groups.google.com/a/arl.org/group/sparc-oaforum/browse_thread/thread/fc977cabd0d59bcc#. The more work that is published CC-BY, the more I believe we can expect to see this kind of scam, and this risks turning researchers off OA. Also, when faculty members develop their own open access policies (e.g. Harvard, MIT), they insist that articles not be sold for a profit. Links to these and other institutional repositories are available through the Registry of Open Access Material Archiving Policies (ROARMAP) at http://roarmap.eprints.org/.

To illustrate how CC-BY does not necessarily result in the Budapest open access initative's vision of "sharing of the poor with the rich and the rich with the poor": those who give away their work for commercial purposes may not be able to afford the results. For example, if a scholar from a poorer area gives away their medical articles as CC-BY, images and other elements from these articles could be used to develop point-of-care tools that could be sold at prices that the health care professionals serving the scholar and their families could not afford. That is, despite the best of intentions, CC-BY could easily result in a one-way sharing of the poor with the rich. This is one of the reasons why I strongly recommend that the developing world avoid CC-BY.

I cover this topic in more depth in the third chapter of my draft thesis - from the link below, search for open access and creative commons:
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/chapter-3-open-access-as-solution-to-the-enclosure-of-knowledge/

For practical reasons, to further text and data-mining I would suggest that the article format is more to the point than licensing. An author's final manuscript may be more likely to meet this requirement than the so-called "Article of Record". For example, an author's own version in an open format that allows for text and data-mining, with no licensing language, is much better for text and data-mining purposes than a publisher's "Article of Record" in a locked-down PDF format with a CC-BY license. My recommendation is to specify useable format rather than license. Also, I would recommend against encouraging deposit of the "Article of Record", as scholarly communication needs to evolve beyond the print-based journal article format, and this specification may tend to further entrench a system that needs some shaking up.

Regarding p. 5 - working with individual institutions to develop open access funds from indirect costs - good!!! I recommend looking at the Compact for Open Access Publishing Equity http://www.oacompact.org/compact/ for guidance, and for institutions to join. When such funds are developed, it is very important to build in efficiencies to prevent against double dipping, avoid paying excessive costs, and planning for education about the growing pool of open access scam companies is an area that is growing in importance. I differ from some of my colleagues in recommending against funding agencies paying OA article processing fees.

What RCUK might want to consider if, similar to North America, some of the publishers experiencing difficulty transitioning are the smaller society publishers, is a journal subsidy program. Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council has such a program, called Aid to Scholarly Journals. If RCUK does not yet have such a program, that would make it much easier to start up with stronger OA expectations than SSHRC has been able to do to date. Canada also has a program to help scholarly journals transition to the online environment called Synergies which is a good model. In North America, most academic libraries nowadays are providing journal hosting and support services. This sector is by far the most efficient in scholarly publishing, with costs on average less than 10% of the current system. See chapter 4 of my draft thesis for details http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/chapter-4-economics-of-scholarly-communication-in-transition/).

Finally, a minor point: the introductory paragraph, talking about benefits of open access, appears to prioritize business interest. I fully agree that scholarship and open access to scholarship is a huge potential benefit to business, but would submit that this is not, nor should it be, the main point of scholarship and research. May I suggest that the final sentence of the first paragraph refer to the public first and foremost, and then perhaps speak to business benefits?

Many thanks for the opportunity to comment, and best wishes to RCUK in the next stage of your leadership on OA policy.

Heather Morrison
Doctoral Candidate, Simon Fraser University School of Communication
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/

Will Elsevier accidentally unite the open access movement?

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 03:17:00 +0000

We open access advocates are unanimous in the goal of universal open access to the world's scholarly knowledge (at least in its peer-reviewed journal article form, for now). However, at times we differ about the means. Some of us favor a focus on rapid transition to a fully open access, more efficient and effective scholarly communication system - what some call the gold road of open access publishing, and Harnad refers to as the premature gold rush. Others, like Harnad himself, favor beginning with the traditional scholarly publishing system as it is, with authors self-archiving in open access archives to expand open access beyond what is provided by library subscriptions. (I fully agree with both positions!).

