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Open access (OA) publishing stands at something of a crossroads. OA is now part of the mainstream. But with increasing success and increasing volume come increasing complexity, scrutiny, and demand. There are many facets of OA which will prove to be significant challenges for publishers over the next few years. Here I’m going to focus on one — licensing — and discuss how the arguments seen over licensing in recent months shine a light on the difference between OA as a movement, and OA as a reality.

Today’s authors face a number of conflicting pressures. Publish in a high impact journal. Publish in a journal with the correct OA options as mandated by your funder. Publish in a journal with the correct OA options as mandated by your institution. Publish your article in a way which complies with government requirements on research excellence. They are then met by a wide array of options, and it’s no wonder we at OUP sometimes receive queries from authors confused as to which OA option they should choose.

One of the most interesting aspects of the various surveys Taylor & Francis (T&F) have conducted on open access over the past year or two has been the divergence between what authors say they want, and what their funders/governments mandate. The T&F findings imply that, whilst there is generally a shared consensus as to what is meant by accessible, there are divergent positions and preferences between funders and researchers as to what constitutes reasonable reuse. T&F’s surveys always reveal the most restrictive licences in the Creative Commons (CC) suite such as Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No-Derivs (CC BY-NC-ND) to be the most popular, with the liberal Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence coming in last. This neither squares with the mandates of funders which are usually, but not always, pro CC BY, or author behaviour at OUP, where CC BY-NC-ND usually comes in a resounding third behind CC BY and CC BY-NC where it’s available. It’s not a dramatic logical step to think that proliferation may lead to confusion, but given the conflicting evidence and demand, and potential for change, it’s logical for publishers to offer myriad options. At the same time elsewhere in the OA space we have a recent example of pressure to remove choice.

In July 2014, the International Association of Science, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) released their ‘model licences’ for open access. These were at their core a series of alternatives for, and extensions to the terms of the established CC licences. STM’s new addition did not go down well in OA circles, as a ‘Global Coalition’ subsequently called for their withdrawal. One of the interesting elements of the Coalition’s call was that, in amongst some very valid points about interoperability, etc. it fell back on the kind of language more commonly associated with a sermon to make the STM actions seem incompatible with some fundamental precepts about the practice of science: “let us work together in a world where the whole sum of human knowledge… is accessible, usable, reusable, and interoperable.” At root, it could be interpreted that the Coalition was using positive terminology to frame an essentially negative action – barring a new entry to the market. Personally, I don’t have a strong opinion on the new STM licences. We don’t have any plans to adapt them at OUP (we use CC). But it was odd and striking that rather than letting a competitor to the CC status quo exist and in all likelihood fail, some serious OA players felt the need to call for that competitor’s withdrawal.

This illustrates one of the central challenges of the dichotomy of OA. On one hand you have OA as a political movement seeking to replace commercial interests with self-organized and self-governed communities of interest – a bottom-up aspiration for the common good, often suggested to be applied in quite restricted ways, usually adhering to the Berlin, Budapest, and Bethesda declarations. On the other you have OA as a top-down pragmatic means to an end, aiming to improve the flow of research and by extension, economic performance. The OA pragmatist might suggest that it’s fine for an author to be given the choice of liberal or less liberal OA licences, as long as they meet the basic criteria of being free to read and easy to re-use. The OA dogmatist might only be satisfied with the most liberal licence, and with OA along the terms they’ve come to believe is the correct interpretation of their core precepts. The danger of this approach is that there is a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ and, as can be seen from the language of the Global Coalition in responding to the STM licences, that can very easily translate into; “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”

Against this backdrop, publishers find themselves in a thorny position. Do you (a) respect author choice, but possibly at some expense of simplicity, or do you (b) offer fewer options, but potentially leave members of the scholarly community feeling dissatisfied or disenfranchised by your standard option?

Oxford University Press at the moment chooses option (a), as we feel this is the more inclusive way to proceed. To me at least it feels right to give your customers choice. But there is an argument for streamlining processes, avoiding confusion, and giving users consistent knowledge of what to expect. Nature Publishing Group (NPG), for example, recently announced that as part of their move to full OA for Nature Communications they would be making CC BY their default, and only allowing other options on request. This is notable in as much as it’s a very strong steer in a particular direction, while not ruling out everything else. NPG has done more than most to examine the choice issue – changing the order of their licences to see what authors select, sometimes varying charges, etc. Empirical evidence such as this is essential for a viable and credible resolution to the future of OA licensing. Perhaps the Global Coalition should have given a more considered and less emotional response to the STM licences. Was repudiation necessary in a broad OA community which should be able to recognise and accept different variants of OA? It would be a shame if all the positive impacts of open access for the consumer come hand in hand with a diminution of scholarly freedom for the producer.

The opinions and other information contained in this blog post and comments do not necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of Oxford University Press.

