[GOAL] Re: Springer for sale - implications for open access?
On 10-Oct-12, at 2:58 PM, David Prosser wrote: ...The simple fact is that the Springer OA articles published to date will remain OA whoever purchases the company Comment: This sounds very reassuring. However, I argue that this is not a simple fact at all. Please explain how this work and how you know this work. For example, are you privy to inside knowledge about Springer contracts? Are your Research Libraries copying the Springer OA content and planning making this available? If the latter, are these concrete plans with funding attached or tentative? If Springer went out of business altogether, that would constitute a trigger event for CLOCKSS, but not if the business is transferred. At the very least, can we agree that something other than using a particular CC license needs to happen to make works open access for the long term, such as a library or archive storing, preserving, and making the works OA? best, Heather Morrison ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Springer for sale - implications for open access?
Heather, 1) Open access licences — of any kind, including all the CC-licences, not just CC-BY — cannot be revoked. Only replaced, by the licensor (the © holder), by a more liberal one. E.g. CC-BY-NC licences by CC-BY ones. Springer, or its successors and assigns, will not be able to make OA articles closed-access anymore. 2) Springer is in CLOCKSS 3) Springer's open access articles in the life sciences (90% of their OA material at present, I understand) are in PMC and UKPMC 4) Springer's output is deposited at the Dutch National Library and perhaps some others as well. 5) As for making OA, or any other, material available on their own platform in perpetuity, Springer's obligations are indeed limited. That is true for *all* publishers, for-profit or not-for-profit, in respect of *all* materials they publish, OA or not. The solution to that, ever since Alexandria in the 3rd century BC, has been libraries. You seem to have an extraordinary lack of any trust in the publishing and legal system. Jan Velterop On 11 Oct 2012, at 02:32, Heather Morrison wrote: On 10-Oct-12, at 2:58 PM, David Prosser wrote: ...The simple fact is that the Springer OA articles published to date will remain OA whoever purchases the company Comment: This sounds very reassuring. However, I argue that this is not a simple fact at all. Please explain how this work and how you know this work. For example, are you privy to inside knowledge about Springer contracts? Are your Research Libraries copying the Springer OA content and planning making this available? If the latter, are these concrete plans with funding attached or tentative? If Springer went out of business altogether, that would constitute a trigger event for CLOCKSS, but not if the business is transferred. At the very least, can we agree that something other than using a particular CC license needs to happen to make works open access for the long term, such as a library or archive storing, preserving, and making the works OA? best, Heather Morrison ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Springer for sale - implications for open access?
From the Springer website (http://www.springeropen.com/about): SpringerOpen supports several international archives and digital repositories, and encourages self-archiving by authors All research articles published in a SpringerOpen journal are archived without delay in several international archives. SpringerOpen also allows authors to immediately deposit the official, final version of their published article in any suitable digital repository. Several institutions and research funders have introduced official policies requesting or requiring their authors to deposit the articles they publish in a central archive. SpringerOpen fully supports these deposition policies and is compliant with them. Not least of these, of course, is PMC and UKPMC (now renamed European PubMed Central) where the vast majority of Springer articles are (non-exclusively) deposited. To stop these papers from being OA PMC, European PMC, and every institutional repository worldwide would need to be shut down or the international copyright agreements underpinning CC licenses completely rewritten. I completely agree that robust digital preservation plans are essential. But the original question was what are the implications for OA of the Springer sale and my answer is still that for the OA papers already published - none. Further, I think this who point is moot. What little I do know about Springer's business suggests that the OA part of it is growing and profitable. I haven't seen a plausible scenario whereby any new owner would want to cut off the company's engine of growth either with a futile attempt to retroactively take published papers out of OA (a move that would cause extreme repetitional damage even if it worked, which it wouldn't) or discontinue current OA business. David On 11 Oct 2012, at 02:32, Heather Morrison wrote: On 10-Oct-12, at 2:58 PM, David Prosser wrote: ...The simple fact is that the Springer OA articles published to date will remain OA whoever purchases the company Comment: This sounds