So what does this have to do with Elsevier? Simple: Elsevier is "green" on open access and hence the darling of the green roaders. As long as Elsevier supports this approach, the open access archives first supporters are likely to support Elsevier. However, as we saw recently with the Research Works Act, Elsevier is quite capable of doing its best to attack the open access mandates that are critical to the green road. If Elsevier keeps up this attack on open access mandates, it's a matter of time the green roaders become gold and join us in the Elsevier boycott - where they will be most welcome!

So what are the options for Elsevier? They can either support - or at least not attack - the open access mandates that are coming, particularly the U.S.' FRPAA and the growing institutional open access mandates movement, and keep the support of the green roaders - or they can attack the mandates, and face a much more united open access movement. I think that this is what people like to call "between a rock and a hard place".

Of course, Elsevier could follow the lead of other major commercial scholarly publishers such as Springer, Wiley, Nature Publishing Group, and others, and aim to compete in the obviously emerging open access marketplace. This growing tendency towards OA competition is a topic that I speak to in a bit more depth in the 4th chapter of my draft dissertation, open access as solution to the enclosure of knowledge.

Elsevier numbers illustrate - once again - just how much more sense open access makes!

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 04:30:00 +0000

Elsevier today wrote a letter to the mathematics community, hoping to woo scholars away from the still-growing boycott, The Cost of Knowledge, now that Elsevier has publicly disavowed its support for the Research Works Act which would have forbidden the U.S. government from requiring public access to the results of research it pays for. In its letter, Elsevier commits to lowering the costs of articles in its mathematics journals to at or below $11 US per article. This sounds like a pretty reasonable step when you consider that this is just over a quarter of what Elsevier currently charges. However, when you compare this with the potential of open access, you can see how ludicrous this model really is today. If every research library in North America were to purchase a copy of an Elsevier article at $11, this would add up to $1,386 - more than it would cost to pay the PLoS ONE article processing fee for full open access to everyone, everywhere. Or, if an undergrad class of 150 students were required to purchase this article to read for class on a pay-per-use basis, the total would come to $1,650 - that's $300 more than what is needed to pay for the article to be fully open access through PLoS ONE - for access to just one class. In summary, this move by Elsevier just shows how ludicrous the current model is. Plus - why just math, Elsevier? There are many of us who signed the boycott who are not mathematicians!

Details

In the section on pricing, Elsevier commits to lowering the costs of articles in its mathematical journals to at or below $11 US per article or 50-60 cents per page.

As a for-profit corporation reporting to shareholders, I think it is reasonable to assume that Elsevier would not make such a commitment unless this cost was sufficient to not only cover costs, but return a profit. Does this mean that the current $37.95 charged for one article in Elsevier's Advances in Applied Mathematics is close to 4 times more than what Elsevier itself feels is necessary to recoup costs and make a profit? This does seem consistent with Elsevier's high profit rates.

If every one of the 126 members of the Association of Research Libraries were to pay $11 for an article in mathematics, the total would be $1,386. That's higher than the article processing fee for a fully open access article at PLoS ONE at $1,350 per article. In other words, a high quality, U.S.-based publisher working out of San Francisco (not a cheap place to live or work, I hear), can provide full open access for everyone in the world at less than it would cost to have one copy of an article at every large North American research library, at Elsevier's proposed reduced rate which is just over a quarter of what they currently charge. This is yet more proof that this old school business model of Elsevier's just doesn't make any sense any more, not even with this little modicum of tweaking after significant pressure from mathematicians like Timothy Gowers.

Another scenario: if an undergrad class of 150 students were required to buy a $11 mathematics article to read for class on a pay-to-read basis, the cost would be $1,650. In other words, the pay-per-view costs for just one class to read an article would exceed the PLoS ONE article processing fee by $300. Multiply that by all the millions of students in the world, and it's easy to see how the Elsevier model means either outrageous costs or needless barriers to mathematical knowledge, or, more likely (as things stand now) some of both.

