[GOAL] Re: Hybrid Open Access

Wed Dec 18 06:41:03 GMT 2013

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 10:38 PM, Couture Marc <marc.couture at teluq.ca>wrote:

>  Peter Murray-Rust wrote:
>
>
>
> >
>
> > Proponents of CC-NC should realize that this licence directly gives a
> monopoly
>
> > for exploitation to the publisher - the author is irrelevant
>
> >
>
>
>
> Not necessarily. It means that for any commercial use (and the CC
> definition is subject to interpration), one has to obtain the permission of
> the copyright owner, which may be the author, depending of the scope of the
> license granted to the publisher.
>

This may be true in theory, but I have never heard of an *author*, at least
in scientific disciplines, issuing a take-down notice or taking an
exploiter to court. Please give counterexamples if they exist.

The exploitation is carried out by the *publisher* through CCC Rightslink.
This does not involve the author (IMO it absolutely should) - it is a
monopoly business carried out by the publisher. I would be amazed if 0.1%
of authors understood they had handed over effective exploitation rights to
CCC+publisher. CCC Rightslink nowhere mentions authors - this is why I use
the word "irrelevant" - it only mentions the publisher, even where the
copyright is still held by the author. In effect the publisher is
exploiting the author without involving them.

This exploitation only affects citizen purchasers (individuals, companies,
etc.) not academics. We don't need to care about these second-class
citizens.

>
>
> I’m in the editorial board of an OA journal which uses -NC but doesn’t ask
> authors to grant it a license, so the authors keep the exploitation rights.
>
>
If you manage all permissions yourself then this may be true but I would
need to see details - which Journal?.  If you involve CCC RightsLink I
would be very surprised if the exploitation - including pricing - was not
done by the publisher without reference to individual authors.

And please reconsider NC. It does a lot of harm beyond the RightsLink
stuff. It is not allowed by many funders and cannot be deposited in the
Open Access subset of (Europe) PMC.

>
>
> The problem with Elsevier is that they require (even for CC-BY) an
> exclusive license to publish that effectively makes them the ones who give
> permissions (and pocket the money).
>
>
The pocketing of money is not confined to Elsevier. It is true of other TA
publishers, especially those who promote CC-NC.

