From: T Scott Plutchak <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 4 Mar 2015 18:43:37 +0000

I’ll also echo Ann & Anthony’s comments.  Having worked with Fred on a
number of issues since our days on the Scholarly Publishing Roundtable
I can attest to his strong commitment to seeking consensus among all
stakeholders in the scholarly communication ecosystem.  I believe this
consultation is a good faith effort to do that.

Anyway, here’s my take on it – some publishers are concerned that SCNs
are becoming open repositories of articles for which they hold the
copyright.  They believe there is confusion within the community about
whether or not it is legal to post copyrighted articles to SCNs and
thus make them available to anyone else using that SCN.  They would
like to put a stop to what they perceive as a potentially worrisome
trend.  (See, as exhibit #1, Elsevier’s takedown notices to
Academia.edu last December, which served no one’s interests very
well).  On the other hand, they recognize that some sharing of
copyrighted articles is perfectly reasonable and they would like to be
able to support that.

STM, as the trade association for publishers (and bear in mind that,
as an organization, STM is agnostic on the question of open access),
is attempting to develop a shared consensus among publishers, SCNs,
librarians and researchers about what the norms should be.  Viewed in
this context, I think the principles are straightforward.  Researchers
should be encouraged to post OA articles and the metadata for non-OA
articles freely within SCNs, but they should not post the copies of
copyrighted articles themselves.  However, within “academic groups”
(as defined in the document) researchers would be free to share
copyrighted articles as well.  This does seem to me to be a concession
on the part of the publishers.  Certainly not as much of a concession
as many in the OA community would like, but a concession in the right
direction, nonetheless.

The intent of the initiative, then, is to see if we can get voluntary
agreement on the part of all components of the community to adhere to
these principles.  If that were achieved, developers of SCNs would
configure their systems to make the distinction between posting
articles (OA) and metadata (for non-OA) clear and efficient and would
provide support for “academic groups”.  Researchers would use the
systems to post OA articles, but would refrain from uploading
copyrighted articles,  except within those groups.  Publishers would
develop consistent policies that would  encourage sharing of articles
within those groups.  All sectors would work together to try to
develop systems that could track how much of this sort of sharing
actually takes place.

This would enable us to avoid ambiguity and mixed messages from SCNs
about what kind of article sharing their systems should be used for, a
flurry of individual and inconsistent policy statements on the part of
publishers, and uncertainty on the part of users of the SCNs about
what is appropriate when using these systems.

These seem like reasonable goals to me.  However, since I can’t think
of anything on which the prominent voices in these debates currently
agree, I’m uncertain what level of consensus can actually be reached.
But it’s worth a try.

The negative reaction to the Elsevier takedown notices in December
indicates that at least some users of SCNs believe that it is
perfectly legitimate for people to upload articles for which they do
not hold the copyright and for any other users of those systems to
obtain copies that way.  I don’t know how widespread that view is, but
those folks, of course, will not support these principles.  I would
like to think, however, that most people, even those who would like us
to achieve a fully OA environment at some point, would acknowledge
that, at present, publishers do have a legitimate interest in trying
to maintain some control over the distribution of the articles for
which they clearly hold the copyright.  And I think that STM should be
commended for trying to set up a collaborative process to come up with
a consensus for what the appropriate norms of behavior around SCNs
should be.

My main question about the principles has to do with these academic
groups.  How common are they and how well defined?  Is this notion of
an academic group fully developed enough that they can function
efficiently within the SCNs?

I’ve looked at the comments posted at
http://www.stm-assoc.org/stm-consultations/scn-consultation-2015/   So
far there isn’t much there.  I hope that we will see a good number of
thoughtful and useful comments posted there over the next few weeks.


Scott

T Scott Plutchak | Director of Digital Data Curation Strategies
UAB | The University of Alabama at Birmingham
The Edge of Chaos – LHL 427
O: 205-996-4716 | M: 205-283-5538
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4712-5233

uab.edu

********

From: Ann Okerson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, Mar 3, 2015 at 10:54 PM

I second Anthony's comments about Fred Dylla's deep commitment
to dialog.  Fred is extraordinary in so many ways.

But I'm puzzled about the intent of this initiative; it's hard to
tell exactly what it's trying to do and what problem it's trying
to solve.  Three possibilities came to mind:

1.  Scholars and researchers are hampered from scholarly
sharing of their and their colleagues' works, and the wish is to
help them to share without worrying that they shouldn't be doing
this.  (If this is the case, we in libraries don't encounter such
fears.)

2.  It would be interesting to learn how much work is being
shared among scholars in their networks and communities.
(Possibly, but then why should we try to shape the way in which
different scholarly/research communities do this, which seems to be
asked for, by creating principles and asking for signatures.)

3.  A number of folks read this initiative as paving the way to
regulating and monetizing scholarly sharing.  (Maybe this is a
cynical interpretation, but it's not an illogical one.)

Several colleagues who might like to submit comments are not
quite sure what they'd be commenting about, as the purpose
of this initiative isn't clear -- or perhaps it feels inherently
contradictory.

Insights would be appreciated.   Ann