very reassuring. However, I argue that this is not a simple fact at all. Please explain how this work and how you know this work. For example, are you privy to inside knowledge about Springer contracts? Are your Research Libraries copying the Springer OA content and planning making this available? If the latter, are these concrete plans with funding attached or tentative? If Springer went out of business altogether, that would constitute a trigger event for CLOCKSS, but not if the business is transferred. At the very least, can we agree that something other than using a particular CC license needs to happen to make works open access for the long term, such as a library or archive storing, preserving, and making the works OA? best, Heather Morrison ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY
On 10 Oct 2012, at 22:27, Peter Murray-Rust wrote: Let's hypothesize that we could achieve 80% green (visible Green, not hidden AlmostVisible) in 7 years' time. (I think that's optimistic). Are we then allowed to initiate a CC-BY activity? And by that time the nature of publication will have changed dramatically (because if it doesn't academia will be seriously out of step with this the philosophy and practice of this century). We have to proceed in parallel. No-one - not even SH - can predict the future accurately. I believe that Green-CC-BY is possible and that if we do it on a coherent positive basis it can work. There is no legal reason why we cannot archive Green CC-BY and it is not currently explicitly prevented by any publisher I know of. Try it - rapidly - and see what happens. My guess is that a lot of publishers will let it go forward. The publishers own the citation space. It is their manuscript which is the citable one. Green-CC-BY doesn't remove that. Actually it makes it better because it will increase citations through all the enhancements we can add to re-usable manuscripts. This is particularly relevant once mined data can be reliably attributed, not only to the author, but also to the journal from which they were mined. Several developments are well underway in that regard: http://www.openphacts.org/ and http://nanopub.org/wordpress/ are some examples. Jan Velterop And I will state again that for my purposes (and those of many others) Green CC-BY gives me everything I want without , I believe, destroying the publishers' market. We are in a period of very rapid technical and social change and we need to be actively changing the world of scholarship, not waiting for others to constrain our future. P. -- Peter Murray-Rust Reader in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK +44-1223-763069 ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: RE : Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY
Jean-Claude’s approach is very sensible, and very much in the interests of OA. The gratis/libre distinction is valuable but it should not become a fundamental disagreement between OA supporters of good will. Those who need OA content will be the losers if we take too dogmatic an approach to such policy issues. Over the years I have held a deep respect for Stevan’s total commitment to the achievement of OA by the quickest route possible, and without such total commitment there would not be as much OA in place as there is now. It is natural that refinements of policies will come about and that we shall have different views on such refinements. Even in the original BOAI meeting there were differences between us, but we still found a way of keeping our eye on the target of universal OA and committing ourselves to that goal. All OA is good; libre OA may be better than gratis OA, and in many situations may be achievable. I for one do not want to lose the goodness in gratis OA for the sake of pursuing libre OA at all costs, but neither will I pass on the opportunity to use CC-BY or any other OA tool when it can improve users’ experience of OA. With warm wishes to all, Fred Friend From: Jean-ClaudeGuédon Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2012 11:37 PM To: Jan Velterop Cc: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Subject: [GOAL] Re: RE : Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY Jan, I do not think it does, provided that the *wherever* quest for libre that you suggest does not get confused with the *absolute need* to get libre and nothing else. What I think concerns Stevan is that some people get so hung up on libre as a result of the systematic nature of the *wherever* that they downgrade gratis to the level of an ugly, ultimately unacceptable, compromise. At that point, perfection becomes the enemy of the good. Peter Suber has written some good pages in his book on Open Access, by the way. Also, if libre is not currently realistically possible, why go for it, except to reassert a principle? And going for gratis does not prevent reasserting the ultimate goal of libre, while accepting the temporary gain of gratis. Finally, there are negotiating situations where speaking only in terms of gratis is probably wise to achieve at least gratis. Lawyer-style minds are often concerned about the toe-into-the-door possibility. In such situations, the libre imperative could indeed work against