On Thu, 13 Jan 2011, Marius Kempe wrote:
> I've started a question on Quora to discuss the topic of whether scientific
> texts (rather than data) should be put into the public domain rather than
> licensed under CC-BY, as it seems an important issue which hasn't been
> extensively discussed. The discussion is at
> http://www.quora.com/Should-scientific-writing-be-put-into-the-public-domain
> -
> I'd be grateful for any thoughts, particularly from people with legal
> backgrounds. I originally posted this to the Open Knowledge Foundation Open
> Science list, and Angus Whyte suggested that I send it here as well, as some
> of you might be interested. The open science list discussion is at http://l
> ists.okfn.org/pipermail/open-science/2011-January/thread.html.
(1) "Scientific texts" includes monograph, textbooks and journal
articles: one size does not fit all.
(2) Open Access (OA) only concerns refereed journal articles (because
they are all, without exception, author giveaways, written solely for
usage and impact, not royalty revenues: books are not).
(3) OA comes in 2 "strengths": free online access ("Gratis OA") and free
online access plus certain additional re-use rights (from the weakest to
the strongest CC license, and even up to public domain) ("Libre OA")
(4) Most refereed journal articles (85%) are not yet even Gratis OA, and
it is proving very hard to get authors to provide even that much (hence
the Green OA mandate movement).
(5) Asking for more is not only premature, but risks not even getting
Gratis OA.
So why is this hypothetical question about "whether scientific
texts... should be put into the public domain" being asked at this time?
Who is asking whom? And who is offering (or listening)?
My recommendation: First things first. Do the doable. Reach the
reachable. Mandate Green Gratis OA. Once you have accomplished that,
*then* reflect on what more you (and authors) may want, and how to
get it...
Stevan Harnad
