From: "Bargheer, Margo Friederike" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2015 07:50:19 +0000

Among German university presses
<http://blog.bibliothek.kit.edu/ag_univerlage/>  we have an ongoing
discussion whether it is economically wise to publish scholarly books
under a CC-license permitting commercial use (cc-by-sa, cc-by-nd and
cc-by). There are reasonable arguments pro and contra.

The presses doing it already as a default mode (f.e. KIT Publishig,
Goettingen University Press) are convinced that the integrity of the
content and the book as such is maintained best through other modes
than a restrictive open access license. After thorough analysis we
decided to trust in:

a) scientific standards (as a scientist working with material from
peers, one either indicates "own translation" or seeks permission from
author; one doesn't distort texts from peers as that is a scholarly
no-go),

b) in continental European copyright that enables authors/creators to
prohibit garbling or distortion of the creation (a miserable Kindle
edition f.e. could be interpreted as an wrongful distortion; as a
rights-owner I'd make vendors aware that it needs to be corrected or
taken down)

c) in the strength of our brands (trademark law gives us exclusive
rights to sell products under our name)
and d) in the field we're playing on. Scientific books from university
presses usually serve the purpose of P2P communication. This ain't the
field of generating hit-and-run profits as the entire field operates
against a backdrop of reputation and long-standing relations, among
authors, editors and their presses, among presses, vendors and
libraries.

So far we didn't need to persecute any infringements, hence we will
continue with the chosen licensing policy.

In our perspective the advantages of libre licenses outweigh the
potential risks. Although there is no robust evidence yet we are
convinced that books in their printed and online form benefit from
widest dissemination. And dissemination of scientific books shouldn't
come to a full stop once it reaches the realm of the "commercial".
Although several authors think so, "commercial use" isn't necessarily
a profit-maximising enterprise. Any given player in the internet
relying on generating revenues exercises commercial use. We don't want
to exclude databases, contexts, connections, whether existing or yet
unknown, solely because they involve financial flows with a commercial
nature.

Best
Margo

Margo Bargheer

Leitung Elektronisches Publizieren ǀ Head of Electronic Publishing
----------------------------
Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen
State and University Library Goettingen
[log in to unmask]
www.sub.uni-goettingen.de

________________________________________

From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2015 20:59:51 -0500

The difference, of course, was that all of those other efforts were
focused solely on journal publishing, David, and that's the problem.
The CC BY definition does not work so well for monograph publishing,
and that is one reason why I drafted the AAUP's Statement on Open
Access, released in July 2007, viz., to expand the conversation beyond
STM journal publishing.  If the OA community doesn't care about
anything other than journal publishing, then it may well be that CC BY
would suffice.

Sandy Thatcher


> From: David Prosser <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2015 08:21:59 +0000
>
> I think it is useful to have a distinction between 'Open Access' and
> 'Free Access'.  Many of those who want to redefine Open Access
> essentially want to expand the definition to include all material that
> is freely available online.  If that is the case then 'Open Access'
> becomes useless as term in itself.
>
> My understanding is that 'Open Access' was adopted as a term
> specifically to distinguish material from the 'merely' free to access.
> Why not keep it that way?
>
> (Of course, Sandy wasn't alone in pursuing projects and models that
> would support free and open access.  Around the time of the events he
> describes in his articles Stevan Harnad, for example, was working on
> his 'Subversive Proposal' and many journals were experimenting with
> open publishing.)
>
> David
>
>
>
> On 4 Jun 2015, at 01:23, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>>  From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
>>  Date: Wed, 3 Jun 2015 18:09:52 -0500
>>
>>  Why should the people who met in Budapest in 2002 have a monopoly on
>>  the "correct" definition of open access?  There were some of us
>>  working on open-access projects long before that meeting was held and
>>  developing business models around them. I trace the history of one
>>  such project  for OA monograph publishing in the CIC (Committee on
>>  Institutional Cooperation) in the early 1990s in the lead article in
>>  the April issue of the Journal of Scholarly Publishing. The
>>  appropriate CC license for that initiative (before CC existed) would
>>  have been CC BY-NC-ND.
>>
>>  Sandy Thatcher