the gratis. I suspect may librarian/publisher negotiations would fall in this category and I suspect many publishers approach the whole issue of open access with a cautionary mind. That is the the best I can do on your question. It is a tough question because each category of actors (researchers, librarians, publishers, administrators) will have a different take on it. Best, Jean-Claude Le mercredi 10 octobre 2012 à 21:53 +0100, Jan Velterop a écrit : Jean-Claude, I get that. But I have a question that I don't think has been answered yet. I'll phrase the question differently: Do you think that going for libre wherever we can, impedes the chances of achieving gratis where libre is not currently realistically possible? Best, Jan On 10 Oct 2012, at 21:04, Guédon Jean-Claude wrote: Jan, Please read again what I wrote. I repeat: The only concern one should have in this kind of tactical choice is whether the intermediate step may act against the ideal goal. In this particular case, I do not see how going first for gratis, and then for libre, would impede the goal of ultimately reaching libre. I believe that what I wrote is not ambiguous or difficult to understand. Ot, to put it differently: No, it does not mean... etc. Jean-Claude Message d'origine De: goal-boun...@eprints.org de la part de Jan Velterop Date: mer. 10/10/2012 13:51 À: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum; BOAI Forum Objet : [GOAL] Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY Jean-Claude, Does this mean that you think trying for ideal OA and settling for Gratis Ocular Access where ideal OA is not yet possible, is acting against the ideal goal? If so, on what basis? Best, Jan On 10 Oct 2012, at 18:25, Guédon Jean-Claude wrote: I have been observing this discussion from afar. It has always seemed to me that Stevan was distinguishing between ideal OA and reachable OA. Gratis OA, if I understand him right, is but the first step, and he argues (rightly in my own opinion) that we should not forfeit gratis simply because we do not reach the ideal solution right away. The only concern one should have in this kind of tactical choice is whether the intermediate step may act against the ideal goal. In this particular case, I do not see how going first for gratis, and then for libre, would impede the goal of ultimately reaching
[GOAL] Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY
I agree that portraying 'green' OA as not providing 'real' OA is to be avoided. Real OA has become a wholly meaningless term, due to the proliferation of different perceptions that has taken place, unintentionally or deliberately. Instead, using the unambiguous BOAI-compliant OA is to be recommended. (i) Observing that Gratis Green OA and its mandates do not (necessarily) provide BOAI-compliant OA is just observing a fact; not deprecating Gratis Green OA. (ii) I'm not aware of anybody advocating mandates for BOAI-compliant 'green' OA. Advocating BOAI-compliant 'green' OA, emphatically yes. Mandating it, no. (iii) I'm not aware of anybody advocating mandates for 'gold' OA. Examples, please, if you have them. Preferences, yes. Mandates, no. (iv) See (iii). Jan Velterop On 10 Oct 2012, at 22:27, Stevan Harnad wrote: On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 4:53 PM, Jan Velterop velte...@gmail.com wrote: Jean-Claude, I get that. But I have a question that I don't think has been answered yet. I'll phrase the question differently: Do you think that going for libre wherever we can, impedes the chances of achieving gratis where libre is not currently realistically possible? If I may be permitted to venture a reply too: An author going for libre whenever he can and wants to is perfectly fine, whether it means (1) negotiating with a subscription publisher for libre Green or (2) paying a Gold publisher for libre Gold (if the author has the funds and wants to). What's not fine is (i) deprecating Gratis Green OA or Gratis Green OA mandates as not providing real OA -- or, equally, (ii) advocating upgrading mandates to (impossible) Libre Green mandates. Or (iii) advocating paying for Gold *instead of* mandating (Gratis) Green. Or (iv) advocating mandating Gold instead of mandating (Gratis) Green. (i) - (iv) amount to passing over the better in the name of reaching the best (when the better is within reach and the best is not) Stevan Harnad ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost from Gratis to CC-BY
