On 2012-08-17, at 11:03 AM, Arthur Smith wrote: > There is nothing preventing somebody from charging for a work provided > through a CC-BY or other CC license; however, the first person to > purchase such content then has the right (from the CC license) to > redistribute it freely, so in practice if any publisher tried to charge > it would be self-defeating. > > Arthur
This is useful to know, and may explain why not all publishers are rushing to embrace CC-BY. From the perspective of those who would like to use open access materials, the assumption is that someone else is gathering these works and making them accessible in a usable way. Otherwise, the potential reader may well be faced with a paywall and the possibility that a free version is available somewhere, but whether it is reasonably accessible or not may depend a lot on the person's search skills. In medicine, with PMC, as with arXiv for physics, there is such a mechanism for gathering across the disciplines. However, this is not currently true across the disciplines. Speaking of PMC: if OA advocates succeed in making CC-BY the default for scholarly publishing, this opens up the possibility of commercial entities completely recreating PMC and then lobbying to eliminate funding for the free version. This definitely would not be a nice thing to do, and there probably are legal arguments that this would violate the license (this would not be totally clear-cut, though, since PMC would not be the Licensor). Plus, there are likely also clever ways of indirect lobbying. Over the past decade or so, we have seen that scholarly publishers will go to some lengths when it comes to lobbying against things they consider unfavorable to their business model. The OA movement can continue to fight such lobbying efforts, and we may well succeed. At the very least, let's keep in mind that a full switch to CC-BY may not diminish the need to continue to fight lobbying efforts. One thought is that the CC-BY approach reinforces the need for green - even with open access publishing as CC-BY. That way, if the original disappears altogether or behind a paywall, there should be a copy available in the author's institutional repository. This does not address the possibility of a publisher changing its mind about CC licenses, or journals changing hands from an open access publisher to a publisher with a different perspective on OA. best, Heather Morrison > > On 8/17/12 12:54 PM, Heather Morrison wrote: >> Many in the open access movement consider CC-BY to be the very embodiment of >> the spirit of the Budapest Open Access Initiative - giving away all rights >> to one's work, including commercial rights, for open access. My own take on >> this is that while CC-BY can provide a useful tool for those fully engaged >> in the open access spirit, the license is problematic for open access. This >> is important now that funding agencies in the U.K. are beginning to require >> CC-BY licenses when they fund open access article processing fees. That is >> to say, we are now looking at a situation where organizations that do not >> have any commitment to (or even liking for) open access, may be required to >> use this license. >> >> Some questions that I think should be raised at this point: >> >> The CC-BY legal code, as I read it, does not mention open access, nor is >> there any wording to suggest that the license can only be applied to works >> that are open access. Here is the URL for the legal code: >> http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode >> >> Questions: >> >> 1. Am I missing something in the legal code, i.e. does it say somewhere >> that this license is only for open access works? >> >> 2. Is there any reason why a publisher could not use a CC-BY license on >> toll-access works? (Here I am talking about an original publisher, not a >> licensee). >> >> 3. Is there anything to stop a publisher that uses CC-BY from changing >> their license at a later point in time? (Assuming the license is the >> publisher's, not the author's). >> >> 4. Is there anything to stop a toll-access publisher from purchasing an >> open access publisher that uses CC-BY, and subsequently selling all the >> formerly open access journals under a toll-access model and dropping the >> open access versions? The license would not permit a third party to do this, >> but what I am asking about is if the original licensor sells to another >> publisher. >> >> To sum up, my perspective is that CC-BY, while superficially appearing to be >> the embodiment of BOAI, is actually a problematic license with significant >> loopholes and serious thought should be given to this before it is >> recommended as a standard for open access. >> >> best, >> >> Heather Morrison, MLIS >> Doctoral Candidate, Simon Fraser University School of Communication >> http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/ >> The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics >> http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com >> >> >> >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> GOAL mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal > > _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal Heather G. Morrison Coordinator BC Electronic Library Network [email protected] 778-782-7001 778-855-5156 mobile http://www.eln.bc.ca _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
