Hi all, I would very much welcome a concrete example (or two..) of the scenario described below where a work has been taken and distorted to the extent an author would actually wish to have their name removed as an originator of the work. It is a scenario often used by people concerned about the Non Derivative aspect of Creative Commons licenses. It is my understanding that Creative Commons themselves have not had any examples of this type provided to them in discussions about the ND aspect of their license. In the UK we are similarly asking for examples and have not managed to unearth any to date. It would help hugely before we make national decisions on policies whether concerns being raised are actual problems or not.
On the thesis issue, this is indeed something I am actively managing working through a new policy at my institution and I am working from the premise that we must give our students the best possible opportunity to succeed. That means different things for different disciplines and it is important to ensure that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater in both directions. It is not helpful to have a moratorium of 10 years on all theses to ensure the small percentage who require an embargo of a period of time to secure publication are protected. Equally we do not want to put those students at risk by insisting on blanket immediate OA. It requires nuance. But I would like to point out that in the consultations I have now had working with two institutions, I know of several cases where theses have been published as books under another person's name. These were all theses that were 'protected' by All Rights Reserved. They were not born digital theses, they had had to be requested and then digitised and a single copy sent to a person/library. In at least one case where a thesis was heavily plagiarised and submitted as someone else's thesis the work was never digitised. It is still unclear how it happened. So we do, to a large degree actually rely on 'scholarly culture', not copyright law to protect us. Lizzie Gadd explains it much better than I do https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2017/10/31/guest-post-academics-copyright-ownership-ignorant-confused-misled/ This is again, however detracting from the point I was trying to make. We have bigger fish to fry. There will be no 'academic' - free or not - if we are not vigilant in our current political climate. Danny Dr Danny Kingsley Deputy Director - Scholarly Communication & Research Services Cambridge University Library e: da...@cam.ac.uk p: 01223 747 437 m: 07711 500 564 On 24/03/2018, 19:27, "SANFORD G THATCHER" <s...@psu.edu> wrote: So, Danny, let me ask if you are ok with funders requiring authors to publish under a CC BY license and waive all rights they otherwise would have to have input into how and where their writings get translated and how and where their works are republished (e.g., in edited form that distorts the author's meaning and associates the author with a cause, ideology, etc. that the author finds abhorrent)? Is these rights do not pertain to academic freedom, please explain why. The same might be asked of those universities that require immediate OA posting of dissertations, allowing no time for an author to revise it and find a publisher for it. Various associations (in history, medieval studies, etc.) have adopted recommended embargo periods to deal with this problem. You are saying that those associations are wrong to be concerned about this problem? That this has nothing to do with academic freedom either? Sandy thatcher On Sat, Mar 24, 2018 04:07 AM Danny Kingsley <da...@cam.ac.uk> wrote: > >Hi all, > >Can we have a quick chat about Academic Freedom? I am frankly fed up with this being trotted out in multiple discussions in relation to open access. It is akin to the PhD student who recently tearfully told me that the University’s requirement for her to provide a digital version of her thesis in addition to the hardbound one was a ‘breach of her human rights’. I feel the academic freedom argument is moving into similar levels of hysteria. >I wrote a blog recently that addresses this issue: Scare campaigns, we have seen a few<https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p?05> https://unlockingresearch-blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p?05 (relevant bits below) >Usually I hear ‘Academic Freedom’ thrown in in relation to being able to choose where to publish. On the SCHOLCOMM and GOAL lists in the discussion about Willinsky’s copyright proposal, academic freedom has been thrown into the mix again. Given, there is potentially some validity in the statement that: “Policies that impact academics that are not developed and supported by academics are not consistent with academic freedom.” But copyright ownership (other than the moral right to be identified as an author of a work), and the place of publication are NOT enshrined in academic freedom. > >Academic Freedom is not being threatened by copyright licensing requirements. This is a stupid side issue. We are fiddling while Rome burns. The real threat to academic freedom