Re: [GOAL] DOAJ: handmaiden to despots? or, OA, let's talk

[Downes, Stephen]

Hiya All,

This is an issue I have thought a lot about. My work takes me to various 
countries, some of which might be classified as despotic. I have worked with 
the governments of those countries, always from the perspective of advancing 
open access and free learning. The question I have asked myself is whether it 
is appropriate to work with them.

I have decided that it is, and for a very simple reason: any principled 
selection process would leave me with very few countries to work with, if any.

It is easy to point to a particular country and suggest that we should not work 
with that country. But if we apply the same principle that led us to that 
decision the we are left with a significant practical problem. And if we extend 
that principle to agents of the country, including companies that support that 
country, or customers of that country, or suppliers to that country, as we most 
surely should, then we are left with no countries in which to work.

And at a certain point, when a recommendation to boycott a given country is 
made, I find that I have to ask, why this country? What made the person select 
this country to address, as opposed to one of the many others engaged in the 
same practice?

I will most certainly concur with Heather Morrison that a problem exists. There 
are countries in the world that murder their own citizens, either 
extra-legally, or by some sort of state sanctioned capital punishment. There 
are many countries that interfere with the publication of academic materials on 
political grounds. There is definitely a problem, one of many problems plaguing 
our world today.

How to address this? It is easy to identify what we oppose and to work against 
it. But my experience is that, in the long term, if is much more effective to 
work *for* something. It is also a lot harder, which is maybe why we don't see 
so much of it.

We need, globally, to build the structures and institutions that will address 
issues such as this. Support for entities such as the United Nations and the 
World Court will go a long way toward addressing oppressive regimes. It is 
essential to build international trade regulations that prioritize justice, 
human rights, and environment as much as they do the needs of global capital.

It is tempting to short-cut this process, to have (say) DOAJ stand on its own 
against countries that oppress their citizens. But this is not justice, nor can 
it be seen as any pretense of justice. Only by building the institutions that 
serve all people, on a global scale, will we be able to address the injustices 
that we, as individuals, seek to redress. Any other approach would be parochial 
and sectarian.

Meanwhile, as an individual, I stay firm and unwavering in my own commitment to 
individual autonomy, celebration of diversity, an open society, and collective 
governance. Change happens not by changing governments, but by changing people, 
and the only way to change people is to be an example of the change you want to 
see in them.

-- Stephen




From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
Heather Morrison
Sent: August 14, 2019 5:22 PM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci) 
Subject: [GOAL] DOAJ: handmaiden to despots? or, OA, let's talk

As any movement grows and flourishes, decisions made will turn out to have 
unforeseen consequences. Achieving the goals of the movement requires critical 
reflection and occasional changes in policy and procedure.The purpose of this 
post is to point out that the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) appears 
to be inadvertently acting as a handmaiden to at least one despotic government, 
facilitating dissemination of works subject to censorship and rejecting open 
access journals that would be suitable venues for critics of the despotic 
government. There is no blame and no immediately obvious remedy, but solving a 
problem begins with acknowledging that a problem exists and inviting discussion 
of how to avoid and solve the problem. OA friends, please consider this such an 
invitation.

Sustaining the knowledge commons full post:
https://sustainingknowledgecommons.org/2019/08/14/doaj-handmaiden-to-despots-or-oa-we-need-to-talk/



best,



Dr. Heather Morrison

Associate Professor, School of Information Studies, University of Ottawa

Professeur Agrégé, École des Sciences de l'Information, Université d'Ottawa

Principal Investigator, Sustaining the Knowledge Commons, a SSHRC Insight 
Project

sustainingknowledgecommons.org

heather.morri...@uottawa.ca

https://uniweb.uottawa.ca/?lang=en#/members/706
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Re: [GOAL] ‘Transformative’ open access publishing deals are only entrenching commercial power

[Downes, Stephen]

Link takes me to a Facebook page. The actual article is behind a paywall.
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/transformative-open-access-publishing-deals-are-only-entrenching-commercial-power

-- Stephen

From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
Jon Tennant
Sent: August 15, 2019 3:42 AM
To: i...@opensciencemooc.eu
Subject: [GOAL] ‘Transformative’ open access publishing deals are only 
entrenching commercial power


Hi list-dwellers,

With apologies for any cross-posting.

My latest piece is out in Times Higher 
Education
 today. It's something I've been wanting to write for a while now.

Every year, we waste billions of euros of taxpayers money on inefficient 
systems with outrageous profit margins. When we KNOW there are more 
sustainable, non-profit, and more effective solutions out there.

The current model of scholarly publishing contains a disastrous blend of 
Stockholm Syndrome and cognitive dissonance. Researchers are helplessly locked 
into the system because of an over-reliance on journal brands for their 
evaluations, including for promotion, grants and tenure. As such, we are forced 
to continue to support the notion that where we publish is more important than 
what we publish – despite all having been told as children not to judge a book 
by its cover. I find it absurd that the most supposedly intellectual people in 
the world cannot find an evaluation system better than this.

