[GOAL] Re: Springer for sale - implications for open access?

[Heather Morrison]

Just a few points:

PMR:  "So long as one person or institution clones ("forks") the content it is potentially saved as open for all time. And although the world cannot rely on me and Ross to preserve BMC content, this can and is bening done by national libraries".

HM: Agreed that CC-BY gives permission for someone to copy works and preserve them for open access. The question is whether someone, or some organization, is in fact taking on this responsibility. You say that national libraries are doing this. Which national libraries? How do you know if the national library will continue to have a mandate and funding to maintain such an operation indefinitely? Library and Archives Canada, for example, has recently undergone such severe cuts that they obviously cannot even maintain the most essential of archiving services, never mind pick up preserving and making accessible scholarship.  

If national libraries take on this role, what happens in future if a scholar is in a country not in favour with that particular nation? Should we assume that all countries would never ever take the step of stopping access to works of value during times of war or economic sanction? 

You appear to be claiming that CC-BY is necessary for this preservation function. I argue that it is not. PubMedCentral maintains this function without any CC licensing at all, relying just on fair use. Libraries and archives have been preserving and making accessible works since long before Creative Commons became a reality.

You also appear to be claiming that national libraries cannot preserve and make accessible works that are licensed NC because they could be construed to be commercial organizations. Can you cite a national library source that makes such a claim?

If I am misunderstanding your points, clarification is welcome.

best,

Heather Morrison



On 2012-10-10, at 1:09 PM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote:

> 
> 
> On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 6:45 PM, Heather Morrison <hgmorris at sfu.ca> wrote:
> On 2012-10-10, at 10:05 AM, David Prosser wrote:
> 
> Unless you believe that private companies should not be allowed to run scholarly publishing services (a position I don't hold) then I don't see any implications.  I guess any new owner may feel that the OA business is not profitable enough, in which case they will either a) put prices up and risk pricing themselves out of the market, b) lower costs and risk losing out to competitors who provide better services or c) exit the OA journal publishing busy entirely.  In any case, all the papers that Springer has already published OA will remain OA.
> 
> Re:     "all the papers that Springer has already published OA will remain OA".
> 
> Question: please explain on what basis you make this assertion. Any papers that Springer has published under CC-BY licenses place no obligation whatsoever on the Licensor (Springer) or a successor.
> 
> This is central to the whole rationale for CC-BY:
> 
> Assuming that by "OA" we mean BOAI compliant ("free to use, re-use and redistribute) CC-BY then all BOAI-compliant papers can remain BOAI-compliant for all time. The mechanism is simple:
> 
> * anyone can copy any BOAI-compliant paper and redistribute it as many times as they like.
> 
> That's it.
> 
> Ross and I are doing exactly that. We are copying the whole of an BMC journal (BMC is owned by Springer) and putting them into open repositories. Here is an example of our first public batch (80 papers):
> 
> https://bitbucket.org/petermr/ami2/src/cd8aa692c09a/pdfs/bmcevolbiol/2/1471-2148-11-310.pdf?at=default#
> 
> These are the PDFs copied directly from the BMC site (we used a web-friendly approach). I have thousands more on my machine - I could put them all on bitbucket except it would affect  performance.
> 
> Assume BMC closed down tomorrow (I hope it doesn'), these papers would remain on my machine and on bitbucket. I can clone the whole of BMC if I want. I may well do that and i don't need permission - (but I'd ask BMC first as to the most friendly way to do it technically). 
> 
> So long as one person or institution clones ("forks") the content it is potentially saved as open for all time. And although the world cannot rely on me and Ross to preserve BMC content, this can and is bening done by national libraries.
> 
> *** and of course Eu/PMC ***
> 
> So it's the power to clone that preserves OA. This right has been very clearly set out by the Free and Open Source movements and its philosophy has been essentially copied by BOAI. That is why BOAI is so powerful.
> 
> You cannot do this with CC-NC. National libraries can be construed as commercial organizations. So CC-NC gives no rights to fork publicly. Pleaes consider this before yet again suggesting CC-NC as a useful strategy
> 
> And note that many "Open Access" terms and conditions and almost all Green OA (unless CC-BY) does not give the right to copy and fork. Indeed some publishers actively specify that their "OA" prevents copying.
> 
> It is because "OA" effectively operationally meaningless that we are urging that documents should all be formally licensed. And many of argue that CC-BY is the only workable and desirable licence.
> 
> The only problem with CC-BY is potential apathy - no-one makes a copy. But while national libraries, domain repositories and IRs exist that is not a problem. 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> 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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