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

Wed Sep 11 20:36:32 BST 2019

Dear all,
Thanks to Peter and Heather for taking the time to comment on this initiative by CCC. I am of course conflicted myself, as we've been contracted by them to help form this advisory group, so members of the list will need to make their own judgement on whether it's an activity they wish to engage with, but I hope some of you will consider it.

As a newcomer to this list, I should perhaps explain that my involvement in open access over the last decade (first as a university research manager, latterly as a consultant), was initially sparked by personal interest, and the sense that OA is self-evidently a worthy and desirable goal. My opinion on that front has not changed, but much of my work in recent years has meant engaging in the messy business of trying to translate that goal into reality, and working out how to navigate the many vested interests, collective action problems and, of course, skewed incentives that make up our current system of scholarly communication. One conclusion I came to fairly quickly, from simply looking at the data on where scholars publish, is that somehow bypassing the big commercial publishers, and related bodies like CCC, is not a viable pathway to OA at scale, simply because they publish so much of the (Western) world's research.

My thinking on this and related matters is set out in far more detail in this report we wrote for the European Commission on the OA market a couple of years ago: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/114081/. At the time I and my co-authors advocated for a greater level of regulation in the scholarly market, and this work informed some of the thinking behind Plan S, whose implications I explored in a more recent article: https://insights.uksg.org/articles/10.1629/uksg.453/. I do understand the appeal of price caps in principle, as Peter advocates, but I find it very hard to see how they might be implemented in practice without significant unintended consequences. I have tended to suggest the focus should instead be on changing incentives in the system, promoting transparency in the market, and enhancing monitoring and reporting mechanisms.

Copyright is an important part of this picture, as Heather has outlined, and there would seem to be a clear need for dialogue between publishers, bodies like CCC, funders, librarians and the research community on how rights retention mechanisms might be more consistently implemented in practice, to take just one example. I do understand that initiating such a dialogue can look like 'openwashing' if it emerges from the publisher community. I can't speak for CCC, and no doubt the marketing aspect is part of their thinking (what for-profit or quasi-for-profit doesn't consider the bottom line?), but from my perspective this doesn't cancel out the need for dialogue between stakeholders, and the potential benefits that can arise from this.

I'm grateful to Richard for adding me to the list, and giving me the chance to pick up on the correspondence below, and look forward to contributing to future discussions.

Best wishes,

Rob

Rob Johnson
Director

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From: goal-bounces at eprints.org <goal-bounces at eprints.org> On Behalf Of Heather Morrison
Sent: 11 September 2019 19:19
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] Call for applications - International Open Access Advisory Group

Good point, thanks Peter.

The Copyright Clearance Center is only one of many such organizations around the world. They have their own international organization, the International Federation of Reproductive Rights Organizations - website here:
https://www.ifrro.org/

These organizations are a factor in the cost of scholarly communication (purchase of material and rights), and CCC is not the only organization to have sued universities. In Canada, local copyright collectives Access Copyright and Copibec are working to use legal means to require all educational institutions (including K-12 and universities) to be required to pay a blanket license for copying. Many universities and the K-12 sector strongly disagree with the approach and cost ask, in part because most materials are purchased for site-wide access or are available open access, so a model based on assumptions of print and photocopiers does not make sense and certainly does not justify higher prices. In this instance, CCC is helpful because they provide per-item licensing which is one of the options for universities to avoid blanket licenses. Two universities that refused blanket licenses have been sued. One case is settled, the other is in progress.

A key concept is fair dealing, that is, the idea that copyright law should be balanced, with readers as well as authors having some re-use rights. For me as a scholar, fair dealing is and will always be essential to my work. For example, even publishers with strict CC-BY licenses for articles they publish typically have All Rights Reserved for material on their website. I need fair dealing in order to work with their price lists and copy wording from their websites when needed as evidence for my research.

In the U.S. an important case that I think is still in progress involves 3 publishers that sued George State University for providing students with excerpts of material that they had paid for - 2018 brief update here:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/10/30/georgia-state-and-publishers-continue-legal-battle-over-fair-use-course-materials

In Canada in 2012 there were major gains in fair dealing for the educational sector through a series of Supreme Court lawsuits. Prior to this, fair dealing in Canada was far less generous than fair use in the U.S. This does not settle the matter - a statutory review of the Copyright Act last year resulted in close to 200 submissions, with reproductive rights organizations and some publishers pushing to reduce or eliminate fair and educational institutions, researchers and some other publishers pushing to retain or expand fair dealing. There are substantial stakes involved ($ and our ability to work and create), and so I do not think that either the discussion or the litigation will be over anytime soon. This is another reason why learning about copyright is a good career move for future academic librarians.

best,

Heather

________________________________
From: goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> <goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org>> on behalf of Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk<mailto:pm286 at cam.ac.uk>>
Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2019 12:41 PM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) <goal at eprints.org<mailto:goal at eprints.org>>
Subject: Re: [GOAL] Call for applications - International Open Access Advisory Group

Attention : courriel externe | external email
I would direct readers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Clearance_Center to get an overview if CCC, which is a for-profit company and has sued universities (and lost).
I would think that this new venture is a case of Openwashing of a business model that is directly opposed to GOAL and many of its readers.

On Wed, Sep 11, 2019 at 2:38 PM Heather Morrison <Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto:Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca>> wrote:
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<http://sustainingknowledgecommons.org>

Heather.Morrison at uottawa.ca<mailto: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<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org> <goal-bounces at eprints.org<mailto:goal-bounces at eprints.org>> on behalf of Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk<mailto: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<mailto: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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--
"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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