[GOAL] A scholar's first published works are often derivatives of earlier works, or why restricting derivative rights is in the best interests of OA

[Heather Morrison]

One issue with granting blanket re-use rights downstream to scholarly works that I think needs more attention is the impact on scholars themselves of granting blanket downstream re-use rights. 

It is common for a scholar's first published works to be derivatives of their own earlier works. Research is presented at a conference, published as part of a thesis, and then subsequently formally published as a series of articles or a book. These first publications are critical for scholars to obtain tenure. While scholars have traditionally given away their works (as stated in the 2002 BOAI declaration), we have not traditionally given away rights to anyone to create derivatives.

This problem has been noted with respect to research data, and there are efforts to recognize open publication of research datasets for assessing and rewarding scholarly work. This is early days and recognition for open data is far from common.

Until this is resolved, perhaps though the norm becomes open sharing of early work, the potential to harm the careers of early scholars if others release derivatives before the original scholars themselves are able to outweighs the potential benefits of granting blanket re-use rights.  I argue that it is not wise to advise scholars to grant blanket rights to anyone downstream to create derivatives. This means that CC-BY and CC-BY-SA should be avoided by emerging scholars, or any scholar for whom this could be an issue. This is true even emerging scholars who are strongly in favour of open access. The future of the OA movement needs such scholars to succeed, obtain tenure and thus be eligible to sit on tenure and promotion committees and address these problems. 

My idea of the knowledge commons (similar to the BOAI vision of a global sharing of the knowledge of humankind) needs open access. The commons also needs scholars who are able to succeed, a challenging enough task in today's tough job market for new academics.

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