Some responses to PMR: Nature's Scientific Reports website lists just one fee for APFs, in different currencies - $1,350 in the Americas. There is no mention of differential pricing based on CC license choice. From: http://www.nature.com/srep/authors/index.html#costs
Here is the advice given to authors about their licensing choices: "Scientific Reports does not require authors of original (primary) research papers to assign copyright of their published contributions. Rather, authors can choose one of three licenses: the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license; the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license; or the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported license". "http://www.nature.com/srep/policies/index.html#license-agreement Nature is obviously going to some lengths to be transparent in their information to authors, so I will take it as a given that this journal does not charge more for CC-BY. My data sample of 8 articles on the Scientific Reports home page on the evening of Jan. 28, 2013 PST about 9:30 p.m. is a small sample, but it is data. With such a small sample it is difficult and unwise to draw much by way of conclusions, however this small sample is sufficient to conclude that at least some scientists, given the choice between CC-BY, CC-BY-NC-SA, and CC-BY-NC-ND with all other variables apparently equal, are choosing CC-BY-NC-ND. More research would be needed to establish the current preferences of scientists, and this real-world experimental situation where authors have the choice is useful for such research. With respect to who is making decisions about the CC licenses of journals listed in DOAJ: I have no information about who is making the decisions, regardless of what decision is being made. All I can say is that it appears that many fully open access journals, even in the sciences, either do not use CC licenses at all, or if they do, CC-BY is not the obvious and ubiquitous choice. best, Heather Morrison, PhD The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com On 2013-01-29, at 12:38 AM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote: > > > On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 5:57 AM, Heather Morrison <heath...@eln.bc.ca> wrote: > On 28-Jan-13, at 8:24 PM, Peter Murray-Rust wrote: > > > Comment: I know how much you appreciate quantitative evidence, PMR, so > here are some quick figures that suggest that scientists do very much > want NC: > > These are not scientific observations - at best anecdotal. > > Nature's Scientific Reports provides an interesting case study. This > journal is similar to PLoS ONE - except that they give authors their > choice of CC licenses. I just checked the 8 journals on the front page > of scientific reports, and here are the CC license choices of the > scientists themselves: > > CC-BY-NC-ND: 6/8 or 75% > CC-BY: 1/8 or 12.5% > CC-BY-SA: 1/8 or 12.5% > > > My understanding is that Nature charges more for CC-BY than CC-NC, in which > case I hypothesize that price is the determining factor. > > A larger study would be useful - anyone interested? This is one of the > advantages of the leaving the choice in the hands of the author. > > A quick glance at the DOAJ General Science list shows that about 20 of > the 143 journals on this list use the NC element. This compares with > about 19 journals on the same list using CC-BY. > > There is no evidence that this policy is set by scientists. I strongly > suspect this is done at non-academic editorial level. I suspect that it is > due to simplistic decision-making in the office. In several cases where I > have pubklicly challenged editors on this they have changed their policy from > NC to BY > > This means that scholars on editorial boards who are making decisions > about gold open access publishing in the area of science are looking > at the CC options and deciding that it makes sense to use > noncommercial. Note that the majority in this sub-list still are not > using CC licenses at all. > > The lack of knowledge in journals about licences is almost certainly an > important factor. > > >> To summarize: there is evidence that given a choice, scientists tend > to prefer CC licenses including the noncommercial element. > > > There is no evidence to support this claim. This can only be established by a > proper controlled study not assumptions from anecdotes. > > P. > > -- > Peter Murray-Rust > Reader in Molecular Informatics > Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry > University of Cambridge > CB2 1EW, UK > +44-1223-763069 _______________________________________________ > GOAL mailing list > GOAL@eprints.org > http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
