[GOAL] Call for applications - International Open Access Advisory Group

[Heather Morrison]

Peter Murray-Rust raises the important point that the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC)'s basic model fits with perpetual copyright, the antithesis of open access.

However, I argue that the open access movement needs to engage with the issues that will or might be raised by this group. Following is a bit of background, concluding with a recommendation that copyright for scholarly works should be led by the research community not industry groups, perhaps coordinated by bodies such as Canada's Tri-Council of national research funding agencies.

Many advocates of open access also advocate for the most liberal of open licenses. From my perspective, this is naive because some of the most liberal of open licenses, in particular immediate dedication to public domain and CC licenses granting downstream commercial use rights (CC-0, CC-BY, CC-BY-SA) grant to anyone the right to sell the works. This is already happening as open access works are included in toll access packages such as Elsevier's Scopus.

Creators are giving away their works using CC licenses thinking they are contributing to a commons. The problem with this is that lack of restrictions means, for example, that images in CC-BY licensed works can be included either in Wikimedia commons for free sharing or to create a for-pay image databank.

If OA venues are lost in future, the toll access versions may be the only ones available. As I noted recently, the attrition rate at SpringerOpen is 16%, with most ceased journals de-listed by both SpringerOpen and DOAJ and content available through Springer's subscriptions site:
https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/07/22/springer-open-ceased-now-hybrid-oa-identification-challenges/

The trend towards market concentration that was evident for subscription based publishers is beginning to be seen with open access publishers as well. Examples: Versita was bought by De Gruyter; Medknow was bought by Wolters Kluwer; Co-Action was bought by Taylor & Francis; Libertas Academic was bought by Sage; BMC was bought by Springer; as we report regularly, many of the OA journals by commercial publishers have no APC due to partnerships with universities and societies, indicating that traditional publishers are pursuing such partnerships on a global basis. Plus many commercial initiatives once thought of as OA friendly (Mendeley, SSRN, Bepress) have been bought by Elsevier.

Both perpetual copyright and the most liberal forms of open licensing are problematic for scholarly works. Members of CCC, OASPA, and other industry groups (e.g. STM, ALPSP) are in a conflict of interest position when advocating for particular approaches to copyright / licensing, that is, members stand to benefit or lose financially.

It is problematic for any of these groups to lead research and decision-making on matters of copyright. Leadership should come from the research community. Researchers need time to devote to such activity and in particular to coordinate. In Canada, coordination of consultation on this topic might best be led by Canada's Tri-Council of national research funders, perhaps in cooperation with similar groups in other countries.


Dr. Heather Morrison

Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa

Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa

Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC Insight Project

sustainingknowledgecommons.org

Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca

https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706

[On research sabbatical July 1, 2019 - June 30, 2020]

________________________________
From: goal-bounces at eprints.org <goal-bounces at eprints.org> on behalf of Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk>
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2019 7:32 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] Call for applications - International Open Access Advisory Group

Attention : courriel externe | external email

What is the relation of this group to the actual activities of CCC? Does it have the power to advise that it extends copyright and licensing to areas what those practices do great harm, and that the prices for re-use are often extortionate (one article in NEJM apparently generated over 1 million USD for re-use of a scholarly article).

If the advisory group were to recommend that CCC's activities be transparently regulated with price caps I might have some sympathy. As it is CCC will have to convince me that it is more than an unregulated rent-seeker.

(It's also the antithesis of Open Access - the theme of this list)

--
"I always retain copyright in my papers, and nothing in any contract I sign with any publisher will override that fact. You should do the same".

Peter Murray-Rust
Reader Emeritus in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dept. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
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