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Further down in this blogpost I commend the Nature Scientific Reports<br>
options. For further details and explanation of why I consider author<br>
choice to be optimal, see the blogpost.<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Author choice is absolutely fine if the author(s) 100% fully-funded the research they are reporting on. Although even then I would hope they would choose CC BY to maximise the re-use of their work. </div>
<div><br></div><div>But this is not the case for the vast majority of papers published in STM (and perhaps even in HSS?). I strongly think the funder should be the one to choose, guide or even mandate the license by which the article is made available. This way the funder can maximise the dissemination potential and return-on-investment. Funders like RCUK have realised they need to do and so have mandated the CC BY license for all gold OA published research from 1st April this year. Good for them - the reasons for this are clear to me. I think more and more research funders will follow this mandate in the coming months and years.</div>
<div><br></div><div>It is a privilege to be able to do research with public or charity money. I already get paid to do research. I do *not* need or want further payment for 'royalties' from further licencing for re-use of academic research I write. By blocking re-use of my research with modules such as ND I understand I would clearly be limiting the potential re-use value of my work.</div>
<div><br></div><div>That many authors who publish in NPG Scientific Reports choose such an extremely restrictive license as <span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px">CC BY-NC-ND shows to me that these authors don't particularly understand the negative consequences of their actions. Authors who choose to publish in NPG Scientific Reports are a self-selecting group anyhow and may not represent a 'general' sense of author behaviour - I would not ever choose to publish in this journal. There are many different publication outlets available. That authors choose Scientific Reports and not a similar megajournal such as PLOS ONE, suggests to me that this self-selecting group may be a more conservative type that are seeking to identify their work with the NPG 'brand' which in some circles equates with prestige.</span></div>
<div><span style="background-color:rgb(255,255,255);color:rgb(34,34,34);font-family:arial,sans-serif;font-size:13px"><br></span></div><div><font color="#222222" face="arial, sans-serif">Put another way, if PLOS ONE offered this choice (not that they will, it would not be good for science to offer this choice) I doubt the results would be the same - people who publish in PLOS ONE tend to understand the reasons behind the need for open access & re-use without permission a bit more.</font></div>
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</span></div><div>Best,</div><div><br></div><div>Ross</div><div> </div></div>-- <br>-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-<br>Ross Mounce<br>PhD Student & Open Knowledge Foundation Panton Fellow<br>Fossils, Phylogeny and Macroevolution Research Group<br>
University of Bath, 4 South Building, Lab 1.07<br><a href="http://about.me/rossmounce" target="_blank">http://about.me/rossmounce</a><br>-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-/-