The section from the Elsevier letter on pricing:

Pricing
Mathematics journals published by Elsevier tend to be larger than those of other publishers. On a price-per-article, or price-per-page level, our prices are typically, but not always, lower than those of other mathematics publishers.

Our target is for all of our core mathematics titles to be priced at or below US$11 per article (equivalent to 50-60 cents per normal typeset page) by next year, placing us below most University presses, some societies and other commercial competitors. Where journals are more expensive than this, we will lower our prices, as we already have in recent years for journals such as the Journal of Algebra and Topology and its Applications, among others.

We realize that this is just part of the concerns about pricing -and we will seek to address concerns about the nature and composition of the large discounted agreements, through which most Universities now access journals - but addressing the base line pricing is a necessary first step.

Darkroom and open disclosure: two library solutions for dealing with copyright extremists

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 04:34:00 +0000

Elsevier, the scholarly publisher currently being boycotted by close to 7,000 researchers, does not appear on the exclusions list of the copyright extremist group Access Copyright. To me, this raises the question: are Elsevier and ilk receiving monies from Access Copyright in addition to the substantial fees paid by libraries for subscriptions, and if so, is this a breach of the typical "entire agreement" clause in a library license? Since Access Copyright does not tell us who they are giving money to, why not ask when we purchase? We could call this an "open disclosure" policy. Whenever libraries are purchasing or subscribing to resources, let's ask - IS this really the entire agreement, or are you looking for money from copyright collectives, too?

Of course, open disclosure would be most effective if it were practiced by Access Copyright. If people knew who they are representing (rather than who is excluded), then we could take appropriate actions. Such actions could include:

not buying their stuff
buying their stuff if we must, but putting it away in the most dark, remote corner we can find, in a separate room covered with stern warnings like: "These materials are covered by Access Copyright". Don't even THINK about copying!
set up a bank of computers that people pass by on their way to the dark room featuring open access resources

Another thought: if Access Copyright and those represented by Access Copyright don't want to participate in open disclosure, then let's start by encouraging those who aren't members of Access Copyright to openly proclaim their non-membership. This could be a selling point! Come of think of it, I wonder if anyone is using that Access Copyright exclusions list as an acquisitions tool?

Could the University of Iowa Libraries save over $2 million from their subscriptions budget with a flip to open access?

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:51:00 +0000

Thanks to Wendy Robertson at the University of Iowa Libraries for posting some very useful information about their library's expenditures on journals.

This post is an informal research collaboration designed to build on Robertson's work, explore the cost of a full flip to open access for this particular university and some of other not yet quantified possibilities that may be of interest along with a flip to open access.

By my calculations, the University of Iowa Libraries could save over $2 million dollars or 60% of the expenditures for journals listed on this web page with a full flip to open access, paid for entirely out of the library budget, assuming a mixed model composed of half of the articles published in the scholar-led publishing sector as illustrated by OJS (Edgar & Willinsky), with an average per-article cost of $188; and the other half published using an article processing fee with the PLoS ONE fee of $1,350 as an average. It is assumed that 1,960 articles were published by the University of Iowa Libraries in 2010, based on a Google Scholar Advanced Search.

More information would be most helpful to refine my calculations. In particular, it would be really helpful to have a better estimate of the number of journal articles published by the University of Iowa faculty in a given year. If anyone has data to help with this project, please share! In order to facilitate this sharing, I plan to turn on the comment feature on my blog. For calculations, download the data. Method note: the reason I used the 2008 google scholar article numbers is because this was the highest count in recent, i.e. to obtain a conservative figure.

Food for thought

I argue that we need to look for savings in the process of transition to open access, because libraries have many new areas where funding is needed, such as services to support research data, preserving electronic information, research commons type services and embedded librarianship.

