From: Heather Morrison <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2012 12:06:00 -0700
Some open access advocates insist on a narrow definition of open
access as equivalent to the Creative Commons Attribution-Only license.
Jan Velterop recently made this point in Liblicense under the thread
Predatory Open Access Journals in CHE:
http://listserv.crl.edu/wa.exe?A2=ind1203&L=LIBLICENSE-L&F=&S=&P=62827
As a long term open access activist and scholar, I have given this
matter quite a bit of thought. With all due respect to my OA advocate
colleagues, I do not believe that CC-BY is the best option even for
strong (libre) forms of open access, and I would argue for a broader,
more inclusive definition at any rate. In brief, my view is that while
CC-BY superficially appears to be the expression of the BOAI
definition of open access, in practice it has weaknesses that are
problematic for open access. For this reason, it is my opinion that
the best CC license for libre open access is Creative Commons
Attribution-Noncommercial-Sharealike (CC-BY-NC-SA), as this protects
open access downstream. I recognize that the current CC-NC definition
is overly broad and hence problematic. However, I argue that the
solution is for CC to improve the license rather than abandoning the
noncommercial option.
One of the reasons why I think CC-BY-NC-SA is actually a better fit
with BOAI than CC-BY is because it would be more effective to achieve
the vision of BOAI, e.g. "the sharing of the poor with the rich and
the rich with the poor" than CC-BY. That is, CC-BY allows for the
creation of for-pay derivatives that the CC-BY author (or their
family, community, or country) could not afford. This would in effect
be a one-way sharing of the poor with the rich. For this reason, I
always recommend the use of NC for open access authors and publishers
in the developing world.
My argument is presented in more detail in the third chapter of my
draft dissertation, which can be found here:
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/open-thesis-draft-introduction-march-2011/
(search for open access and creative commons)
While I argue that CC-BY-NC-SA is the best available license for the
strongest form of open access, I also argue for a broader, more
inclusive definition of open access. Free to read online with no other
rights is a tremendous improvement over toll access that people cannot
afford. One of Willinsky's most basic points in The Access Principle
is exactly this broad, inclusive approach to open access. Authors,
publishers, universities and research funders around the world work in
many different contexts and it is not clear that there is a single
approach that actually makes sense for everyone. Some publishers and
journals work in areas where research funding is relatively plentiful
and the grant amounts generally large enough to cover article
processing fees. In other areas of scholarship, funding is less
frequent and less generous. Some journals in these areas may be just
barely covering costs with their subscriptions revenue and reluctant
to move to full, immediate, libre open access for valid reasons. When
these journals choose partial OA measures such as free access to back
issues, that is a very fine thing. If we wish these journals to move
to stronger forms of open access, I would suggest that it would be
appropriate to find means of helping them figure out economic
solutions to support a transition. If their chosen model is
problematic, we should point this out and explain what the problem is.
For example, Elsevier's Sponsored Articles is an expensive option
which is essentially a copyright transfer to the publisher which
leaves the author with
In my blogspot, Articulating the Commons, I I argue that we do not yet
have a complete answer to the question of how best to share our works,
and that rather than rushing to find a solution, it would be optimal
to open up a discussion to take place over many decades, around the
world, involving as many people who are interested and willing to
contribute, and taking into account a wide variety of perspectives,
including non-western perspectives.
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.ca/2011/12/articulating-commons-leaderful-approach.html
This topic has generated some lively discussion recently on the SPARC
Open Access Forum, the open science list, scholcomm, and google's G+,
in case anyone wishes to delve into the details of the debates.
best,
Heather Morrison, MLIS
Doctoral Candidate, Simon Fraser University School of Communication
http://pages.cmns.sfu.ca/heather-morrison/
The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics
http://poeticeconomics.blogspot.com
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