[GOAL] Re: CC-BY and - or versus - open access

[Stevan Harnad]

And off we go, yet again, Rights Rapture Redux:

*Overselling the Importance and Urgency of CC-BY/CC-BY-NC *
*for Peer-Reviewed Scholarly and Scientific Research*
http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/909-.html

On Fri, Aug 17, 2012 at 2:45 PM, Heather Morrison <hgmorris at sfu.ca> wrote:

> On 2012-08-17, at 11:03 AM, Arthur Smith wrote:
>
> > There is nothing preventing somebody from charging for a work provided
> > through a CC-BY or other CC license; however, the first person to
> > purchase such content then has the right (from the CC license) to
> > redistribute it freely, so in practice if any publisher tried to charge
> > it would be self-defeating.
> >
> >    Arthur
>
> This is useful to know, and may explain why not all publishers are rushing
> to embrace CC-BY. From the perspective of those who would like to use open
> access materials, the assumption is that someone else is gathering these
> works and making them accessible in a usable way. Otherwise, the potential
> reader may well be faced with a paywall and the possibility that a free
> version is available somewhere, but whether it is reasonably accessible or
> not may depend a lot on the person's search skills. In medicine, with PMC,
> as with arXiv for physics, there is such a mechanism for gathering across
> the disciplines. However, this is not currently true across the disciplines.
>
> Speaking of PMC: if OA advocates succeed in making CC-BY the default for
> scholarly publishing, this opens up the possibility of commercial entities
> completely recreating PMC and then lobbying to eliminate funding for the
> free version. This definitely would not be a nice thing to do, and there
> probably are legal arguments that this would violate the license (this
> would not be totally clear-cut, though, since PMC would not be the
> Licensor). Plus, there are likely also clever ways of indirect lobbying.
> Over the past decade or so, we have seen that scholarly publishers will go
> to some lengths when it comes to lobbying against things they consider
> unfavorable to their business model. The OA movement can continue to fight
> such lobbying efforts, and we may well succeed. At the very least, let's
> keep in mind that a full switch to CC-BY may not diminish the need to
> continue to fight lobbying efforts.
>
> One thought is that the CC-BY approach reinforces the need for green -
> even with open access publishing as CC-BY. That way, if the original
> disappears altogether or behind a paywall, there should be a copy available
> in the author's institutional repository.
>
> This does not address the possibility of a publisher changing its mind
> about CC licenses, or journals changing hands from an open access publisher
> to a publisher with a different perspective on OA.
>
> best,
>
> Heather Morrison
>
> >
> > On 8/17/12 12:54 PM, Heather Morrison wrote:
> >> Many in the open access movement consider CC-BY to be the very
> embodiment of the spirit of the Budapest Open Access Initiative - giving
> away all rights to one's work, including commercial rights, for open
> access. My own take on this is that while CC-BY can provide a useful tool
> for those fully engaged in the open access spirit, the license is
> problematic for open access. This is important now that funding agencies in
> the U.K. are beginning to require CC-BY licenses when they fund open access
> article processing fees. That is to say, we are now looking at a situation
> where organizations that do not have any commitment to (or even liking for)
> open access, may be required to use this license.
> >>
> >> Some questions that I think should be raised at this point:
> >>
> >> The CC-BY legal code, as I read it, does not mention open access, nor
> is there any wording to suggest that the license can only be applied to
> works that are open access. Here is the URL for the legal code:
> >> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode
> >>
> >> Questions:
> >>
> >> 1.   Am I missing something in the legal code, i.e. does it say
> somewhere that this license is only for open access works?
> >>
> >> 2.   Is there any reason why a publisher could not use a CC-BY license
> on toll-access works? (Here I am talking about an original publisher, not a
> licensee).
> >>
> >> 3.   Is there anything to stop a publisher that uses CC-BY from
> changing their license at a later point in time? (Assuming the license is
> the publisher's, not the author's).
> >>
> >> 4.   Is there anything to stop a toll-access publisher from purchasing
> an open access publisher that uses CC-BY, and subsequently selling all the
> formerly open access journals under a toll-access model and dropping the
> open access versions? The license would not permit a third party to do
> this, but what I am asking about is if the original licensor sells to
> another publisher.
> >>
> >> To sum up, my perspective is that CC-BY, while superficially appearing
> to be the embodiment of BOAI, is actually a problematic license with
> significant loopholes and serious thought should be given to this before it
> is recommended as a standard for open access.
> >>
> >> best,
> >>
> >> Heather Morrison, MLIS
> >> Doctoral Candidate, Simon Fraser University School of Communication
> >> http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/
> >> The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
> >> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
> >>
> >
>
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