One of the reasons why the scholar-led publishers that are the primary users of Open Journal Systems have such a low per-average article cost is that many are built on efficient, not-for-profit library publishing services. Perhaps the transition to full open access will open up opportunities for our librarian colleagues? For example, I hear that there are (understandably) many concerns about potential layoffs at Harvard's libraries. Getting into publishing could be a great freelance opportunity for some of these highly qualified people - after all, who better to help libraries make the transition to OA than our own professional colleagues? Or, I wonder if Harvard has considered that this might be a good time to grow their own publishing services? Then they could simply transition acquisitions budgets into funding for new opportunities to retain their own great staff.

Speaking of job opportunities, growth in the not-for-profit publishing sector could open up many a part-time or full-time opportunity for some of our faculty members, too - no doubt this would be very welcome considering the impact of the financial crisis on university professors. I wonder if even those who have secure jobs themselves might like the idea of transitioning high profits for commercial publishers into more and/or better job opportunities for their colleagues and graduating students? We could spend a lot more than that average $188 per article and still save a bundle, too!

For more of my writing on the economics of scholarly communication in transition to open access, please see this draft chapter of my open thesis.

Reference

Edgar, B. D., & Willinsky, J. (2010) (In press). A survey of the scholarly journals using

open journal systems. Scholarly and Research Communication, Retrieved August

27, 2011 from http://pkp.sfu.ca/node/2773

A way of saying "this is open access"

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 05:39:00 +0000

In honour of the 10th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (February 14), here is a way of saying "this is open access" based on BOAI. I am hoping that this kind of approach can lend clarity and avoid some of the complexities that come with Creative Commons licensing. In brief, the basic idea is to make a statement that a work is made open access in accord with the definition and the spirit of the Budapest Open Access Initiative. People can link to BOAI, or copy the text; and add specific permissions if these apply.

Here is an attempt at such a license for my scholarly blog, The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics:

This blog is open access in the definition and spirit of the Budapest Open Access Initiative. Note that sometimes I copy bits from other peoples' works, so please watch for this as my permissions apply only to my own work. What the definition and spirit of BOAI means to me is that you are free to take my work and reuse it, with attribution, as long as you make any copies or derivatives freely available and with the caveat that you may not sell my work, or place it behind a paywall.

Following are the relevant excerpts from BOAI -

Statement of spirit (intent)

An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.

Definition of open access

By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

This statement does not (yet) replace my CC-BY-NC-SA license for IJPE, but is rather presented as one idea to help in the struggle to Articulate the Commons. Comments are welcome - join me in Google G+ for discussion.

PLoS ONE is in the lead...but could a well thought out noncommercial approach give a competitor an edge?

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 05:04:00 +0000

PLoS ONE has often been the source of attention on IJPE and elsewhere, becoming in 2010 the world's largest journal then doubling in size in 2011, publishing close to 14,000 articles that year. No wonder PLoS ONE is leading the new tendency to competition in open access, attracting a number of clones.

No doubt many a competitor is wondering how they'll ever get a edge when PLoS ONE is so far ahead - that's my guess as to why Mary Anne Liebert is starting out by providing free publishing services.

So here is a thought - could a well thought out noncommercial approach give a publisher an edge over PLoS ONE, with its insistence that all authors accept the CC-BY license? There just might be something to this. My own perspective is that as an open access advocate of course I want to freely share my work - but not for sale! My preference for including the noncommercial element in a CC license is by no means unusual - my understanding is that NC is the most popular of the CC elements. I've even been thinking that when I next get around to doing some writing to submit for publication, I just might go for Nature's Scientific Reports rather than PLoS ONE - much as I like PLoS and PLoS ONE, Nature will let me have my preferred NC license, and PLoS ONE won't.

When we scholars come up with our own open access mandates, sharing our work, "but not for a profit" is part of the deal, as illustrated by the leader with this approach, Harvard, and MIT. This kind of suggests that scholars don't want to give away their work to just anyone to sell for a profit, doesn't it?

