[GOAL] Re: CC-BY and open access question: who is the Licensor?

[Heather Morrison]

Thank you to Graham Triggs for clarifying that his agreement that in the case of PLOS CC-BY licenses, PLOS is presumably the licensor is a  "personal opinion as a member of the public". 

PLOS authors retain copyright. CC licenses are a waiver of one's rights under copyright. This suggests that one of the following must be true:

-	PLOS authors, not PLOS, are the licensors of their works as copyright owners
-	PLOS is the licensor, and is legally entitled to do this because of a separate agreement between PLOS authors and PLOS (e.g. copyright transfer or author sub-licensing to PLOS)
-	PLOS is granting CC licenses where they do not have the required legal rights 

PLOS has been a vocal advocate of CC-BY, encouraging other publishers to use this license and decision-makers to require the license through policy, as well as an advocate of openness in science. I think it is reasonable to request that a PLOS spokesperson respond to this question on this public listserv. If someone can forward this question or provide me with the appropriate contact person at PLOS, that would be most appreciated. 

best,

-- 
Dr. Heather Morrison
Assistant Professor
École des sciences de l'information / School of Information Studies
University of Ottawa
http://www.sis.uottawa.ca/faculty/hmorrison.html
Sustaining the Knowledge Commons http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/
Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca