PyriteOA

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and Pyrite OA

jwilbanks — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 07:07:19 +0000

Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, and Pyrite OA

I don't like getting into blog back and forths, but this post from the Information Research folks really deserves a reply of its own. I believe this is an honest piece of confusion, and it's likely the result of FUD from the traditional publishing community. I invite the Information Research folks to contact me if they have questions about how Open Access works from a legal perspective so that we can counter any unwarranted fears about how to make the sharing involved easy and legal - we're here to help.

From the post:

If the author retains copyright, as Information Research authors do, it is up to the author to determine what should be done with his or her work. A journal publisher cannot assign copyright to the author and then encourage infringement of this copyright by suggesting that users of the material may do whatever they wish with it.

Gaaaaaah!

It's not "encouraging infringement" if everyone involved assigns the rights required to achieve open access. Public Library of Science doesn't encourage infringement. Nor does BioMed Central (I'm pretty sure Springer wouldn't have bought them if they did). Or Hindawi. Or Nature's Molecular Systems Biology and foundational genome papers. All of these journals allow users to make and distribute copies of articles, as required by the OA definitions. None of them encourage infringement.

Let's be clear: authors start the process owning the copyrights. In traditional publishing, they either transfer the copyright or provide the publisher an exclusive license to publish. These approaches both provide the journal the power to lock up the article and prevent its re-use and dissemination.

In an Open Access publishing world, the author-journal copyright relationship is indeed frequently changed. Authors provide to the journal a non exclusive right to publish, and the journal then uses a non exclusive permissive copyright license to provide the article to the public. This is how the entire cycle therefore complies with the definitions that require the removal of price barriers and permission barriers. I quoted Budapest in my last post, so I'll quote Bethesda-Berlin here: it is only Open Access if you empower the user to "copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship...."

I can't say it enough. Open Access publishing is about the rights that the entire process provides to the user. If you're just removing price barriers, you're not completing the requirements to be an Open Access publisher, because the user doesn't have the right to make and distribute copies. The definitions are absolutely clear on the point. To claim the title of an Open Access publisher, the publisher has to have an agreement with the author that allows enough rights to pass through to the user. Creative Commons licenses are an easy way to do that, which is why they are popular. But in the end it doesn't matter how it gets done - CC licenses, the SURF license to publish, GFDL - but it does indeed matter that the permissive licensing take place.

If a publisher doesn't want to be Open Access, that's their choice - though the market is rapidly coming around to realization that it's better for science, and closed publishers have to find ways to adapt. But do not claim the mantle of the movement if you aren't willing to meet the definitions that the movement has agreed upon. Pyrite OA is as bad in some ways as closed access, because it gives the impression of open while all the rights needed to lock it up simply sit in wait. As Ackbar might say, it's a trap.

(we'll note but not explore in detail that the self-archiving Green Road frequently avoids the rights issue entirely, with some potentially negative side effects over time, and you should therefore use the Science Commons Addendum Engine, but since we're talking about OA publishers here, it's good to stay on topic)

jwilbanks Mon, 04/06/2009 - 03:07

JoVE goes closed access

jwilbanks — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:51:59 +0000

JoVE goes closed access

Big FriendFeed chatter on the interwebs yesterday about JoVE "moving" to a closed access model.

This is being covered extensively on the FF conversation so I won't dredge through the points there - if you want to see the arguing and JoVE responses, head over there.

What's interesting for me is the lack of conversation about the importance of licensing. There is a reason Open Access talks about copyrights in the definitions. Let's go back and remember:

By "open access" to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited. - Budapest Open Access Initiative (emphasis mine)

I say this all the time, but I'm going to say it yet again. If you don't use a permissive copyright license you are not an Open Access publisher. JoVE was never OA. They simply weren't charging for their publications. JoVE was shareware, and the bill's come due.

I would rather have seen them go the other way to deal with the crisis - throw it really open and follow BioMed Central and Hindawi, who've found profit in Creative Commons licenses and truly open strategies - rather than embrace a model that is fast on its path from dominant predator to dinosaur to petroleum base. But that's their call and the authors who submitted, the editors who edited, and the community gave them that power instead of pushing for a model that actually fit the BBB declarations.

If they'd been OA, this conversion would still be a sad moment, but at least we'd have the rights to repost the old videos. Now they're all gone behind firewalls, but in the end, didn't anyone notice they didn't give users *any* rights? I didn't know JoVE well but even I knew this - Moshe said this at several fora where he and I spoke together. It wasn't a secret.

This is perhaps a good moment to remind everyone that the SPARC seal is an attempt to deal with this. If your journal isn't giving users clear rights, and is claiming the OA mantle, it's time to call the bluff and get an open license or get the OA branding and good vibes out the door. The one sad thing I've heard in all of this is that JoVE has called itself OA from time to time - I'd never heard it but it's apparently true, and that's a shame. The gratis v. libre distinction in software is well-worn and worth remembering here...

But the more this kind of thing happens the more it hurts the movement. It gives power to those who say "open doesn't work!" - even when the publisher wasn't open. So we better shine a light on *any publisher* who is trying to say they are OA while retaining the rights to enclose the content down the line if economic pressures make it an expedient strategy change. I'm proposing "PyriteOA" as a tag for blog postings where this happens...because "open" without rights is just fool's Gold.

jwilbanks Wed, 04/01/2009 - 12:51