[GOAL] Re: Some discussion points for the UK OA initiative

[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 11:11 PM, Stevan Harnad <harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk>wrote:

> Richard, you are quite right that making research data open for all
> to mine is not the same thing as making the texts of research articles
> (Libre) OA for text-mining, and you are also right that there are
> different problems associated with each.
>
> I should point out that Libre OA as defined by Suber-Harnad does not
automatically give rights for textmining. Libre OA indicates that "some
permission barriers are removed" - it does not indicate what those barriers
are. For example by default an toll-access article may not be posted in an
Institutional repository. The permission to post it is the removal of a
barrier. However that permission does not allow text-mining as the copyirgh
and re-use rights remain with other parties (publisher or repository or
both). For this reason the phrase "LibreOA" is operationally meaningless -
it may have political value. Wiley claims "fully open access" for its Gold
hybrid and no doubt would label it as LibreOA but I can see no difference
between it and publisher-supported Green OA other than that Wiley is 3000
USD better off and the research community is worse and that the authors can
claim they have "Gold OA".

I urge people to realise that textmining requires an explicit statement of
rights of re-use.


> Making article texts open for text-mining calls for Libre OA.


Specifically it calls for BOAI-compliant LibreOA, not just "LibreOA". It
also calls for clear licensing with something equivalent to CC-BY or CC0.


>
> But few publishers endorse Libre OA, for fear of 3rd-party free-riders.
>

BMC and PLoS do this enthusastically. I have seen no serious evidence of
free-riders.


> (Moreover, some flavors of Libre OA call for further re-use rights
> that even some authors would not wish to grant.)
>

This statement is made without evidence and is typical of some of the
casual and damaging inaccuracies made in this debate. I have no evidence
that people fail to publish in PLoS and BMC because of their worry about
re-use.


>
> So all in all, both data OA and Libre OA face problems that Green
> Gratis OA does not face.
>

And they deserve careful, accurate discussion.

P.

-- 
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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