On 2012-10-11, at 12:26 AM, Andras Holl wrote: My opinion is that libre OA and CC By in particular is something that sounds good, but in reality nothing more than a misconception. It is thoughts, facts, ideas which should be reusable - and they already are - not articles. Gratis OA is what the scientific community needs, not libre. I operate a journal and several repository collections, all of my users appreciate and demand access, none of them wants anything more. Data mining would indeed be desirable, but how? At repositories we already have OAI-PMH. Green OA have the potential for even more. In my journal data mining is allowed (with technical conditions), but the journal's own sohisticated search system can provide more. Full text search is fine, but it is really semantic web? Is searching strings in the text data mining? I thing putting the CC BY label on articles does not help much in this direction. We should think about providing machine-readable abstracts for articles, applying technologies like OAI ORE, instead of championing CC BY - something that should serve a completely different purpose. See my letter in JLCS ( http://jlsc-pub.org/jlsc/vol1/iss2/5/ ). I agree with Stevan that tactically it is best to focus on gratis Green OA (without discouraging Gold). What I am saying more is that strategically CC BY is not what we want. Thanks to Andras for his response. I think he would agree that in some fields (such as crystallography) text-mining rights would be useful today, but what his response underscore is that CC-BY is not urgent in all fields (even technical ones like his own) whereas Gratis OA is urgently needed in all fields. Stevan Harnad___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY
On 10 Oct 2012, at 23:37, Jean-Claude Guédon wrote: Jan, I do not think it does, provided that the *wherever* quest for libre that you suggest does not get confused with the *absolute need* to get libre and nothing else. That would be silly. But the *absolute need* is there, for data-intensive disciplines, or they can't do the research they need to do. By all means, mandate for the lowest common denominator, but don't frustrate efforts to reach further. What I think concerns Stevan is that some people get so hung up on libre as a result of the systematic nature of the *wherever* that they downgrade gratis to the level of an ugly, ultimately unacceptable, compromise. Well, it *is* the lowest common OA denominator. At that point, perfection becomes the enemy of the good. Peter Suber has written some good pages in his book on Open Access, by the way. A bit of a platitude, Jean-Claude. If that were applied to science and knowledge discovery we wouldn't be anywhere near we are now. Also, if libre is not currently realistically possible, why go for it, except to reassert a principle? 'Libre' (let's call it BOAI-compliant OA, for the avoidance of doubt) is certainly realistically possible. *Universal* BOAI-compliant OA may not be as yet. And going for gratis does not prevent reasserting the ultimate goal of libre, while accepting the temporary gain of gratis. Not just reasserting, but working actively on the spread of BOAI-compliant OA. 'Green', ocular access is a way station; not the goal. What's wrong with that? Arguing that advocating BOAI-compliant OA should wait until everybody has arrived at the way station is not sensible. That could take ages. The world, and science, moves on. Finally, there are negotiating situations where speaking only in terms of gratis is probably wise to achieve at least gratis. Lawyer-style minds are often concerned about the toe-into-the-door possibility. In such situations, the libre imperative could indeed work against the gratis. The Dutch expression for this is cold water fear. I think the term FUD approaches this in English. Of course, in negotiations it's easier still to go for minimal, ocular OA with a two-year embargo. But proper negotiations are about finding out what the important issues are for the other party. They often result in a win-win, at least to a degree. Making articles mineable and the mined results reusable may not be the biggest barrier for publishers. In fact, I suspect they are easier for publishers to 'give away' than ocular access, because they don't threaten their business models directly. Especially if mined data can be made attributable and 'link-backable' — sorry, I can't think of an appropriate proper English word here — to the author and the article/journal from which it was mined (see http://openphacts.org/ and http://nanopub.org/ for instance). I suspect may librarian/publisher negotiations would fall in this category and I suspect many publishers approach the whole issue of open access with a cautionary mind. That is the the best I can do on your question. It is a tough question because each category of actors (researchers, librarians, publishers, administrators) will have a different take on it. I agree with you on it being a tough question. Best, Jean-Claude Best, Jan Velterop Le mercredi 10 octobre 2012 à 21:53 +0100, Jan Velterop a écrit : Jean-Claude, I get that. But I have a question that I don't think has been answered yet. I'll phrase the question differently: Do you think that going for libre wherever we can, impedes the chances of achieving gratis where libre is not currently realistically possible? Best, Jan On 10 Oct 2012, at 21:04, Guédon Jean-Claude wrote: Jan, Please read again what I wrote. I repeat: The only concern one should have in this kind of tactical choice is whether the intermediate step may act against the ideal goal. In this particular case, I do not see how going first for gratis, and then for libre, would impede the goal of ultimately reaching libre. I believe that what I wrote is not ambiguous or difficult to understand. Ot, to put it differently: No, it does not mean... etc. Jean-Claude Message d'origine De: goal-boun...@eprints.org de la part de Jan Velterop Date: mer. 10/10/2012 13:51 À: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) Cc: SPARC Open Access Forum; BOAI Forum Objet : [GOAL] Re: RE : Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost fromGratis to CC-BY Jean-Claude, Does this mean that you think trying for ideal OA and settling for Gratis Ocular Access where ideal OA is not yet possible, is acting against the ideal goal? If so, on what basis? Best, Jan On 10 Oct 2012, at 18:25, Guédon Jean-Claude wrote: I have been observing this discussion from afar. It has