So what would a good noncommercial policy look like? First of all, if authors are paying to make their work open access, then it should be open access, and the copyright (including any reserved commercial rights) should belong to the author. This would protect the publisher from having a competitor take their whole journal and use it for commercial purposes that would undermine the working publisher's revenue streams, while making it clear to authors and funders alike that the purpose is not to sneak in other enclosures for the purpose of making more profits.

This is a concept I am just starting to explore. Comments are welcome, via email at hgmorris at sfu dot ca. This post is part of the Articulating the Commons series.

Mary Anne Liebert enters the open access megajournal competition

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 21:38:00 +0000

Mary Anne Liebert has just announced their entry into the open access megajournal competition with Bioresearch Open Access on a loss leader (no article processing fees - yet) basis.

Highlights
My comments, in brief: this development is most welcome, as yet another example that open access has moved into a competitive phase for the commercial sector. Commentary on the APF will have to wait until one is announced, but note that anything above $1,300 U.S. will not be competitive with existing options such as Nature's Scientific Reports and PLoS ONE. It is hard to assess the terms based on the description from the announcement. My advice to Liebert is to use a CC license, leave copyright with the author, and clarify what "noncommercial" means as the current CC NC terms are much too broad. My recommendation is to limit noncommercial to no resale and clearly state that there is no intention of limiting educational use.

Details

Description from the announcement:

BioResearch Open Access is a journal of broad interest that has been launched to overcome unnecessary barriers to the immediate availability and use of research. BioResearch Open Access makes all content freely available to researchers worldwide. There will be no article processing fees for articles submitted prior to May 15, 2012. Article processing fees to cover the cost of publication may be announced after May 15, 2012.

All articles in the Journal will be deposited upon publication, without embargo, to PubMed Central. BioResearch Open Access is fully NIH-, HHMI-, and Wellcome Trust-compliant.
Benefits to authors:
High visibility: immediate universal access, high citations, downloads
Accessible to researchers in low-income countries
Fast-track publication opportunity
Global marketing and publicity for your article
Podcasts or Skype videocasts on selected articles
Users may access, download, post, and redistribute article as well as adapt, translate, text- and data-mine content contained in the article, for noncommercial purposes

Comments

Welcome to Mary Anne Liebert and Bioresearch Open Access - yet another example that open access has moved into a competitive phase for the commercial sector. Comment on the article processing fee will have to wait until this is announced, but note that anything above $1,300 U.S. would not be competitive with similar services such as Nature's Scientific Reports and PLoS ONE. The default $3,200 optional open access fee for other Liebert journals suggests that this publisher has yet to take OA competition seriously. This article processing fee is nearly double the BioMedCentral standard fee of $1,895 U.S., for example, and six times the article processing fees for many of the journals published by the profitable Hindawi Publishing Company.

The description of terms Users may access, download, post, and redistribute article as well as adapt, translate, text- and data-mine content contained in the article, for noncommercial purposes needs to be clarified before serious commentary is possible. Questions that I see as needing an answer:

1. Who retains copyright? (My advice: with open access, the author should retain copyright).
2. Will a CC license be used, and if so, which one? Presumably NC, but this is not totally clear.
3. If Liebert is not planning to grant blanket commercial rights, what does this mean, exactly? Note that I fully support the CC Noncommercial license, providing that the intent is limited to prohibiting resale and that it is clear that educational use is not considered commercial. Unfortunately, this is not clear with the CC Version 3.0 licenses - I hope that this will be corrected for Version 4.0, but in the meantime clarification is necessary. The language that I use for this for IJPE http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com/2011/12/education-is-public-good-not-commercial.html is available to anyone for this purpose on a public-domain basis (tweak as you like, citation optional).

Thanks to Daniel Mietchen for the head's-up.

The American Economic Association tackles ethical conflicts - good for AEA

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:27:00 +0000

At a recent meeting of the American Economic Association, the AEA began tackling some important ethical issues, according to this article in The Economist.

