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

[Peter Murray-Rust]

On Tue, May 8, 2012 at 11:50 AM, Stevan Harnad <harnad at ecs.soton.ac.uk>wrote:

> For the perplexed reader:
>
> I hope that it is allowed to discuss matters on this list other than the
absolute need for the whole world to move towards Green OA and that their
arguments can be read and acted on. There are a  number of inaccuracies in
what is posted here and I have to go through the process of correcting them


> 1. Peter Murray-Rust is a dedicated advocate for certain text-mining and
> re-use rights that are very important and very fruitful in certain fields
> of research
>


> (but not all, and probably not many).
>

The "probably not many"  is not based on evidence and does not help the
tone of the debate. The following are evidence:
* JISC  and Manchester University set up the National Text-mining centre
(NaCTeM) because it believed in the value of Textmining and has spent
considerable public funds on it. It covers many fields in medicine ,
bioscience and chemistry at least.
* JISC  has recently published a position statement on text-mining which
asserts its considerable value.
* The UK government has initiated the Hargreaves report which specifically
recommended that exceptions or changes to copyright law be made for the
purpose of, inter alia, textmining.
* there are many conferences on the value of textmining in science - I will
list some if you don't trust this assertion



> 2. One of the necessary conditions for the kind of text-mining and
> re-use rights PM-R seeks is free online access to the articles
> (Gratis OA).
>

That is an unnecessary simplification. There are at least two major cases:
* where material is "freely available" (Gratis) and where the textminer
wishes to know whether they have rights to mine it.
* where material is toll-access and where the subscriber wishes to text-m
ine it and publish some or all of the mined content under a permissive
licence (e.g. CC0).

There are intermediate cases where material is available in certain places
such as IRs and the conditions and access are unclear.

>
> PM-R keeps reiterating that Gratis OA is not enough,
> but he takes no practical account of the fact that we don't
> even have Gratis OA, that Gratis OA is within reach, via
> mandates, and that more than Gratis OAis not within reach.
>
>
As I said clearly above Gratis OA does not confer automatic rights to
textmine. Note that access to a subset of the literature with
BOAI-compliant rights may be sufficient for many types of textmining
activity. These include generation of corpora and their redistribution,
collections of representative material, educational materials, etc. A major
problem with UK/PMC is that much of the "Open" material is not sufficiently
labelled for re-use.


> Whatever you call it, "Libre OA" or Gratis OA plus certain
> further re-use rights is not within reach today. Publishers oppose
> it and it is not at all clear whether all, many, or most authors
> want it -- but it is clear that only 20% of authors are providing
> even just Gratis OA.
>

And - as I have just said, even 10% of the literature as BOAI-compliant OA
is valuable for many purposes. The problem is that the 10% is not clearly
defined and in practice.

I support Green OA rather than nothing but where authors and funders wish
to provide re-usable material they should be taken seriously and the issues
carefully looked at.

>
> Hence immediate burden of the OA movement is not, as PM-R
> suggests, to gather evidence as to how many authors need and
> want the further re-use rights PM-R seeks.
>


> Nor is there any practical
> strategy for mandating the further re-use rights PM-R seeks.
>
> I many cases this is simply the labelling of material correctly and the
correct use of terminology. (It is a great pity that "Libre" means almost
nothing in this area).

The immediate priority is to mandate the Green Gratis
> OA that is already within reach -- and that also happens
> to be a necessary condition for the further re-use rights PM-R
> seeks.
>

but not a sufficient condition. 100% Green OA would per se give 0% re-use
rights

>
> I urge PM-R to stop arguing that Gratis OA is not enough,
>

Maybe I will have a dream tonight and see the One True Green Path.



-- 
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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