We may actually be in agreement, Stevan
You say this ""100 years or so of copyright protection" is something
scholarly journal-article authors never needed or wanted. It was just
foisted on them as a 'value added" they could not refuse."
I say this in my IPA article: "The key point is that the researcher authors
are not writing to make money. One could even argue that a lifetime+
copyright was misapplied to them in the first place."
We seem to be saying the same thing, as is Willinsky. Journal articles
should become public domain quickly.
As for the embargo period, I do not think Willinsky addresses that
directly. I pick 12 months because it is already established in the Public
Access Program, which Congress has already endorsed several times. I do not
see Congress gutting the journal publishing community.
David
http://insidepublicaccess.com/
At 04:42 PM 3/22/2018, Stevan Harnad \(via scholcomm Mailing List\) wrote:
The copyright agreement already exists. It's called CC-BY. Authors needn't
invent it, just adopt it.
And there is no need or justification for any delay or embargo, whatsoever.
And "100 years or so of copyright protection" is something scholarly
journal-article authors never needed or wanted. It was just foisted on
them as a 'value added" they could not refuse. (Rather like "Make America
Great Again"...)
(And now, back to a world where things actually move forward at a less
glacial tempo, sometimes... OA could have used a dose of the global
warming in which DW does not believe...)
On Thu, Mar 22, 2018 at 12:08 PM, David Wojick
<<mailto:dwoj...@craigellachie.us>dwoj...@craigellachie.us> wrote:
John Willinsky has a fascinating OA proposal, namely that copyright law be
changed to make research articles publicly available after a very short time.
I have written about this proposal in some detail in my Inside Public
Access newsletter, which I have made OA to facilitate discussion. See
below and also at
<http://davidwojick.blogspot.com/2018/03/public-access-limited-copyright.html>http://davidwojick.blogspot.com/2018/03/public-access-limited-copyright.html
. Apologies for cross posting but this looks important as a policy proposal.
It seems like a good idea. Given that journal articles are not written for
profit, the authors may not need 100 years or so of copyright protection.
Comments?
David
<http://insidepublicaccess.com/>http://insidepublicaccess.com/
Public Access limited copyright?
The following is adapted from the March 15 issue of my
<http://insidepublicaccess.com/>newsletter: "Inside Public Access"
Synopsis: OA guru John Willinsky proposes that we change the copyright law
to embrace public access. It is a big step but it may make sense.
 Canadian scholar and OA guru John Willinsky (now at Stanford) has
written a thought provoking book and
<http://www.slaw.ca/2018/03/09/let-canada-be-first-to-turn-an-open-access-research-policy-into-a-legal-right-to-know/?t=1&cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email&iid=6d62950ff7b6420580c05d212d85d50f&fl=4&uid=2192321690&nid=244+272699400>blog
article. The basic idea is amazingly simple: If we are going to make
research articles publicly available then we should change the copyright
law to do just that.
Here is how Willinsky puts it (speaking just of Canada):
"Canada is recognizing that people everywhere have a right to this body of
knowledge that it differs significantly from their right to other
intellectual property (which begins well after the authorâs lifetime)."
What is true for Canada is true for America too. In fact the Canadian
government has a public access program that is similar to the US program.
The point is that copyright law gives authors certain rights for a certain
time, that is very long (say 100 years), and the idea here is to
dramatically shorten that time for a specific set of articles, namely
research articles in journals.
As Willinsky points out, we are already making a lot of these articles OA
(such as under the US Public Access Program) by funder mandate. Codifying
this existing practice, without the funder limitation, would be easy as
far as legislative drafting is concerned.
Getting it passed is another matter, of course, but I can see it having
bipartisan support. The Democrats would like the health care argument for
OA and the Republicans would like the innovation and economic growth argument.
The key point is that the researcher authors are not writing to make
money. One could even argue that a lifetime+ copyright was misapplied to
them in the first place. We need the present limited embargo period of 12
months to protect the publishing system, but that is all.
This idea fits the fundamentals elegantly. That makes it an attractive policy.
In fact Congress has already taken a step in this direction. Public Access
originated in the Executive Branch, but Congress has now legislated it for
the Departments of HHS (think NIH), Education and Labor.
One possible objection is that the 12 month embargo period is too short
for some disciplines. However, the publishers have had five years to raise
this issue formally with the US Public Access agencies and to my knowledge
none has done so.
On the other hand, some disciplines are only lightly funded by the Public
Access agencies. In that sense their case has yet to arise and they can
make it in the legislative process. I imagine that if Congress were to
move in the direction of public access copyright there would be a lot of
discussion.
Willinsky specifically mentions a Canadian government
<https://www.canada.ca/en/innovation-science-economic-development/news/2017/12/parliament_to_undertakereviewofthecopyrightact.html>review
of copyright law that is presently getting underway. His book may even be
timed for it. The title of his blog article is Let Canada Be First to Turn
an Open Access Research Policy Into a Legal Right to Know so this clearly
is a policy proposal.
How this Parliamentary review proceeds with regard to Willinsky's radical
public access proposal might be worth watching. In any case the US
Congress should consider it.
Note that Richard Poynder has a lengthy discussion of, and interview with,
Willinsky here:
<https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-intellectual-properties-of-learning.html>https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-intellectual-properties-of-learning.html
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