The post Questions surrounding open access licensing appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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With major revelations in the Shepard Fairey copyright case hitting the news, image citation and copyright has been on my mind lately.  Maybe I’m a little over-sensitive because I hold a degree in art history, but failure to properly cite images has always been a pet peeve of mine. I cringe when I see students pulling photos and diagrams straight from a Google image search without bothering to find out the source of the image or credit its creator in any way.

But here’s my sad little secret: half the time I’m just as confused as my students when it comes to properly citing.

At a recent conference I was excited about a session on copyright for school librarians, but what looked like a solid overview was quickly derailed by very specific audience questions, so we never even got to the slide on images.  What’s a well-meaning librarian to do?

There’s Creative Commons, of course, which I think offers very clear explanations of copyright and terms of use–and is a great place to send teens when they want to find images. If you want cover images for your library blog (and who doesn’t?) you can easily obtain a developer key from LibraryThing and pretty much use CoverThing to your heart’s content.

But what about when you’ve found the absolutely perfect image online, and you’re not sure if you can use it?

This morning I’ve been hunting for propaganda images for a US History class coming into the library this week, and I came across a fantastic slide show from Life Magazine.  I immediately tried to track down citation information–I think it’s irresponsible to point my students to resources without knowing if or how they can be cited–but what I found was a pretty dense terms of use page geared toward commercial reproduction.

Luckily for me, Getty Images offers free online chat with their licensing experts. (Hi, Brad!) I quickly learned that images can be cited by photographer/artist and Getty Images, and that printing costs money–unless you print just the preview image with a Getty watermark, which is free.

Success! I found a great resource for my students, I got over my fear of feeling dumb and asked someone for help, and now I have very clear image use and citation guidelines for Getty Images–not to mention a very positive customer service experience online.

What’s your favorite story about copyright or a resource you love for images online?

Back in January we mentioned Nina Paley’s astonishing Sita Sings the Blues, an animated and musical tragicomedy with Indian roots and a 20’s jazz soundtrack.

It’s more than worth a mention that since last month, the released film has been available under the terms of a Creative Commons Share-Alike license. In short, as Paley writes, “You don’t need my permission to copy, share, publish, archive, show, sell, broadcast, or remix Sita Sings the Blues.”

Or to download and watch it. So grab a 1080p full cut, and remix Sita into something else awesome!

http://sitasingstheblues.com

Beggar's dog - Hoboken (LOC)
Originally uploaded by The Library of Congress

For someone who went through library school just a couple years ago, I'm feeling very late to the party - or maybe just extremely forgetful. Somehow I missed that for the past 10 or so years the Library of Congress has offered digital images from its collection through its Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, with a collection of over a million images.

And now, through a cooperative effort with Flickr, called The Commons, LOC is improving access to thousands of those images (so far) through Flickr's interface and public tagging capability.

This is very cool stuff. More people will appreciate these visual documents of our nation's history, and the images will get more thorough cataloging through tagging (though possibly also more erroneous, or extraneous - I hope LOC's Flickr moderator will weed out the dumb ones occasionally). Moreover, all the images have "no known copyright restrictions", which means they can be freely shared and remixed - even more freely than a Creative Commons license allows. Just please still remember to attribute the source!

Via The Monkey Speaks

After a few weeks of planning, The Publishing Spot alumni Nick Mamatas just released a copy of his cult novel, Move Under Ground, with a Creative Commons (CC) license. You can now download a free copy of his novel that crosses the creeping horrors of novelist H.P. Lovecraft with a beatnik hero.

CC has a new generation of artists, programmers, and musicians to publish content in a unique way--making it legal for your fans to play with content that you produced.

The CC license prevents anybody from profiting from your work of art, while allowing you to dictate how your fans can play with your content. It's all about community and interactivity, an alternative to old media copyright laws.

Check it out:

"Below as HTML and also available as a PDF is my 2004 novel Move Under Ground.  I decided to release it under a Creative Commons license for a number of reasons.  The first is simply that I wish my novel to be more widely read.  The second is that I am currently a student at Western Connecticut University's MFA program in Professional Writing, and this site is a project for its class on publishing technologies." 

Creative Commons (CC) licenses have allowed a new generation of artists, programmers, and muscians to publish content in a unique way--making it legal for your fans to play with content that you produced.

The CC license prevents anybody from profiting from your work of art, while allowing you to dictate how your fans can play with your content. It's all about community and interactivity, an alternative to old media copyright laws.

How can writers get involved? The novelist Nick Mamatas just posted a long Internet conversation about how to publish his novel Move Under Ground with a CC license.

The conversation included web luminaries and novelists like John Scalzi and Charles Stross. Read the post, and be sure to check out the comments section for more. Check it out...

"So as my project for this class I've decided to release Move Under Ground to the Internet under a Creative Commons license. I'll track the results, such as they might end up being (sales? links? mentions amongst the 'net chatterati?) and hand it in at the end of the term. I'm not a huge believer in CC as a rrrrrrevolutionary thingamajig, but it seems to be clever marketing and it sure beats writing a term paper." 

Once again, the heating crisis has slowed my posting output for the day. I'll be back online tomorrow.