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

[Heather Morrison]

hi David, 

If this is the whole story (no other agreement between author and PLOS), then the author is the Licensor, and PLOS is a Licensee, with exactly the same rights as any other Licensee.

It would be helpful if PLOS would confirm whether this is indeed their practice. This could be useful information for downstream users. 

What of other publishers / journals using this license? Do they also serve solely as Licensee?

best,

Heather

> On Apr 13, 2015, at 9:53 AM, "David Prosser" <david.prosser at rluk.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
> On the publicly-accessible PLoS website we find (http://www.plosone.org/static/editorial#copyright):
> 
>> 3. Copyright and Licensing
>> 
>> Open Access Agreement
>> 
>> Upon submitting an article, authors are asked to indicate their agreement to abide by an open access Creative Commons license (CC-BY). Under the terms of this license, authors retain ownership of the copyright of their articles. However, the license permits any user to download, print out, extract, reuse, archive, and distribute the article, so long as appropriate credit is given to the authors and the source of the work. The license ensures that the article will be available as widely as possible and that the article can be included in any scientific archive.
> 
> Again, I’m no lawyer nor a representative of PLoS, but there does not appear to be any attempt by PLoS to claim any rights in an article - except the right, given by the author under CC-BY, to reproduce it publicly. 
> 
> David
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On 13 Apr 2015, at 14:00, Heather Morrison <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca> wrote:
>> 
>> 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
>> 
>> 
>> 
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