On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 11:37 AM, Stevan Harnad <[email protected]> wrote:
** Cross-Posted **
For Peter Murray-Rust's crusade for journal article text-mining rights,
apart from reiterating my full agreement that these are highly important
and highly desirable and even urgent in certain fields, I would like
to note that -- as PM-R has stated -- neither gratis OA nor libre OA
is necessary for the kinds of text-mining rights he is seeking. They
can be had via a special licensing agreement from the publisher.
There is no ambiguity there: The text-mining rights can be granted
even if the articles themselves are not made openly accessible,
free for all.Â
Well of course they can. Nature will charge UCSC the special price of 85,000 USD
for a single institution. I have no doubt that a somewhat larger sum per
institution could even buy the ACS's involvement.
Â
And, as Richard Poynder has just pointed out, publishers are
quite aware of (perhaps even relieved with) this option, withÂ
Elsevier lately launching an experiment in it:
Well of course they are. If libraries and universities are happy to do special
one-to-one deals with publishers they are in command of a new market. We handed
them the copyright of our articles. We are in danger of repeating this for
content-mining
We sometimes forget that we created the content and that we have a very deep set
of rights in it. I believe absolute. Others believe that giving away our
material to publishers is an acceptable the price for impact-branded journals
and peer-review.
The point of the discussion IMO is that we are (or should be) fighting for our
rights. Green OA gives us no rights other than to read. No re-use for lecture
notes, no re-use for anything in the electronic era.
And there is no guarantee that Green OA will not be taken away at some stage.
Where are the signed contracts constraining the publishers? There is no
negotiating body for the universities or authors. My simple understanding is
that Green OA (a concession from the publishers) is given only as long as the
repositories are negligibly populated and almost impossible to use effectively.
Suppose they got to 100% full - with a proper search systems - and the
publishers lost business. They'd find a way to limit depositions - if one were
necessary. HINARI switched off Bangladesh when they thought it would impact
their business - they can and probably will do the same with Green.
--
Peter Murray-Rust
Reader in Molecular Informatics
Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
University of Cambridge
CB2 1EW, UK
+44-1223-763069
[ Part 2: "Attached Text" ]
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