>
>
> Marc Couture
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *De :* goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] *De la
> part de* Peter Murray-Rust
> *Envoyé :* 17 décembre 2013 16:04
> *À :* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> *Objet :* [GOAL] Re: Hybrid Open Access
>
>
>
> I flagged this up to Elsevier about 5 months ago.
>
> I would agree that they could be in violation of trading laws as they are
> asserting rights over free material and charging for it.  I don't know
> whether the trading standards office would be able to deal with it - we
> might have to make purchases.
>
> From my observations it has happened frequently with Elsevier (see my
> blog). I have no idea whether my examples I pointed out have been corrected.
>
> There is a more general problem in that many publishers charge for CC-NC
> articles. It is unclear which categories can be legitimately charged for. I
> note that Elsevier journals such as Cell Reports have a very high
> proportion of CC-NC(-ND) on the basis that authors choose it (in the same
> way that 10 year olds choose burgers and sweets). I was sent an example
> today of an editor who was being urged by Elsevier to make her journal
> CC-NC. as it would protect authors.
>
> Proponents of CC-NC should realize that this licence directly gives a
> monopoly for exploitation to the publisher - the author is irrelevant.
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 8:22 PM, Graham Triggs <grahamtriggs at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> Thanks for that Robert.
>
>
>
> Interestingly, the Rightslink page also claims that the article is
> Copyright Elesvier. Which it isn't - the copyright is held with the authors
> (which is only clear when you download the PDF).
>
>
>
> That means on Rightslink, aside from the licence not requiring re-use
> rights to be purchased, the page is making false and misleading statements
> about the item in question. I would say that is breaking UK law, and
> presumably other regions too.
>
>
>
> I would suggest that Elsevier needs to urgently review how this is
> advertised and/or it's relationship with CCC on the basis of that evidence.
>
>
>
> Although I suspect a lot of this comes from blanket rules in place for an
> entire serial with CCC, and a lot of these problems could at least be
> mitigated by ScienceDirect:
>
>
>
> a) being clear about copyright and licencing in the HTML page, as well as
> the PDF
>
>
>
> b) not providing links to Rightslink for CC-BY articles, where this is
> clearly unnecessary.
>
>
>
> G
>
>
>
> On 17 December 2013 16:30, Kiley, Robert <r.kiley at wellcome.ac.uk> wrote:
>
> Laura
>
>
>
> It is not difficult to find an example of RightLink (and probably others)
> quoting re-use fees for CC-BY articles.
>
>
>
> Let me give you an example.
>
>
>
> http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0898656813002489 is an
> article funded by Wellcome, and made available under a CC-BY licence.  This
> is made clear at ScienceDirect (albeit in a footnote).
>
>
>
> However, if you follow the link to “Gets rights and content” you get
> redirected to the Rightslink site where there is a form you can complete to
> get a quick quote for re-use.  So, for arguments sake I selected that I
> wanted to use this single article:
>
>
>
> ·         In a CD-ROM/DVD
>
> ·         I was a pharmaceutical company
>
> ·         I wanted to make 12000 copies
>
> ·         And translate it into two languages
>
>
>
> ..and RightsLink gave me a “quick price” of 375,438.35 GBP [I love the
> accuracy of this price.]
>
>
>
> Of course for a CC-BY article, there is no need for anyone to pay anything
> to use this content. Attribution is all that is required.
>
>
>
> I don’t know what would have happened if I had continued with the
> transaction, but I hope that a user would not really end up getting charged.
>
>
>
> As the CC-BY licence information is in the ScienceDirect metadata I’m not
> sure why RightsLink can’t “read “ this and for whatever use the user
> selects, the fee is calculated to be £0.00.  Better still would be for
> CC-BY articles NOT to contain a link to RightsLink.
>
>
>
> Regards
>
> Robert
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* goal-bounces at eprints.org [mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org] *On
> Behalf Of *Laura Quilter
> *Sent:* 17 December 2013 14:53
> *To:* Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
> *Subject:* [GOAL] Re: Hybrid Open Access
>
>
>
> Can you clarify regarding instances of CCC RightsLink demanding payments
> for OA reuse?  I'd really like to know details.
>
>
>   ----------------------------------
> Laura Markstein Quilter / lquilter at lquilter.net
>
> *Attorney, Geek, Militant Librarian, Teacher *
> Copyright and Information Policy Librarian
> University of Massachusetts, Amherst
> lquilter at library.umass.edu
>
> Lecturer, Simmons College, GSLIS
> laura.quilter at simmons.edu
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 6:08 AM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
> Moving the discussion to a new title...
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 9:16 AM, David Prosser <david.prosser at rluk.ac.uk>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> What my paper missed and what may have been obvious at the time, but which
> I only saw with hindsight, were the biggest problems with the model:
>
>
>
> 1. There is little incentive for the publisher to set a competitive APC.
>  It is clear that in most cases APCs for hybrids are higher than APCs for
> born-OA journals.  But as the hybrid is gaining the majority of its revenue
> from subscriptions why set a lower APC - if any author wants to pay it then
> it is just a bonus.  Of course, this helps explains the low take-up rate
> for OA in most hybrid journals - why pay a hight fee when you can get
> published in that journal for free?  And if you really want OA then best go
> to a born-OA journal which is cheaper and may well be of comparable quality.
>
>
>
> 2. There is little pressure on the publisher to reduce subscription
> prices.  Of course, everybody says 'we don't double dip', but this is
> almost impossible to verify and  from a subscriber's point of view very
> difficult to police.  I don't know of any institution, for example, in a
> multi-year big deal who has received a rebate based on OA hybrid content.
>
>
>
>
>   There are several other concerns about "hybrid":
>
> * the unacceptable labelling and licensing of many TA publishers. Many
> hybrid papers are not identified as OA of any sort, others are labelled
> with confusing words "Free content". Many do not have licences, some have
> incompatible rights.
>
> * many are linked to RightsLink which demand payment (often huge) for Open
> Access reuse
>
> * many deliberately use Non-BOAI compliant licences. One editor mailed me
> today and said the the publisher was urging them to use NC-ND as it
> protected authors from exploitation.
>
> * they are not easily discoverable. I mailed the Director of Universal
> Access at Elsevier asking for a complete list of OA articles and she
> couldn't give it to me. I had to use some complex database query - I have
> no idea how reliable that was.
>
> Leaving aside the costing of hybrid, if someone has paid for Open Access
> then it should be:
>
> * clearly licensed on splash page, HTML, and PDFs.
>
> * the XML should be available
>
> * there should be a complete list of all OA articles from that publisher.
>
> Currently I am indexing and extracting facts from PLoSONE and BMC on a
> daily basis. Each of these does exactly what I need:
>
> * lists all new articles every day
>
> * has a complete list of all articles ever published
>
> * collaborates with scientists like me to make it easy to iterate over all
> the content.
>
> It is easy to get the impression that TA publishers don't care about these
> issues. BMC and PLoS (and the OASPAs) do it properly - an honest product.
>
> Any publisher who wishes to be respected for their OA offerings has to do
> the minimum of what I list here:
>
> * CC-BY
>
> * list of all articles
>
> * easy machine iteration and retrieval.
>
> Anything else is holding back progress
>
>
> --
> 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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>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
>
> _______________________________________________
> GOAL mailing list
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-- 
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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