Excerpts:
Economics has internalised the views of rich patrons, according to Luigi Zingales of the University of Chicago. His scathing analysis of journal publications revealed that papers providing justification for high executive pay were 55% more likely to be published than those opposed, and were more heavily cited by others.

A paper presented by Atif Mian of the University of California, Berkeley, Amir Sufi of the University of Chicago and Francesco Trebbi of the University of British Columbia, laid out why good policy is often most difficult to implement in the wake of a financial crisis...a redistribution of wealth from creditors to debtors could potentially benefit both groups by averting a deep downturn. Yet even though debtors are many, such redistributions are few. Effective lobbying by a few, concentrated creditors helps hold back a populist tide: a few powerful banks, for instance, may be better able to influence legislators than millions of homeowners.

Comment: this is very interesting, and lends support to something I am thinking about but have not yet written about, which is that the current situation of extreme and growing inequity is not good for anyone, not even the 1%. For example, what good will extreme wealth do for the 1% when everyone's favorite island nation getaways are under water due to global warming? If we continue on our current path of destroying our precious water supplies through using increasingly dangerous methods of obtaining oil and gas such as hydraulic fracturing or putting pipelines to carry oil sands oil - with leaking inevitable - right through key watersheds as per the first Keystone Pipeline proposal - it is only a matter of time before all of us are drinking poisoned water and eating food supplied by poisoned water - including the 1% and their loved ones*. The only sane way forward, from my perspective, is to remove the divide between the 99% and the 1% and become one, or the 100%, living and working in harmony with each other, and with our environment.

* perhaps the 1% is thinking no problem, they will just buy what little clean water and food there is left and to heck with the rest of us. My response: from whom will you buy this? A company that puts profit before everything, and is subject to no government regulation? (postscript Feb 4 2012).

Thanks to Kyle Thompson for the pointer to the Economist article.

Should we copyleft our personal information - including our bodies?

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 05:13:00 +0000

Data mining is a growing trend, and we can soon expect to see demand for data mining more personal information than we have seen before, such as our personal health information. My question is, should we all collectively copyleft all of our personal information, including our bodies (DNA), so that anyone who finds a way to make useful services from our information, has an obligation to provide these services in a way that benefits us?

For example, I submit that if a government or health organization authorizes the use of personal health data for research purposes leading to a commercial product, then the producer of that product has an obligation to make it available to those who provided the health information. This would not necessarily mean for free; it could mean reasonably affordable.

Could an approach like this strengthen the position of social goods such as health care?

This post is part of the Articulating the Commons series.

For further related reading, see this article in The Scientist which inspired this post:
http://the-scientist.com/2012/01/24/opinion-occupy-science/#disqus_thread

And also this post, Occupy Science | The Scientist by Dale Dougherty

Excerpt:

Genomics research increasingly depends on access to large pools of individuals’ genetic and health data, but there is mounting dissatisfaction with governance approaches that erect barriers between donors and the biomedical research in which they are participating. Typically, participants have little or no opportunity to track how their data are being used, what discoveries result, and what the new knowledge might mean for them, even when findings are of life and death significance for the participant...

Call for withdrawal of labour from publishers in favour of the US Research Works Act

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 22:24:00 +0000

Gary Hall posts a call for withdrawal of labor from publishers in favour of the US Research Works Act, which would make it impossible for the U.S. government to require public access to the published results of research that it funds:
http://www.garyhall.info/journal/2012/1/16/withdrawal-of-labour-from-publishers-in-favour-of-the-us-res.html

Among the publishers of critical and cultural theory on this list are:

Sage (who publish numerous journals in the area including Theory, Culture and Society and New
Media and Society)

Palgrave Macmillan (publisher of Feminist Review

Stanford University Press

Fordham University Press

Harvard University Press

NYU Press

Cambridge University Press

Early draft of my thesis

noreply@blogger.com (Heather Morrison) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 03:07:00 +0000

An early draft of my dissertation, Freedom for Scholarship in the Internet Age, has been posted here: http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/open-thesis-draft-introduction-march-2011/