[GOAL] Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost from Gratis to CC-BY
Begin forwarded message: From: Andras Holl h...@konkoly.hu Subject: [BOAI] Re: On the proposal to raise the Green OA goalpost from Gratis to CC-BY Date: 11 October, 2012 7:42:05 AM EDT To: boai-fo...@ecs.soton.ac.uk Reply-To: boai-fo...@ecs.soton.ac.uk Hi David, I have argued against including CC BY requirement for the Seal, without success. I am not sure everyone using CC BY understands what is it about, and whether it is really what they want - apparently not. As Stevan just commented, it is about re-use, not access. As I have commented, thoughts, numbers, assertions etc. in scientific articles can be reused without CC, and the articles themselves are not things one would want to reuse. (Reuse for an article could be re-publishing. In the past re-publishing was important for paper articles, but now? Access solves everything. Other re-use scenario could be distributing copies for a class of students. Again - if it is accessible, why hand out copies? But I think even such distribution is possible without CC by fair use.) Data mining possibilities are important, but CC BY is not about data mining. Figures in the articles, on the other hand, could be put nder CC BY! The argument that many people publishes in journals with the seal, therefore CC BY is good, is not very convincing... I have not done a survey within the author community of the journal I run, neither in the community of users of my repositories, but I have the strong feeling that many of them does not know or care much about OA. They publish in a journal, because it is perceived as a good journal, and they do not care about the details how the OA contributes to the impact. They deposit articles to the repository because they are mandated to do so. Some of them has difficulties choosing the access and copyright models in EPrints, and acknowledge that they have selected those more or less randomly. Why should scientists understand CC BY if we do not understand it? Andras Holl On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 10:38:19 +0100, David Prosser wrote The SPARC Europe Seal for Open Access Journals (Tom rather mangels the name) is still going: http://www.doaj.org/doaj?func=loadTempltempl=faquiLanguage=en#seal Journals that match the standards of the Seal are labelled as such in the DOAJ - there are currently just under 1000 journals with the Seal. The thousands of authors who have published CC-BY articles don't appear to share Tom's view that liberal rights assignments are nonsense David On 10 Oct 2012, at 17:57, Prof. T.D. Wilson wrote: Steven Harnad is certainly right on this issue, but the cause of it is the altogether impracticable definition of open access by the BOAI - the notion that authors should give up, effectively, ALL commercial rights to their work, allowing use for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself, leaving only control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. We have a situation in which authors are asked to abandon their rights to the publisher, and now they are being asked to abandon them to anyone at all. It was this nonsense that led open access publishers, including those who do not levy author charges, to protest the idea that this definition should form the basis for some kind of SPARC award for OA journals - the opposition was such that, as far as I'm aware, we have never heard anything more about the award. On 10 October 2012 14:49, Stevan Harnad amscifo...@gmail.com wrote: ** Cross-Posted ** This is a response to a proposal (by some individuals in the researcher community) to raise the goalposts of Green OA self-archiving and Green OA mandates from where they are now (free online access) to CC-BY (free online access plus unlimited re-use and re-publication rights): 1. The goal-posts for Green OA self-archiving and Green OA mandates should on no account be raised to CC-BY (free online access PLUS unlimited re-use and re-publication rights). That would be an absolute disaster for Green OA growth, Green OA mandate growth, and hence global OA growth (and hence another triumph for the publisher lobby and double-paid hybrid-Gold CC-BY). 2. The fundamental practical reason why global Green Gratis OA (free online access) is readily reachable is precisely because it requires only free online access and not more. 3. That is also why 60% of journals endorse immediate, un-embargoed Green OA today. 4. That is also why repositories' Almost-OA Button can tide over user needs during any embargo for the remaining 40% of journals. 5. Upgrading Green OA and Green OA mandates to requiring CC-BY would mean that most journals would immediately adopt Green OA