We are continuing to actively work against efforts to return control of 
publishing to the academic community. "Plan S" does not seem to make this 
situation better. It is time to take a step back and to think again about what 
we really want.

Any thoughts or feedback on this would be deeply appreciated. Also, don't miss 
the latest video for the Open Science 
MOOC, with Eloy Rodrigues from 
COAR!

Have a great day, all.

Jon
--
Rogue Palaeontologist; PhD, MEarthSci, MSc - Center for Research and 
Interdisciplinarity, Paris.

Latest research papers: Ten hot topics around scholarly 
publishing; Open Access in 
Palaeontology;
 Ten simple rules for researchers collaborating on Massively Open Online Papers 
(MOOPs).

  *   Founder of the Open Science MOOC (open 
Slack channel)
 [Image removed by sender.] 


  *   Founder of paleorXiv, a free, open source digital 
publishing platform for all Palaeontology research (companion 
Website)
  *   Independent open science communicator and 
consultant

 *   Author of Excavate! 
Dinosaurs
 and World of Dinosaurs (coming 2018)
Personal website - Home of the Green Tea and 
Velociraptors blog.

ORCID: -0001-7794-0218
Twitter: @protohedgehog

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Re: [GOAL] Public domain and/or CC-BY facilitate toll access

[Downes, Stephen]

Jeroen Bosman wrote, "Any publication shared with a CC-license is free of 
charges, as is any publication in the public domain. Period."


This is simply not true.


Thomas Hardy's book 'The Mayor of Casterbridge' is public domain, having been 
published in 1886. However, if you go to a book store and try to take a copy 
without paying, you will be arrested and charged with theft.


If you search for it online, you can find it for sale on Amazon and other 
sites. You will have to pay money before they give you a copy.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56759.The_Mayor_of_Casterbridge


It is true that you can find it for free on sites like Project Gutenberg.

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/143/143-h/143-h.htm


But it's availability for free is not guaranteed by the license. Someone like 
Project Gutenberg must make it available for download. If this doesn't happen, 
then the only way to get a copy to pay money. Even if it's CC or public domain.


-- Stephen



Stephen Downes

National Research Council Canada | Conseil national de recherches Canada
1200 rue Montreal Road 349 M-50, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0R6
Tel.: (613) 993 0288  Mobile: (613) 292 1789
stephen.dow...@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca ~ 
http://www.downes.ca

From: goal-boun...@eprints.org  on behalf of Bosman, 
J.M. (Jeroen) 
Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2018 12:08 PM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: Re: [GOAL] Public domain and/or CC-BY facilitate toll access

Heather,

Again, I think this argument creates much confusion.

Any publication shared with a CC-license is free of charges, as is any 
publication in the public domain. Period.

(Just for reference, as I am sure that you know the license terms, this is what 
the CC-BY license says: "a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, 
non-exclusive, irrevocable license to exercise the Licensed Rights in the 
Licensed Material to:
reproduce and Share the Licensed Material, in whole or in part; and produce, 
reproduce, and Share Adapted Material.")

The fact that I can put water from a free public tap provided by a municipality 
into a bottle and try to sell that bottle to people for 3€ does not make that 
water from the tap less free. (For the sake of the argument just supposing that 
the flow of water is endless.)

Having commercial additional functions on open access content that carries a 
CC-BY license or is in the public domain is fully compatible with the 
principles of the scholarly commons. The free, open version will remain in 
place as part of the common pool of resources.

By the way, even if you use a CC-BY-BC license and even if your publication is 
fully copyrighted without any CC-license, private profits can be generated form 
using the metadata, as Google Scholar, Dimensions and other products show. Your 
CC-BY-NC licensed publication makes these products more valuable, just by being 
able to refer to it.

And if you are looking for examples of companies charging for free stuff, the 
best example you can find nowadays in de scholalry world is probably . 
JSTOR. Look for instance at their Sustainability thematic collection 
(https://about.jstor.org/whats-in-jstor/sustainability/) that consists of many 
thousands of reports freely available on the web and sold for many thousands of 
dollars in yearly subscriptions to libraries.

Jeroen Bosman
Utrecht University Library

From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [goal-boun...@eprints.org] on behalf of Heather 
Morrison [heather.morri...@uottawa.ca]
Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2018 2:56 PM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Public domain and/or CC-BY facilitate toll access

This is a repeat of one argument I made last week to focus on one argument at a 
time.

Either public domain or CC-BY is consistent with, and facilitates, toll access, 
both by the original publisher and downstream.

To date the best examples I have seen of creative use of CC-BY for commercial 
profit-making are Elsevier's ability to incorporate such works into their toll 
access services such as Scopus and metadata sales, at no cost to Elsevier, and 
Springer's harvesting of images from CC-BY works for TA image bank (few years 
ago).

US public domain to works created by federal employees works really well in 
areas where the US government itself posts the works online for free access. 
Published works that are public domain are often included in toll access 
packages. Not even PubMed has free access to all the works created by its own 
employees.

