Re: Poynder on Digital Rights Management and Open Access
Stevan Harnad said: Is it not merely fanning fears (without foundation) to insist that the re-negotiating DRM is necessary because more and more of the 92% green are back-sliding, when to date only one green publisher (Nature) has back-slid, and only from full-green (immediate postscript self-archiving) to pale-green (immediate preprint self-archiving plus postprint self-archiving 6 months after publication)? However small the overall impact of Nature's back-pedalling may be in itself, it teaches us that relying on permissions from publishers is an inherently unstable strategy for the OA movement, since these permissions can be withdrawn at any point in time. Moreover since publishers do not create the material that they publish, a more appropriate way of organising things would be for them to seek permissions from authors, not the other way round. Of course, most publishers do not object to self-archiving. The second issue then is that since evidence suggests that -- regardless of its legality, regardless of the existence of publisher permission -- many researchers appear to believe that copyright *does* prohibit them from self-archiving how can the movement resolve the matter? Very simply. And the researchers themselves have told us exactly how: Alma Swan's two international, multidisciplinary surveys have reported that 79% of authors reply that they do *not* self-archive, and will not self-archive, until and unless their employers or funders *require* them to do so; but if and when they do require them to do so, they reply that they *will* self-archive, and will self-archive *willingly*. (Only 4% replied that they would not self-archive even if required; I would say a 96% resolution counts as a solution, and is vastly preferable to the tail wagging -- or holding back -- the dog!) And as Alma Swan elsewhere says: The fact is that copyright raises its head all the time when authors are asked about OA and it is acting as a deterrent to self-archiving. So it can't be ignored. (http://poynder.blogspot.com/2005/04/roller-coaster-ride.html). Indeed, Alma is not the only person to have made this point. Here are the words of Stevan Harnad: [W]hat really needs changing is journals' copyright policies, which are a perceived deterrent to self-archiving refereed papers (even though they can be circumvented completely legally) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1241.html Since research funders seem equally unclear about the current rights situation there appears to be considerable confusion all round. Richard! You register first, as with all archives, and then you can do the keystrokes: Please let me know the timing! I tried it but had some difficulties. Specifically, I could not establish whether the article I was trying to post had been accepted by the system. After 20 minutes trying to work this out I gave up. Perhaps this is because it is only a demo system, but I think the first thing a researcher would want to do is check that his paper has indeed been uploaded - by doing a search to see if it is there. It might also be because I am not as technology literate as I would wish, but then many researchers might be similarly handicapped! Most notably one of those recommendations stated: The issue of copyright is crucial to the success of self-archiving. We recommend that, as part of its strategy for the implementation of institutional repositories, Government ascertain what impact a UK-based policy of author copyright retention would have on UK authors. Providing that it can be established that such a policy would not have a disproportionately negative impact, Research Councils and other Government funders should mandate their funded researchers to retain the copyright on their research articles, licensing it to publishers for the purposes of publication. The Government would also need to be active in raising the issue of copyright at an international level. (Paragraph 126) This is actually a very reasonable recommendation, with exactly the right priorities. Notice that it does not recommend that this further research on the potential impact of a potential copyright-retention policy be performed *before* or *instead of* or as a *precondition for* the recommended self-archiving mandate. It quite sensibly recommends this bit of research to be performed in the background, in parallel. Nor does it prejudge the outcome; it merely says that if the outcome does not prove to be too negative, a copy-right retention policy could then be mandated too. Who can disagree with that? But meanwhile, the priority remains an immediate self-archiving mandate. Absolutely. We are in agreement. More clarity is needed. The reality is that 92% of journals have given self-archiving their green light, yet 85% of authors are still just parked and not moving. Prodding them needlessly and
Re: Poynder on Digital Rights Management and Open Access
