Re: Copyright and Research: A Devastating Critique

From: Stevan Harnad <harnad_at_ecs.soton.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 13:36:14 +0100 (BST)

On Thu, 4 Oct 2007, Jon Crowcroft wrote:

> once you accept the dodgy money, you accept the dodgy rules - i.e. OA
> may be as squeaky clean as you like, but you wont be allowed to USE it
> if you are working with Mammon. ask any lawyer. no, wait, dont - if
> you do, things will get worse.

I think we are continuing to talk at cross-purposes: It is uncontested
that you cannot access, read or use unpublished findings. It is
uncontested that you cannot make and sell a product using patented
findings, even if published. But you can *use* any *published* findings in
further research, and you can publish your resultant findings.

It is uncontested that if a corporation (whether the publisher of the
paper or the employer of the author) owns the exclusive copyright to a
published text, then they are the only ones entitled to publish and sell
that text. They are not, however, the only ones who may access and use
that published text's content.

For example, the author may give away (though arguably not sell) another
version of its (published) content -- e.g., the peer-reviewed, revised
final draft ("postprint"), rather than the publisher's proprietary
PDF. That author give-away can be in the form of mailing individual
copies (reprints) to individual requesters, or the posting of the
postprint in a web repository, for free use by one and all. The latter
is (Green) OA Self-Archiving. Sixty-two percent of publishers already
endorse immediate Green OA Self-Archiving; for the 38% of publishers that
don't yet endorse it, or that embargo it, semi-automatically requesting
and emailing individual eprints is the interim solution for providing
almost-immediate, almost-OA, till 100% OA prevails.

    http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php
    http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/274-guid.html

Stevan Harnad

> In missive <Pine.LNX.4.64.0710041204320.21583_at_login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>,
> Stevan Ha
> rnad typed:
>
> >>On Thu, 4 Oct 2007, Jon Crowcroft wrote:
> >>
> >>> um, nowadays (especially in hitech like CS or Bio-sciences) a
> publication
> >>> has a serious value - with epsrc and related funding often contingent
> >>> on approaching 50% industry matched money, you may find any
> publication
> >>> with any conceiveable future application of real world value will
> require
> >>> some sort of IP protection on the invention (if in systems work, we
> write
> >>> a LOT of software, we need to make damn sure who owns t before we a)
> >>> write a paper about it, and b) do a startup....likewise patents.
> >>
> >>OA is about access to the *publication,* not to the invention. Trade
> >>secrets are either not published, or patent-protected. If they are not
> >>published, OA is moot; if they are published, the usual benefits of
> >>OA to the publication apply.
> >>
> >> http://www.eprints.org/openaccess/self-faq/#27.Secrecy
> >>
> >>> publication and academia as activities do not (now or ever) sit in
> some
> >>> glorious isolation, so this black and white model is unhelpful.
> >>
> >>All true, but all irrelevant to OA...
> >>
> >>> on the other hand, despite being an unceremonious voter, I happen to
> >>> agree with the motives behind both your work on metrics, and on trying
> >>> to free up academic publication - but note this is not a clean
> economic
> >>> position - it is a _political_ statement....
> >>
> >>The view on metrics might be political, but the one on OA certainly is
> >>not. If someone agrees on the merits of publishing something at all, it
> >>is incoherent not to agree also on the merits of maximising access to
> >>that publication (except if the publication is royalty-bearing, as in
> the
> >>case of books). Those who wish to minimise access need merely make their
> >>text accessible only to their chosen private audience (if any), rather
> >>than to make it public, through publication...
> >>
> >>Chrs, Stevan
> >>
> >>> (and of course,as such doesnt represent the views of my employers,
> >>> whether they be Cambridge, Microsoft, Intel, Paris VI or Thomson (yes,
> >>> i work for all of them as well as trying to increase the sum of human
> >>> knowledge +in my spare time+:)
> >>
> >>>
> >>In missive <Pine.LNX.4.64.0710021410070.32400_at_login.ecs.soton.ac.uk>,
> Stevan Harnad typed:
> >>>
> >>>>On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Harold Thimbleby wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>>> A landmark publication... in which Andrew Adams says academics do
> their work
> >>>>> for free. Hmm.
> >>>>
> >>>>At the risk of prolonging this topic -- not long ago unceremoniously
> >>>>voted off this list -- I cannot but caution careful reading: All Adams
> >>>>says (and quite correctly) is that the authors of peer-reviewed
> research
> >>>>journal/conference articles, unlike the authors of, say, books, give
> >>>>away those writings rather than selling them for royalty or fee. No
> >>>>one said they were not employed and funded to do the research. But
> >>>>since their employment and funding is contingent ("publish or perish")
> >>>>on both the publication and -- increasingly -- the uptake, usage and
> >>>>impact of their research, they, quite naturally, do not wish to put up
> >>>>any needless access-barriers to their potential research impact. That
> is
> >>>>why they mailed reprints to reprint-requesters in paper days, and that
> >>>>is why many do (and all should) self-archive those papers, free for
> all,
> >>>>in their OA Institutional Repositories, in today's online era. And
> that
> >>>>is why their employers and funders should mandate that they all do so.
> >>>>
> >>>>QED
> >>>>
> >>>>> At 12:32 pm +0100 2/10/07, Stevan Harnad wrote:
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Andrew Adams (2007) has written a powerful, relentless and
> devastating
> >>>>>> critique of Kevin Taylor's (2007) "Copyright and research: an
> academic
> >>>>>> publisher's perspective." Adams cites other archivangelists in
> support of
> >>>>>> his position, but this lucid, timely, rigorous and compelling
> synthesis
> >>>>>> is entirely his own. It will be seen and cited as a landmark in the
> >>>>>> research community's delayed but inexorable transition to Open
> Access.
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Taylor, K. (2007) Copyright and research:
> >>>>>> an academic publisher's perspective. SCRIPT-ed 4(2) 233-236
> >>>>>> http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol4-2/taylor.asp
> >>>>>>
> >>>>>> Adams, Andrew A, (2007) Copyright and research:
> >>>>>> an archivangelist's perspective 4(3) SCRIPT-ed 285
> >>>>>> http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/ahrc/script-ed/vol4-3/adams.asp
> >>>>>
> >>>>> --
> >>>>> Prof. Harold Thimbleby
> >>>>> http://www.cs.swansea.ac.uk/~csharold
> >>>>>
> >>>
> >>cheers
> >>>
> >> jon
> >>>
>
> cheers
>
> jon
>
Received on Thu Oct 04 2007 - 13:36:42 BST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.3.0 : Fri Dec 10 2010 - 19:49:04 GMT