hi Didier, Thank you for raising good questions to further our understanding of the issues.
On 2015-04-08, at 10:45 AM, Didier Pelaprat wrote: > Hi to all, > > > Before all, maybe I did not properly understand what is the topic. If yes, > please tell me sincerely. > > > I understood the topic was on whether there was or not a risk of closure > brought by a CC-by license, or any orher mean by which a scientific > publication may be freely accessible to every usage, including "commercial > use". > > Did I understand properly? In my opinion, yes. There is no consensus on this topic. > If yes, in order that I can figure out the consequences of this or that, > please could somebody remind me what is exactly under the terms "commercial > use" when written in the context of the CC license or other debates on free > access to scientific publications/contributions? This is the simple description from the CC license main website: "This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation" - from: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ The legal code, available here, does not define commercial use: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode If you are using a translated license, the precise wording may not be the same as the CC main site. There is no consensus on what constitutes commercial use. I argue that it is important to focus on the main commercial use for copyrighted works: actually selling the works for money, and not getting confused by the grey areas of what constitutes commercial use. Other debates on free access is too broad a question to easily answer. > In other words: > > > -which precise object(s) is (are) under the license? This is a very good question, Didier. Even when works are licensed as CC-BY, it is common for scholarly works to include third-party works which may have a different license. There are also neighbouring rights in copyright; for example, if a CC-BY licensed work includes a photograph of someone, the person in the photo may have additional rights. Even in the case of one CC-BY work included within another one, there are two separate requirements for attribution. I think the push for CC-BY reflects to some extent a desire for simplicity; but it really is not that simple. Note also that even publishers that use the CC-BY license do not necessarily use this license for everything on their website. Public Library of Science, for example, has a trademarked logo. > > - which exact objects are susceptible to be sold? Any object with a license that permits commercial use. > > - which objects are authorized (CC-by) or forbidden (other) to be sold > against money, when one speaks of "commercial use"? Any work licensed CC-BY can be sold for money or used for other (unspecified) commercial uses. > > - and how does this generate or not a risk of closure, if the paper is in > free public access (either in an open repository, or on the author website, > or on both, or on the publisher website, or... or on all of thoses > altogether)? If the paper is available for free access in a variety of places, this greatly decreases the risk of enclosure. This is why I recommend that works be available in multiple open access archives, even if they are published in open access journals. If papers are available as free access in only one or two places, here are some examples of the danger: Publisher website: publishers and journals come and go and change hands all the time. Plus, a fully open access publisher is completely within their rights to change their business model at any time. Author website: authors are under no obligation to maintain their websites, and author websites do disappear; for example, these may be on an institutional server that is abandoned by the university. This is not a secure storage system, one of the main reasons why authors should use institutional repositories rather than personal websites. Open repositories: this is a much better option in my opinion. Here, it is best if works are NOT licensed CC-BY. There is always a danger that the owners of repositories could decide to charge for their service in providing the works. This is one reasons why I argue that the MIT open access policy is an improvement over Harvard's. Harvard's says that works will be disseminated "but not for a profit", while MIT's specifies open access. The danger with "not for a profit" is it leaves the door open to fees for cost-recovery. Most OA repositories that I am familiar with have quite sensible policies. Thanks again for raising the questions. Heather Morrison _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