On Tue, 26 Apr 2005, Richard Poynder wrote: my point was that many in this 85% group of authors are still parked because the rights situation is uncertain and they don't want a traffic cop to pull them in when/if they move on to the highway. So let's clarify the rights and allow the parked authors to move off into the self-archiving fast lane - so long, of course, as they have been mandated to self-archive by their funders. Since funders also have it in their power to clarify the rights situation - by insisting that researchers retain sufficient rights to self-archive - they can apparently achieve both aims at one fell swoop. Perhaps this allegory (in which author/researchers are cast as delivery-truck drivers, delivering research impact for their employers/funders) will help get the logic of the situation into better focus: U-HAUL ALLEGORY When 85% of delivery-truck drivers are parked motionless facing traffic-lights, 92% of which are green, one need not (1) seek a court ruling on the legality of going ahead on green! Nor need one (2) seek, for each individual driver, the personal legal right to turn the light green at will of his own accord, when 92% are already green! The drivers' paymasters can propel them into motion by reminding them of the logical and legal contingency between green lights and going ahead as well as the professional and practical contingency between one's salary and making one's deliveries as Alma Swan elsewhere says: The fact is that copyright raises its head all the time when authors are asked about OA and it is acting as a deterrent to self-archiving. So it can't be ignored. (http://poynder.blogspot.com/2005/04/roller-coaster-ride.html). I think that by can't be ignored Alma meant mostly (92%, to be exact) informing drivers about the logical/legal contingencies, as well as firming up the practical/professional contingencies. Indeed, Alma is not the only person to have made this point. Here are the words of Stevan Harnad: [W]hat really needs changing is journals' copyright policies, which are a perceived deterrent to self-archiving refereed papers (even though they can be circumvented completely legally) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/1241.html Since research funders seem equally unclear about the current rights situation there appears to be considerable confusion all round. Richard, that quote was from Tue Mar 27 2001 - 19:09:15 BST! Things have, fortunately, progressed since then -- though more on the publisher (traffic-light) side than on the author (delivery) side, with author self-archiving only increasing from about 10% to 15% during that 4-year interval while journal green-lights increased from perhaps 10% in 2001 to 92% today (under pressure from the demand for OA including, amongst others, the 34,000 authors who signed the PLoS Open Letter threatening to boycott their journals by September 2001 otherwise!) The present situation is not without its ironies and internal inconsistencies! But inconsistencies are there to be pointed out and corrected: A Keystroke Koan For Our Open Access Times (2003) http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Hypermail/Amsci/3061.html The second part of my quote, by the way, is still valid and pertinent today http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#self-archiving-legal but it is mooted by the progress on the first part, 92% of journals now being green; for the remaining 8%, copyright re-negotiation is one option; the preprint-plus-corrections strategy is another; and the keystroke mandate is another: http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Temp/berlin3-harnad.ppt sh to date only one green publisher (Nature) has back-slid, and only from sh full-green (immediate postscript self-archiving) to pale-green sh (immediate preprint self-archiving... However small the overall impact of Nature's back-pedalling may be in itself, it teaches us that relying on permissions from publishers is an inherently unstable strategy for the OA movement, since these permissions can be withdrawn at any point in time. Moreover since publishers do not create the material that they publish, a more appropriate way of organising things would be for them to seek permissions from authors, not the other way round. When the shade of green for one publisher changes (yet remains green, the 92% figure unchanged), this is hardly grounds to call for a bottom-up reconstruction of the traffic grid! Let us reconstruct the grid if and when we ever need to. The priority right now is making those deliveries! 32. Poisoned Apple http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#32.Poisoned I tried [Demoprints] but had some difficulties. [ http://demoprints.eprints.org/ ] Specifically, I could not establish whether the article I was trying to post had been accepted by the system. After 20 minutes trying to work this out I gave up. Perhaps this is because it is only a
Re: Poynder on Digital Rights Management and Open Access
I thank Stevan for his comments. He makes a number of points, but I think the key question is the extent to which uncertainty about copyright is acting as a deterrent to self-archiving. The first issue confronting the OA movement is that there is currently no definitive answer as to whether researches can legally self-archive without publisher permission. Of course, most publishers do not object to self-archiving. The second issue then is that since evidence suggests that regardless of its legality, regardless of the existence of publisher permission many researchers appear to believe that copyright *does* prohibit them from self-archiving how can the movement resolve the matter? Given that publishers appear unlikely to abandon their proprietary habits voluntarily Stevan justifiably draws attention to my failure to suggest more concrete ways in which those who support OA can achieve clarity on this matter by assisting researchers to obtain more liberal licences. Let me suggest one: research funders could not *only* mandate that researchers self-archive, but *in addition* mandate them to retain sufficient rights to ensure that they are free to self-archive their papers, and to be able to do so immediately on publication. It is not clear to me why they cannot (as specified in the SPARC Author's Addendum http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/addendum.html) also insist that publishers provide a copy of the published PDF (without any DRM security measures incorporated). This might even help to cut down the number of keystrokes that researchers have to make in order to self-archive. Stevan is clearly right to say that funders could just tell researchers that they are entitled to self-archive, but as we saw with the NIH plan, clarity on the current situation vis-à-vis rights does not exist even amongst funders. Moreover, where publishers give permission to self-archive, but only after an embargo, I am not clear how the current status quo can ever remove researchers' reluctance to ignore such embargoes without a court ruling on the legalities of self-archiving. For these reasons I suggested that the OA movement needs to address rights issues if it wants to move forward. It is worth noting that three of the recommendations made by the much-applauded UK Select Committee Report (http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200304/cmselect/cmsctech/399/399 14.htm) addressed the issue of rights. Most notably one of those recommendations stated: The issue of copyright is crucial to the success of self-archiving. We recommend that, as part of its strategy for the implementation of institutional repositories, Government ascertain what impact a UK-based policy of author copyright retention would have on UK authors. Providing that it can be established that such a policy would not have a disproportionately negative impact, Research Councils and other Government funders should mandate their funded researchers to retain the copyright on their research articles, licensing it to publishers for the purposes of publication. The Government would also need to be active in raising the issue of copyright at an international level. (Paragraph 126) This, along with all the other Select Committee recommendations, was of course rejected by the UK Government. It may be, however, that the forthcoming Research Councils UK policy (http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/whatsnew.asp) will pick up this recommendation and act on it in some way. After all, what the Creative Commons has taught us is that copyright does not have to be a winner-takes-all process. All that is required is that researchers retain *sufficient rights to self-archive*, not *all rights*. I would add that my intention in the article was not to suggest that researchers stop self-archiving in order first to focus their attentions on ways they can avoid plagiarism, or text-corruption etc. in an OA environment; nor was it to recommend that resolving rights issues be given priority over self-archiving. My point was that since copyright appears to be acting as a significant deterrent to self-archiving the OA movement is more likely to achieve its objectives if it addresses the issue of rights, rather than insisting that there is no issue. Richard Poynder www.richardpoynder.com -Original Message- From: American Scientist Open Access Forum [mailto:AMERICAN-SCIENTIST-OPEN-ACCESS-FORUM@LISTSERVER.SIGMAX I.ORG] On Behalf Of Stevan Harnad Sent: 23 April 2005 20:49 To: american-scientist-open-access-fo...@listserver.sigmaxi.org Subject: Poynder on Digital Rights Management and Open Access Richard Poynder has written an -- as always -- thoughtful and informative article: Richard Poynder, The role of digital rights management in Open Access, Indicare, April 22, 2005. http://www.indicare.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=93 http://poynder.blogspot.com/2005/04/role-of-digital-rights-man agement-in.html Nevertheless, Richard's article also
Re: Poynder on Digital Rights Management and Open Access
Richard Poynder wrote: I think the key question is the extent to which uncertainty about copyright is acting as a deterrent to self-archiving. On this point we agree: Copyright worries are indeed *one* among the (32) groundless worries that are acting as a deterrent to self-archiving: http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/#32-worries The first issue confronting the OA movement is that there is currently no definitive answer as to whether researchers can legally self-archive without publisher permission. There is no definitive legal answer because there has not been a single legal challenge in over 15 years, with hundreds of thousands of articles prominently already self-archived without seeking publisher permission (e.g., in the Physics arXiv since 1991, in computer science web and ftp sites from even earlier). Moreover, the publisher response has been that, for example, the physics publishers were among the earliest to become green (i.e., to give self-archiving their official permission). Since then, 92% of journals have become green. So what Richard is here calling the first issue confronting the OA movement -- that there is no definitive answer as to whether researchers can legally self-archive without publisher permission -- now pertains to at most only 8% of the annual 2.5 million articles published. Is it not the tail (8%) wagging the dog (92%) to conclude from this that Digital Rights Management (DRM) is the first issue confronting the OA movement? and that the remedy is for