From: Fred Dylla <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2015 13:30:54 +0000

LIBLICENSE readers:

As chair of the STM Working Group for Article Sharing on Scientific
Collaboration Networks (SCNs), I am delighted to see our draft
guidelines being discussed in this forum. I especially thank Ann
Okerson for providing three key questions about our attempt to draw-up
a set of draft principles for article sharing, and Scott Plutchak for
his careful analysis, which largely sums up our intent for this
engagement exercise.

Here are responses to Ann’s comments and questions from her March 3rd
posting on LIBLICENSE:

----Ann:  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.)

Fred: Yes, we have received questions from libraries and researchers
about what tools and sharing mechanisms are allowed for sharing
articles using these networks, so we hope to answer some of these
questions and provide clarity and needed consistency across the wide
scholarly research community.


----Ann:  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.)

Fred: Yes, we see scholarly sharing increasing over time with these
networks—they clearly provide a more efficient means of article
sharing than an author’s mailing list or posting on the author's
website. As user loyalty to individual publisher sites or other
platforms can shift, it’s beneficial to all stakeholders to have
broader insight into what content is being consumed and how SCNs are
being used by researchers to improve their ability to collaborate.


----Ann:   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.)

Fred:   We intend to lower barriers to sharing documents and encourage
collaboration between all actors. All of us in this enterprise –
authors, their collaborators, librarians, SCNs and publishers – share
the goal of ensuring that journal articles are read and used to
advance research.


----Scott Plutchak’s March 4th LIBLICENSE analysis of the intention of
this exercise and our request for the scholarly community to weigh in
on the draft principles is accurate. I hope the summary below
describing the purpose of STM’s efforts on this topic will be a useful
complement to Scott’s commentary:

The primary goal of this STM consultation with the community is to
minimize ambiguity between researchers, publishers, and SCNs about how
article sharing is best supported, and to deliver a better experience
to researchers, while giving visibility to publishers and institutions
on the activity around sharing. Actions that are encouraged that are
consistent with this goal include:

* Developers of SCNs should configure their systems to make the
distinction between posting articles (OA) and metadata (for non-OA)
clear and efficient;

* Publishers and SCNs should provide consistent support for sharing
articles in private groups and define a clear path for public posting
of subscription content;

* All sectors of the scholarly community should work together to
develop systems that could track how much such sharing actually takes
place.

If we are successful with the above actions then we will minimize
ambiguity and mixed messages from SCNs about what kind of article
sharing their systems should be used for. We would further avoid a
flurry of individual and inconsistent policy statements on the part of
publishers, and uncertainty on the part of SCN users about what is
appropriate when using these systems.

The publishers involved in the STM Association effort could be
questioned for just including publishers in the initial effort of the
producing the draft principles statement. But we initially had
disparate views that we needed to align to make sure we were on the
same page ourselves, before opening our consultation to the wider
community. We very much welcome input from librarians and networks not
connected to publishers to broaden the consultation. To participate,
see the STM Consultation webpage:

http://www.stm-assoc.org/stm-consultations/scn-consultation-2015/.

Fred Dylla

H. Frederick Dylla

Chair, STM working group for article sharing on scholarly
collaboration networks (SCNs)
Executive Director & CEO, American Institute of Physics