is the systematic undermining of expertise and academia. As the UK justice secretary recently said - “People in this country have had enough of experts” https://www.ft.com/content/3be49734-29cb-11e6-83e4-abc22d5d108c Let’s not even begin to talk about what is happening in the land of stripes and stars. > >Let’s keep focus on the issues that matter. > >Danny > >***************************************** >The new scare – threats to ‘Academic Freedom’ > >The term ‘Academic Freedom’ comes up a fair bit in discussions about open access. In his tweet sent during the Researcher to Reader conference*, one of my Advisory Board colleagues Rick Anderson tweeted this comment<https://twitter.com/Looptopper/status/968463945190313984>: > >“Most startling thing said to me in conversation at the #R2RConf: >“I wonder how much longer academic freedom will be tolerated in IHEs.” (Specific context: authors being allowed to choose where they publish.) > >In this blog I’d like to pick up on the ‘Academic Freedom’ part of the comment (which is not Rick’s, he was quoting). > >Academic Freedom, according to a summary in the Times Higher Education<https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2010/12/21/defining-academic-freedom> is primarily that “Academic freedom means that both faculty members and students can engage in intellectual debate without fear of censorship or retaliation”. > >This definition was based on the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP) Statement on Academic Freedom<https://www.aaup.org/report/1940-statement-principles-academic-freedom-and-tenure> which includes, quite specifically, “full freedom in research and in the publication of results”. > >Personally I read that as meaning academics should be allowed to publish, not that they have full freedom in choosing where. > >Rick has since contacted the AAUP<https://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2018/03/05/open-letter-aaup-faculty-authors-full-freedom-publication/> to ask for clarification on this topic. Last Friday, he tweeted that the AAUP has declined to revisit the 1940 statement to clarify the ‘freedom in publication’ statement in light of evolution of scholarly communication since 1940. > >The reason why the Academic Freedom/ ‘restricting choice of publication’ threat(s) is so concerning to the research community has changed over time. In the past it was essential to be able to publish in specific outlets because colleagues would only read certain publications. Those publications were effectively the academic ‘voice’. However today, with online publication and search engines this argument no longer holds. > >What does matter however is the publication in certain journals is necessary because of the way people are valued and rewarded. The problem is not open access, the problem is the reward system to which we are beholden. And the commercial publishing industry is fully aware of this. > >So let’s be clear. Academic Freedom is about freedom of expression rather than freedom of publication outlet and ties into Robert Merton’s 1942 norms of science <http://www.collier.sts.vt.edu/5424/pdfs/merton_1973.pdf> which are: >§ “communalism”: all scientists should have common ownership of scientific goods (intellectual property), to promote collective collaboration; secrecy is the opposite of this norm. >§ universalism: scientific validity is independent of the sociopolitical status/personal attributes of its participants >§ disinterestedness: scientific institutions act for the benefit of a common scientific enterprise, rather than for the personal gain of individuals within them >§ organized scepticism: scientific claims should be exposed to critical scrutiny before being accepted: both in methodology and institutional codes of conduct. > >If a publisher is preventing a researcher from publishing in a journal based on their funding or institutional policy rather than the content of the work being submitted then this is entirely in contravention of all of Robert Merton’s norms of science. But the publisher is not, as it happens, threatening the Academic Freedom of that author. > > > > >Dr Danny Kingsley >Deputy Director - Scholarly Communication & Research Services >Head, Office of Scholarly Communication >Cambridge University Library >West Road, CB3 9DR >e: da...@cam.ac.uk<mailto:da...@cam.ac.uk> >p: 01223 747 437 >m: 07711 500 564 >t: @dannykay68 >w: www.osc.cam.ac.uk<http://www.osc.cam.ac.uk/> >b: https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk >o: orcid.org/0000-0002-3636-5939 > >[/Users/dak45/Library/Containers/com.microsoft.Outlook/Data/Library/Caches/Signatures/signature_404167699] Sanford G. Thatcher Frisco, TX 75034 https://scholarsphere.psu.edu "If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying."-John Ruskin (1865) "The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything."-Walter Bagehot (1853) "Logic, n. The art of thinking and reasoning in strict accordance with the limitations and incapacities of the human misunderstanding."-Ambrose Bierce (1906) _______________________________________________ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
