[GOAL] Re: Do libraries fight to preserve the public domain?

Wed Feb 10 21:54:55 GMT 2016

On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 7:55 PM, Lucie Burgess <
lucie.burgess at bodleian.ox.ac.uk> wrote:

> Dear Peter,
>
> I wanted to respond to the point you made that:
>
> *'So the moral is that University libraries do not fight to preserve the
> public domain or CC-BY*. In a sad extension of this many libraries
> (including the British Library - whom I FOI'ed) will take the easy way and
> apply charges for everything because it is too difficult to determine
> whether anything is in the public domain or CC-BY*. Thus the BL charges
> people to read my Open Access papers online, and 120-year old chemical
> publications are regarded as belonging to the journal (and hence
> chargeable) because they can't prove the authors are dead.**’*
>
> In my experience, it is really not the case that University libraries do
> not fight to preserve the public domain.
>

I am primarily talking about material that is digital and has been
published electronically under a liberal licence (CC-BY or CC0 or public
domain). And the emphasis on this list is scholarly publication,
particularly in journals

[... digitisation snipped]

> I can’t comment on the British Library access to your papers because I
> don’t know the details, but I will forward your query to colleagues at the
> British Library to respond to.
>

I blogged this 6 years ago in several posts - see
https://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2010/05/08/my-current-freedom-of-information-foi-requests/
for a start.

>
> Thanks and kind regards,
> Lucie
>
>
>
> Lucie Burgess
> Associate Director for Digital Libraries
> Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
> Clarendon Building, Broad Street, Oxford
> Senior Research Fellow, Hertford College
> Tel: +44 (0)1865 277104
> +44 (0)7725 842619
> Twitter @LucieCBurgess
> LinkedIn LucieCBurgess
> http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6601-7196
> Get ready for the REF – Act on Acceptance
> <http://openaccess.ox.ac.uk/home-2/act-on-acceptance/>
>
>
>
>
> From: Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>
> Reply-To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" <goal at eprints.org
> >
> Date: Wednesday, 10 February 2016 15:57
> To: "Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)" <goal at eprints.org>
> Subject: [GOAL] Re: Can time-stamped PDF's qualify as OA?
>
>
>
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2016 at 2:51 PM, Walker,Thomas J <tjw at ufl.edu> wrote:
>
>> Peter Murray-Rust’s posting about $400 study packs based on articles
>> published with CC-BY rights statements opened my eyes to a part of
>> OUP/ESA’s business plan I had missed—the use of time-stamped PDFs to make
>> money from students of the teachers who use study packs that include
>> articles by ESA authors in any of ESA’s four principal journals. OUP has
>> slapped time stamps and notices of an ESA copyright on all articles in the
>> four journals going back to 1908 for Ann. Ent. Soc. Amer. and  J. Econ.
>> Ent, and to 1972 and 1965 for J. Med. Ent. and  Envir. Ent.
>>
>>
>>
>> This should be illegal, as well as ethically and morally unacceptable.
>>
>
> It's called Copyfraud by many, including me.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyfraud gives a good overview. It's a
> "victimless crime" for Universities and their libraries, because the
> victims are not the Universities but hoi polloi outside the ivory towers.
> The people who suffer are artists, naturalists, policy makers, SMEs,
> doctors, politicians, and curious minds.
>
>
>> This is because ESA has no valid claim of copyright to articles published
>> in its journals before it started requiring authors to sign over their
>> copyrights to ESA in 1978.  Furthermore, JME, for its entire run of being
>> published by Honolulu’s Bishop Museum (1964-1986), never required authors
>> to sign copyright releases.  The handover of J. Med. Ent. to ESA resulted
>> in the run from 1987-date being copyrighted by ESA.
>>
>> The magnitude of the deception of OUP claiming an ESA copyright on all
>> articles that ever appeared in ESA’s four journals is that of ESA’s *271*
>> “journal-years” of publication (through 2015 and including the first 22
>> journal-years of JME), ESA could fairly claim copyright to only *103* (
>> *103/271=38%*).
>>
>>
>>
>> That ought to be illegal, but is it? (The evidence is clear cut and
>> online.)
>>
>
> I suffered from this.  Springer took all the images published in its
> journals and stamped COPYRIGHT SPRINGER over all of them and offered them
> for sale at 60 USD. This included all my publications in BioMedCentral, a
> CC-BY Open Access journal. I raised this on my blog as "Springergate", see
> https://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2012/06/06/springergate-springerimages-for-today/
> and preceding/subsequent articles.
> I publicized this - was dismissed by Springer first of all and then it was
> a "computer glitch" . No one in academia cared.
> However Wikimedia cared greatly, because their CC-BY-SA images had also
> been universally stamped as Springer property. They made a considerable
> fuss, rightly (explore the blog).
> The Editor of BMC then spent time correcting it (it wasn't his fault, it
> was SpringerImages).
>
> So the moral is that University libraries do not fight to preserve the
> public domain or CC-BY*. In a sad extension of this many libraries
> (including the British Library - whom I FOI'ed) will take the easy way and
> apply charges for everything because it is too difficult to determine
> whether anything is in the public domain or CC-BY*. Thus the BL charges
> people to read my Open Access papers online, and 120-year old chemical
> publications are regarded as belonging to the journal (and hence
> chargeable) because they can't prove the authors are dead.
>
> P.
>
>
>
>>
>>
>> Tom
>>
>> ====================================
>>
>> Thomas J. Walker
>>
>> Department of Entomology & Nematology
>>
>> PO Box 110620 (or Natural Area Drive)
>>
>> University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620
>>
>> E-mail: tjw at ufl.edu      Phone: 352-273-3920
>>
>> Web: http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/walker/
>>
>> ====================================
>>
>>
>>
>>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
>
> _______________________________________________
> GOAL mailing list
> GOAL at eprints.org
> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
>
>

-- 
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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