all authors to try to re-negotiate their copyright agreements with their publishers? Is it not more straightforward to conclude that the 92% that already have the green light should go ahead and self-archive, and that at most only the remaining 8% might re-negotiate DRM, if they wish (but that first they too should at least deposit their metadata and full-texts into their institutional repositories, with access provisionally set as institution-internal)? Is it not merely fanning fears (without foundation) to insist that re-negotiating DRM is necessary because more and more of the 92% green are back-sliding, when to date only one green publisher (Nature) has back-slid, and only from full-green (immediate postscript self-archiving) to pale-green (immediate preprint self-archiving plus postprint self-archiving 6 months after publication)? http://romeo.eprints.org/publishers.html Of course, most publishers do not object to self-archiving. The second issue then is that since evidence suggests that -- regardless of its legality, regardless of the existence of publisher permission -- many researchers appear to believe that copyright *does* prohibit them from self-archiving how can the movement resolve the matter? Very simply. And the researchers themselves have told us exactly how: Alma Swan's two international, multidisciplinary surveys have reported that 79% of authors reply that they do *not* self-archive currently, and will not self-archive, until and unless their employers or funders *require* them to do so; but if and when they do require them to do so, these authors reply that they *will* self-archive, and will self-archive *willingly*. (Only 4% replied that they would not self-archive even if required; I would say that a 96% resolution counts as a solution, and is vastly preferable to the tail wagging -- or holding back -- the dog!) http://www.eprints.org/berlin3/ppts/02-AlmaSwan.ppt Given that publishers appear unlikely to abandon their proprietary habits voluntarily Stevan justifiably draws attention to my failure to suggest more concrete ways in which those who support OA can achieve clarity on this matter by assisting researchers to obtain more liberal licences. That isn't quite what I said! I said that: (1) it wasn't necessary (because the 92% of journals that are green already provide copyright protection); (2) the 85% of authors today who already find self-archiving too burdensome (until/unless required by their employers and funders) are not likely to find it less burdensome if now they are expected to first successfully re-negotiate DRM with their publishers, and even to put the acceptance of their papers at (needless) risk by asking their journals for more than the self-archiving permission that they already have from 92% of them; and (3) the publishers of the 92% of journals that have already given self-archiving their green light are unlikely to take kindly to being mportuned (needlessly) for still more, when they have already agreed to all that is needed (and the only real problem is that authors don't *do* it, partly because they are unaware of the possibility of self-archiving, or of its impact advantages, but mostly because their employers/funders don't require them to do it!). Let me suggest one [way to resolve the matter]: research funders could not
Re: Poynder on Digital Rights Management and Open Access
On 23 Apr 2005, at 20:48, Stevan Harnad wrote: Richard Poynder has written an -- as always -- thoughtful and informative article: Richard Poynder, The role of digital rights management in Open Access, Indicare, April 22, 2005. http://www.indicare.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=93 http://poynder.blogspot.com/2005/04/role-of-digital-rights-management- in.html I find it significant that Richard defines DRM as a two-part phenomenon: metadata and services (ie a layer of 'rights' metadata and a layer of software that enables appropriate activities given the correct interpretation of the metadata). Note that this conforms to the Open Archives Initiative model of data and service providers communicating through sharing metadata about digital items. DRM is just one example of many publication-related issues that can be dealt with in such a way - preservation, data archiving, version control, classification, certification (all taken from a brief scan of the Self-Archiving FAQ http://www.eprints.org/self-faq/). Open Access, a simple phenomenon whose implications are well understood by researchers, librarians, administrators, managers, funders and politicians, provides the technical infrastructure, the community of users and the service environment which will underpin new solutions for all these issues. Increasingly large amounts of OA material will generate large numbers of OA services, supporting new ways of using the literature which in turn will bring new requirements for the DRM community to support. Now that funders can see the output from their projects appearing online as OA material, they can start to specify what they want to do with it (as services providers) and what extra information needs to be collected by the data providers. Now that research administrators see output from their institutions appearing online in the OA institutional repositories, they can start to work out how they want it analysed, and what metadata needs to be associated with it. My conclusion is patterned on Richards, except that where Richard's puts the OA community in hock to the DRM community, mine reverses this as follows: Until there is a lot more Open Access content available for researchers (and other stakeholders) to use to their benefit, the DRM movement (and many other movements) may struggle to make significant progress in understanding the nature of rights, responsibilities and opportunities involved in digitally-mediated scientific and scholarly research. Increasingly it appears that only by engaging with this simple issue can the [DRM] movement hope to achieve its objectives. --- Les Carr
