[GOAL] OA PRIORITIES: Against needless and counterproductive insistence on CC-BY

[Stevan Harnad]

> On 26-Jan-13, at 9:09 AM, Marcin Wojnarski wrote:
> 
>> [re: CC-BY] What's so different in HSS publications  
>> compared to, say, biology or mathematics 

CC-BY is not too "weak": it's too *strong* (for authors who want only that all 
users should be able access the full-texts of their articles online (no access-denial 
to nonsubscribers), but do not necessarily  want users to be allowed to
re-mix and re-publish their verbatim *text* (as opposed to its *content* -- which of 
course any user who can access the text can already do, today, whether the text is OA 
or non-OA, online or on-paper, CC-BY or non-CC-BY, provided only that the source is 
acknowledged).

And not only is CC-BY too strong for some authors -- it is also too strong for
most non-OA publishers, who may be willing to endorse immediate, unembargoed 
free online access (Gratis Green OA), but not CC-BY, which would immediately 
allow any rival publisher to free-ride legally on their published texts, e.g. sell them at 
a cut-rate, online or in print.

So if authors needlessly insist on *more* than Gratis Green OA, they will get less, 
with their publishers not endorsing even immediate free online access, and their
institutions and funders having to live with less immediate OA and more and 
longer embargos.

As much CC-BY as users need and authors want to provide will come -- *after*
immediate Gratis Green OA has been universally mandated and provided
worldwide. 

Insist instead on CC-BY, needlessly, now, and you only delay the day that
Gratis Green OA is universally mandated and provided worldwide.

Yes, some authors are willing to provide CC-BY to their article texts now.
If so, let them do so, and let them work it out with their publishers, if they wish.

But OA mandates (requirements) today need to be acceptable to *all* authors, 
not just to those who are willing to make their texts CC-BY, and who have 
publishers willing to agree to it.

Yes, CC-BY is more urgent in some fields (e.g., some areas of chemistry, 
where it's needed for the text-mining of chemical structures). 

And the potential power of automatic harvesting, text-mining and the generation 
of new data and data-bases  therefrom is potential important in many, 
perhaps all fields.

But first things first: We don't even have anything near universal Gratis
Green mandated and provided yet, even though it has been within reach
for years.

How long are we going to keep wrangling over the unreachable "best"
while failing to grasp the reachable "better"?

Stevan Harnad

PS And please let us not conflate all this, yet again, with authors' (valid)
indignation at copyright transfer agreements that do not allow them to
re-publish their own figures without permission from their publishers:
Just generate a different graphic from the same data. Copyright transfer
agreements concern text and form, not content and ideas (and authors'
re-mix and re-publication of their own work is a copyright issue but not 
an OA issue)..