On behalf of the Wellcome Trust - one of the funders behind the UKPMC Publishers Panel "Statement of Principle" - let me respond to this posting and state that we do not believe that the re-use statement is "stating the obvious in terms of re-use".
There are many publishers who currently offer a gold "open access" option - but do **NOT** allow researchers to build upon and re-use such content. Hence the need to make it clear that when an OA fee is paid, it covers both free to read and free to re-use. The Statement of Principle - which is endorsed by funders and publisher trade associations - asserts the principle that "it is in the interests of fostering and promoting research that such documents may be freely copied and used for text and data mining purposes"...and that "other re-use of the content, including but not limited to further redistribution, adaptation and translation, is encouraged.." Readers of this list may be interested in learn that the Elsevier OA licence (available at: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/authorsview.authors/supplementalterms) explicitly allows users to "access, download, copy, display and redistribute documents as well as adapt, translate, text and data mine content contained in documents" for non-commercial purposes. If we are going to enjoy the benefits of text mining, semantic web etc (which may result in the creation of derivative works) then it is essential that articles are licensed in ways which explicitly allows re-use. By way of example, all articles for which the Wellcome Trust pays an OA fee not only appear in PMC and UKPMC, but also are made available (in XML format) through the OAI/FTP interface (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/about/oai.html) - thereby facilitating text and data mining. Open access has always been far more than the right to read published research. The right to build upon and re-use this content is equally important. I'd also like to re-state that publication fees are a legitimate research cost and as such are available from grant funds expended by most of the main funders, including charities and Government --and of course the NIH. Regards Robert Kiley Head of e-Strategy Wellcome Library 183, Euston Road, London. NW1 2BE Tel: 020 7611 8338; Fax: 020 7611 8703; mailto:r.ki...@wellcome.ac.uk Library Web site: http://library.wellcome.ac.uk For information about Wellcome Collection go to: http://www.wellcomecollection.org.uk The Wellcome Trust is a charity, registered in England, no. 210183. Its sole Trustee is the Wellcome Trust Limited, a company registered in England, no 2711000, whose registered office is 215 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE. ***** List-Post: goal@eprints.org List-Post: goal@eprints.org Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2007 19:20:11 +0100 From: Stevan Harnad <har...@ecs.soton.ac.uk> Subject: On Paid Gold OA, Central Repositories, and "Re-Use" Rights On Tue, 9 Oct 2007, Albanese, Andrew (Library Journal) wrote: > Hello Stevan: just writing to see if you have any thoughts on the > UKPMC statement on re-use...seems a little unnecessary to me. Stating > the obvious? Rather than say "copyright still applies," would it not > have been more useful to issues guidelines on, say, how to craft a > copyright clause that facilitates open access? Do these broad > statements help anyone? > http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTX041316.html Yes, Andrew, I too think the UKPMC re-use statement is unnecessary and stating the obvious. (Even advice on amending copyright clauses to facilitate Green OA self-archiving is not necessary as a precondition for self-archiving, or for mandating self-archiving, although it is a good idea to try to amend copyright where feasible and desired -- hence good advice is always welcome.) (1) To begin with, the UKPMC statement is about paid Gold OA, and (for reasons I have adduced many times before) I believe that -- except for those researchers and funders who are so well off that money is no object -- paying for Gold OA at this time is unnecessary and a waste of money (until and unless most or all of the institutional money that is currently being spent on subscriptions is released to pay for Gold OA). http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/ 399we152.htm (2) Successfully establishing a credible, high-quality fleet of paid Gold OA journals was definitely useful to demonstrate the principle of paid Gold OA as a feasible one (especially under the current financially straitened circumstance, with most of the potential Gold OA funds still tied up in subscriptions); but that does not change the fact that Gold OA is far from being either the fastest or surest way to scale up to 100% OA today. http://eprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/13309/ (3) The fastest and surest way to scale up to 100% OA today is for authors to self-archive their articles (Green OA) in their own Institutional Repositories [IRs] (not in Central Repositories [CRs] like PubMed Central: CRs should harvest from IRs) -- and for their institutions and funders to mandate that they do so. http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/136-guid.html (4) Green OA self-archiving does not require the description or assertion of any new "re-use rights": All the requisite uses already come with the Green OA territory itself (i.e., the full text being made freely accessible to all on the web). http://listserver.sigmaxi.org/sc/wa.exe?A2=ind06&L=american-scientist-op en-access-forum&F=l&P=102378 So this is a lot of fuss and fanfare about nothing: paid Gold OA, and direct deposit in 3rd-party CRs like UKPMC. Not what the research community urgently needs today, nor what will get us there. Robert Kiley Head of e-Strategy Wellcome Library 183, Euston Road, London. NW1 2BE Tel: 020 7611 8338; Fax: 020 7611 8703; mailto:r.ki...@wellcome.ac.uk Library Web site: http://library.wellcome.ac.uk For information about Wellcome Collection go to: http://www.wellcomecollection.org.uk The Wellcome Trust is a charity, registered in England, no. 210183. Its sole Trustee is the Wellcome Trust Limited, a company registered in England, no 2711000, whose registered office is 215 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE. This message has been scanned for viruses by BlackSpider MailControl - www.blackspider.com