On 11/04/2015 15:39:23, Heather Morrison <[email protected]> wrote:
For example, you have clarified that with PLOS CC licenses, PLOS is the
licensor.
That isn't what I said - I just agreed that your interpretation is probably
correct.
Are you an academic, or an employee of a company seeking to profit from
commercial use of academic works?
Unless otherwise stated, my postings here are personal opinions as a member of
the public; from the point of view of public interest.
we need repositories with a long-term commitment to public access. The public
access repository solution can work for everyone; it's what I recommend.
Very much agreed - whilst there are potential downsides to multiple copies,
these are insignificant compared to the problems of relying on the continued
operation of a sole custodian. OA publishing should not be an alternative to
repositories, but there are distinct benefits over repositories being an
alternative to OA publishing.
It is good advice for downstream users to retain evidence of the license terms
permitting re-use. Note that this is tricker than one might think. For example,
the article my group published earlier this year in MDPI's Publications is
licensed CC-BY-NC-SA - but if you find this through DOAJ you'll first come
across the DOAJ indication of a journal-level CC-BY license and then click
through to the article which is incorrectly labelled as CC-BY.
You can't rely on journal metadata as a substitute for article metadata -
especially where journals allow choice or have hybrid models. The importance of
retaining evidence may depend on subject area and jurisdiction. If Wellcome pay
(and therefore have a record of paying) the APC for a medical article, which is
deposited by the publisher with a CC licence to PubMed Central, then it becomes
very, very hard for a publisher to try to prove otherwise, and/or that some
usage was not made under a CC licence but some alternative they have attached.
One such objection is academic freedom; if authors are restricted to publishing
material that can be made available for blanket commercial use and re-use, this
restricts what academics are able to publish.
As a citizen, that is an area I struggle with. If you take money for anything
(e.g. grant to carry out research), then that money will reasonably come with
certain restrictions / expectations - I don't believe anyone has the right to
call foul about that.
However, there does need to be some common sense - I would not say that such
restrictions should be applied to all research, as clearly that would make
certain research impossible. There has to be some room to determine whether it
is appropriate.
Some academics expressed concern that CC-BY would open up the possibility that
their work would be sold or re-used in ways that they would not approve of.
So what of the public / funder that finds what they consider to be reasonable
use of the research they have paid for restricted by the application of a
certain licence by the academic (/publisher)?
But, it is fair to be concerned about the use of a piece of work, and your
association to it. You see it quite clearly outside of science - for example,
with the forthcoming UK Election, musicians get worried about their implied
endorsement of a party because someone licences their song to be used on a
party broadcast.
Bear in mind that CC does explicitly provide legal code for misuse as
invalidating the licence agreement. That doesn't necessarily ease the issues of
determining misuse and enforcing it, but it would likely cover many potential
instances of contentious re-use for scientific material.
Refusing to use CC-BY because of the concerns of re-use does not actually
protect you against uses that you personally don't approve of - it just means
others aren't by default licenced to do so freely. If anyone has deep enough
pockets, they can almost certainly purchase the rights they need for re-use
directly off the publisher, without any specific approval by the author(s).
As evidence, I would note that the current CC-BY license gives licensors the
authority to insist that downstream users do NOT use attribution. This suggests
that CC received complaints from licensors whose works were used in ways that
the licensor did not want to be associated with.
CC-BY is not purely a licence for scientific material. See concerns above about
political use of creative works, and you can see why there are circumstances
where individuals would not want to have attribution (for their creative
materials).
The misuse of scientific material would usually be a more clear cut example of
misrepresentation - e.g. selective quoting of research in order to support
quackery - and would invoke the clause that invalidates the licence.
If a blanket license is granted, a downstream user would have to be psychic to
know what kinds of commercial uses or re-uses might be acceptable or offensive
to the original author. I am using author, not licensor, here on purpose; if an
author publishes with PLOS as the licensor, it is important that the author's
rights be respected even if PLOS is the licensor.
To the extent that the terms are compatible with CC licencing, there is no
reason that you can't make explicit reference to those terms alongside the
licence declaration. A downstream user does not have to be psychic, they just
need to be informed that there are terms, and provided the ability to read them.
G
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