[GOAL] Re: [sparc-oaforum] Re: Clarification of the new OA policy from the RCUK

Tue Aug 28 17:24:43 BST 2012

Dear Tomasz,

your understanding of OA is not in line with the Berlin Declaration:

Open access contributions must satisfy two conditions:

1.	The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions grant(s) to
all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license
to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make
and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible
purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship (community standards,
will continue to provide the mechanism for enforcement of proper attribution
and responsible use of the published work, as they do now), as well as the
right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.

Also, this conversation is about the Government / RUCK OA policy in UK,
especially about the payment of OA fees.

One may have to accept limited degrees of access when following the green
road.

Funders have to define clearly what they are willing to spend money for when
talking about the golden road.

>From my perspective the goal is to make OA gold publications freely
available for all legitimate uses with a one-off payment.

This would certainly include data mining.

Regards,

Christoph

Von: Tomasz Neugebauer [mailto:Tomasz.Neugebauer at concordia.ca] 
Gesendet: Freitag, 24. August 2012 23:43
An: Stevan Harnad; Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Cc: BOAI Forum; SPARC Open Access Forum
Betreff: RE: [sparc-oaforum] Re: Clarification of the new OA policy from the
RCUK

I have always thought that using text-minability and thus the potential
development of web AI technologies as an argument for the benefits of open
access was not appropriate.  For many researchers, it is not an
effective/convincing argument simply because the assumed benefits of this
automation are too speculative.  

The following exchange demonstrates the confusion w.r.t. the purpose of open
access:

Mark Thorley argues as follows:
"We not only want research papers to be 'free to read' but also to be 'free
to exploit' - not only for text and data mining to advance scholarship. but
also to drive innovation in the scholarly communications market itself."

Stevan Harnad responds:

"All OA advocates are in favour of text-minability, innovation potential,
and as much CC-BY as each author needs and wants for their research output,
over and above free online access to all research output -- but certainly
not just for *some* research output, and certainly not at the expense (in
both senses) of free online access to *all* research output "

I submit that part of the problem here is that not all researchers are in
fact concerned with what is implied in "text-minability, innovation
potential", whereas many OA advocates have indeed implied that this is a key
purpose of OA. 

The assumed purpose of a systemic change drives policy.  I think that it was
always a mistake to confuse the purpose of open access with text-minability
and progress in the development of the semantic web.   The purpose of the
open access movement is to increase the access for *people* to the published
results of research.  I think that many OA advocates made the mistake to try
to "market" OA as a stepping stone towards artificial intelligence on the
web, and this was a mistake that has now found its way to RCUK policy.  The
benefits of text mining are much too speculative compared to the very
tangible and fundamenetal benefits of people having free access to the
published results of publicly funded research.   

Tomasz Neugebauer

  _____  

From: Stevan Harnad [amsciforum at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2012 11:24 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Cc: BOAI Forum; SPARC Open Access Forum
Subject: [sparc-oaforum] Re: Clarification of the new OA policy from the
RCUK

Mark Thorley's response is very disappointing:

-- MT: "the 'corrections' [Harnad] proposes would dilute our policy so that
it was no longer able to deliver the level of open access which the Research
Councils require." 

http://blogs.rcuk.ac.uk/2012/08/10/the-benefits-of-open-access/#comment-81

The proposed corrections very explicitly *include* a correction to "the
level of open access the Research Councils require."

To reply that this "level" is incorrigible and nonnegotiable is tantamount
to saying our minds are made up, don't trouble us with further information.

The points requiring correction are very specifically those concerning the
"level of open access" (Gratis or Libre; immediate or embargoed) that is
actually needed by UK researchers today, and at what price, both in terms of
price paid, out of scarce research funds, and, far more important, in terms
of Green OA lost, in the UK as well as in the rest of the world (to whose
research, RCUK needs to remind itself, UK researchers require open access
too).

These matters are not resolved by asserting that Finch/RCUK has already made
up its mind a-priori about the level of OA required.

-- MT: "We not only want research papers to be 'free to read' but also to be
'free to exploit' - not only for text and data mining to advance
scholarship. but also to drive innovation in the scholarly communications
market itself."

All OA advocates are in favour of text-minability, innovation potential, and
as much CC-BY as each author needs and wants for their research output, over
and above free online access to all research output -- but certainly not
just for *some* research output, and certainly not at the expense (in both
senses) of free online access to *all* research output (of which the UK only
produces 6%). Yet it is precisely for the latter that Finch/RCUK are
insisting upon restrictions and pre-emptive payment -- for UK research
output, both at the local UK tax-payer's expense, and at the expense of
global Green OA. 

The RCUK/Finch policy provides a huge incentive to subscription publishers
to offer paid hybrid Gold while at the same time increasing their Green
embargoes to make cost-free Green an impermissible option for UK authors.
This not only deprives UK authors of the cost-free Green option, but it
deprives the rest of the world as well. 

(I don't doubt that some of the members of the Finch committee may even have
thought of this as a good thing: a way to induce the rest of the world to
follow the UK model, whether or not they can afford it, or wish to. But is
this not something that may require some further thought?)

-- MT: "And, we are very clear that those who read research papers come from
a much wider base than the research community that Harnad considers will be
satisfied through the use of repositories and green OA. Therefore, there are
no plans to revise the RCUK policy, just to satisfy the interests of one
particular sector of the OA community."

It seems to me Mark has it exactly backwards. The "wider base," in all
scientific and scholarly research fields, worldwide, wants and needs free
online access, now, and urgently, to all research, in all fields (not just
UK research output). It is only in a few particular subfields that there is
an immediate and urgent need for further re-use rights (and even there, not
just for UK's 6%).

How urgent is text-mining of the UK's 6% of world research output and CC-BY,
compared to free online access to all of the world's research output? 

And what are these urgent text-mining and other Libre OA functions? All
authors need and want their work to be accessible to all its intended users,
but how many authors need, want or even know about Libre OA, or CC-BY?

And, Mark, can you elaborate rather specifically on the urgent "innovation
market potential" that will resonate with all or most researchers as a
rationale for constraining their journal choice, diminishing their research
funds, and possibly having to find other funds in order to publish at all,
today, when they do not even have free online access to the research output
of the 94% of the world not bound by the RCUK policy?

Stevan Harnad

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