Poynder on Digital Rights Management and Open Access
Richard Poynder has written an -- as always -- thoughtful and informative article: Richard Poynder, The role of digital rights management in Open Access, Indicare, April 22, 2005. http://www.indicare.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=93 http://poynder.blogspot.com/2005/04/role-of-digital-rights-management-in.html Nevertheless, Richard's article also contains a few prominent internal contradictions, and once these contradictions are seen and resolved, it is Richard's thesis -- the seemingly mild thesis that Digital Rights Management needs to be made a priority for Open Access -- that is left contradicted. I will analyze these contradictions in a moment; but first, Richard's article also contains a very important and potentially misleading error in the form of a rather shrill exaggeration of the number of publishers that have been inspired to back-pedal on their prior green author self-archiving policies under the influence of the recent announcement of the NIH 6-12-month Back Access policy: To my knowledge, that number is exactly *one* publisher, taking one half-step backwards: Nature Publishing group has back-pedalled from full-green [immediate postprint self-archiving] to pale-green [immediate preprint self-archiving plus postprint self-archiving after 6 months]. There has been no other change in the SHERPA/Romeo policy database since the NIH announcement. The only publishers mentioning an embargo are the four that were already either gray (American Chemical Society, Yale U. Press, MIT Press) or pale-green (National Research Council of Canada). http://romeo.eprints.org/publishers.html This leaves the total percentage of green journals at 92%, exactly as before, and merely shifts the pale-green/full-green boundary from 13%+79% as before NIH, to 16%+76%. This does not seem to me like a basis for stating that: more and more publishers are insisting that papers are only self-archived on an embargoed basis, demanding delays of between six and twelve months between publication and self-archiving. But now let us turn to the basic contradiction: Richard suggests that those OA proponents who insist that the immediate priority is to self-archive *now* (for, at least 92% of OA's target content, of which only 15% is being self-archived today) are wrong. Instead of giving priority to self-archiving -- and to adopting institutional and research-funder policies that require self-archiving -- we should give priority to Digital Rights Management. So instead of acting on the green light we have already from 92% of journals, the priority is instead to go back and negotiate something like a Creative Commons License with those journals. And this needs to be done for two reasons: (1) to protect our papers from nonattribution, plagiarism or text-corruption (something that our existing copyright agreements with our publishers already cover!) and (2) to dispel the confusion about copyright and permissions that is holding back self-archiving. This re-ordering of priorities is being urged, moreover, in full cognizance of the fact that publishers are highly unlikely to agree (and, I might add, that authors who are already sluggishness about self-archiving, fearful that it might entail some risk or burden for them, will have their fears amply confirmed by this readjustment of the priorities). There you have it. I would say that the resolution of this contradiction is quite clear: Self-archived articles published in green journals (92%) are already protected from nonattribution, plagiarism and text-corruption by their existing copyright agreements, and the only priority for them is self-archiving, immediately. (The 8% minority publishing in the gray journals can, if they like, try to negotiate a CC-like license with their publishers, but the *priority* is the 92% majority, otherwise it is the tail wagging the dog.) And the remedy for author sluggishness about self-archiving and confusion about rights is to adopt clear institutional and funder policies on self-archiving and to provide clear information on the fact that rights are not at issue when supplementing access to one's own green journal articles by self-archiving them. What we don't seem to have quite realized yet is that the only real obstacle to 100% Open Access is -- and always has been -- not permissions, property, plagiarism, and all those other p-words, but KEYSTROKES. It is keystrokes that authors are (for a panoply of reasons, all groundless) slow to perform. So the only thing that is needed is an institutional/funder *incentive* to perform those keystrokes (via a suitable variant of the publish/perish requirements and rewards that are already in play everywhere today anyway). For 92% of OA content, the coast is already clear, and green; for the 8% of the shoreline that is still gray, the keystrokes -- for depositing the full-text plus the metadata (author, title, journalname, date, author's email address, URL for the