Public domain and Creative Commons are not necessarily "free of charge". Hence 
if free of charge is essential to a definition of open access, neither public 
domain nor CC are sufficient to achieve OA.

Re: [GOAL] Public domain and/or CC-BY facilitate toll access

[Downes, Stephen]

To add to Heather's point, many academics (including myself) opt to publish 
under a CC NC (non-commercial) license in order to preserve free access to our 
materials.


-- Stephen



Stephen Downes

National Research Council Canada | Conseil national de recherches Canada
1200 rue Montreal Road 349 M-50, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0R6
Tel.: (613) 993 0288  Mobile: (613) 292 1789
stephen.dow...@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca ~ 
http://www.downes.ca

From: goal-boun...@eprints.org  on behalf of Heather 
Morrison 
Sent: Saturday, March 24, 2018 9:56 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: [GOAL] Public domain and/or CC-BY facilitate toll access

This is a repeat of one argument I made last week to focus on one argument at a 
time.

Either public domain or CC-BY is consistent with, and facilitates, toll access, 
both by the original publisher and downstream.

To date the best examples I have seen of creative use of CC-BY for commercial 
profit-making are Elsevier's ability to incorporate such works into their toll 
access services such as Scopus and metadata sales, at no cost to Elsevier, and 
Springer's harvesting of images from CC-BY works for TA image bank (few years 
ago).

US public domain to works created by federal employees works really well in 
areas where the US government itself posts the works online for free access. 
Published works that are public domain are often included in toll access 
packages. Not even PubMed has free access to all the works created by its own 
employees.

Public domain and Creative Commons are not necessarily "free of charge". Hence 
if free of charge is essential to a definition of open access, neither public 
domain nor CC are sufficient to achieve OA.

best,

Heather Morrison
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Re: [GOAL] How much of the content in open repositories is able to meet the definition of open access?

[Downes, Stephen]

> Some open access advocates do equate OA with the CC-BY license, but not all 
> of us. My perspective is that pushing for ubiquitous CC-BY is a major 
> strategic error for the OA movement.

I also have been arguing that CC-by-NC ought to be considered equally 
acceptable. Open access licenses prior to Creative Commons sought typically to 
prevent commercial appropriation of openly published work. From the perspective 
of a person wishing to access content, a work that is CC-by, but which requires 
payment to access, is not free at all, in either sense. This is especially 
important in the context of open educational resources.



Stephen Downes

National Research Council Canada | Conseil national de recherches Canada
1200 rue Montreal Road 349 M-50, Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0R6
Tel.: (613) 993 0288  Mobile: (613) 292 1789
stephen.dow...@nrc-cnrc.gc.ca ~ 
http://www.downes.ca



From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
Heather Morrison
Sent: January-23-17 8:19 AM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci)
Subject: Re: [GOAL] How much of the content in open repositories is able to 
meet the definition of open access?

Some open access advocates do equate OA with the CC-BY license, but not all of 
us. My perspective is that pushing for ubiquitous CC-BY is a major strategic 
error for the OA movement. Key arguments:

Granting blanket downstream commercial re-use rights allows for downstream toll 
access whether or a one-off or broad-based scale.

Examples (broad-based at end):...


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Re: [GOAL] BLOG: Is CC-BY really a problem or are we boxing shadows?

[Downes, Stephen]

> The copyleft or "share-alike" principle does not prevent enclosing something 
> in a paywall,

By this fact, it becomes clear that CC-BY-SA is not the "correct" license for 
academic work.

-- Stephen

-Original Message-
From: goal-boun...@eprints.org [mailto:goal-boun...@eprints.org] On Behalf Of 
Andrew A. Adams
Sent: March 3, 2016 6:06 PM
To: Global Open Access List (Successor of AmSci); Danny Kingsley
Cc: scholc...@lists.ala.org; lib-st...@lists.cam.ac.uk; 
lib-l...@lists.cam.ac.uk; ukcorr-discuss...@jiscmail.ac.uk
Subject: Re: [GOAL] BLOG: Is CC-BY really a problem or are we boxing shadows?


Danny,

My opinion is that CC-BY-SA is the correct license for academic works. All the 
claims I have seen for people wanting to use "NC" terms (NC is a controversial 
element whose meaning is not properly clear) are generally fixed by using SA 
instead. The copyleft or "share-alike" principle does not prevent enclosing 
something in a paywall, but ddoes require that there are no restrictions placed 
on anyone who then does have access, and for anything reasonably deemed a 
derivative work, it means that it must also be a CC-BY-SA licensed work, which 
generally discourages exploitive terms since then any consortium can club 
together, purchase access and then re-distribute.

For a small class of works there is a justification for CC-BY-ND which prevents 
derivatives beyond fair use/fair dealing (which are the basis on which m,ost 
academic quoting works anyway under "all rights reserved" 
licenses) for material which is controversial or sensitive. However, these 
cases are rare and should be used very sparingly.


-- 
Professor Andrew A Adams  a...@meiji.ac.jp
Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration,  and Deputy Director 
of the Centre for Business Information Ethics
Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan   http://www.a-cubed.info/


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