From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2011 08:23:25 -0600


Mike, I did agree with you on the issue of transparency because I too
fear that some publishers may be taking advantage of the OA model to
double-dip. I just don't think that a stipulative definition about
what OA should mean is a helpful approach at this point (partly
because it would thereby put beyond the p[ale all current book
projects that call themselves OA or partial OA). And, regarding
transparency, it should also be made clear to authors that by going
with the CC-BY license they are possibly giving up some significant
income from commercial republication. This is, of course, very
unpredictable, and most authors would no doubt be willing to sacrifice
the long adds of making a lot of money this way to the principle of
going with OA libre.

Sandy


At 10:22 PM -0500 12/23/11, LIBLICENSE wrote:
>
> From: Michael Carroll <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:47:44 -0500
>
> Hi Sandy,
>
> My response to you is the same as my response to Joe.  Don't try to
> put me into the "purist" box because I simply won't stay there.  I've
> been an OA pragmatist from start to finish and anyone who's had any
> dealings with me regarding OA, including you, should know that.
>
> The PLoS Biology piece is focused on only one aspect of the OA
> movement/ecosystem - journals that have changed their financing from
> primarily subscriptions from the demand side of the market to the
> supply side of the market through article processing fees.  These
> journals use the term "open access" to label this shift to authors and
> readers by calling themselves an "open access journal" or "open access
> publication".  In this context, the use of this terminology is to
> signal to authors and to readers that they are offering something
> different from publication in a subscription-financed, toll access
> journal.
>
> So, we're not talking about what the term "open access" should mean
> for the large and diverse set of folks who support changes in
> scholarly communication that take advantage of the Internet to improve
> research.
>
> Instead, I'm responding to noise in the marketplace by different
> publications using "open access" in this context to mean different
> things regarding reuse rights.  Specifically, the point of the PLoS
> Biology piece is to warn authors and their funders who are willing to
> use grant funds or otherwise pay for this type of open access to make
> sure they're getting their money's worth by getting what I'm calling
> full open access or call it Gold OA or libre or whatever else
> distinguishes read/write access from read-only access.  There's noise
> in the marketplace when some supply-side funded publishers use CC-BY
> and others use CC-BY-NC or CC-BY-NC-SA.
>
> The point I'd put to you and to Joe is, why this noise?  Once a
> publisher decides to rely on supply-side funding, why the half-way
> measures?  I expect the answer is revenue diversification, but too
> easily this is just code for double-dipping.  The article processing
> charges should reflect an author discount if the publication is using
> something more restrictive than CC Attribution Only in order to
> capture these other revenues.  Looking at the prices that primarily
> commercial publishers are charging for pseudo open access, I don't see
> the discount.
>
> Why else aren't the commercial publishers and others that use one of
> the more restrictive Creative Commons licenses willing to put a price
> on the option to use a CC Attribution Only license on the content?  If
> these publishers believe that retaining commercial rights has some
> economic value - express this as net present value - and give the
> author the option to purchase these in order to grant these reuse
> rights to the public.
>
> I suspect that publishers are not sure about what the value of these
> commercial reuse rights are, so they want to hold on to these to make
> sure that they can take advantage of new market opportunities to
> commercially exploit the content in the future.  This is exactly the
> problematic impulse.  The point of the switch to supply side funding
> is to get paid now and to let go of control over future reuse of the
> content subject to the attribution requirement.  Authors who agree
> with this principle and are paying to implement it by publishing in an
> open access publication need to be warned that not all so-called "open
> access journals" are implementing this principle.  As a result, pseudo
> open access journals are misrepresenting what they're selling.
>
> So far, no one on this list or over at the Scholarly Kitchen has
> engaged with this point, which is the only point for which I was
> arguing in the PLoS Perspective piece.
>
> Best,
> Mike
>
> Michael W. Carroll
> Professor of Law and Director,
> Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property
> American University, Washington College of Law
> Washington, D.C. 20016