From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 8 Jun 2015 22:56:45 -0500
That's a reasonable reply, and I can understand why there might be
differences of opinion among OA monograph publishers. So far in the
U.S. presses that have gone into monograph publishing in an OA mode
have needed the revenue stream generated by the sale of POD editions;
so, too, do some of the UK publishing operations like Bloomsbury
Academic and the Knowledge Unlatched project launched by Frances
Pinter after she left Bloomsbury. If OA monograph publishing is fully
subsidized and needs no extra source of income, then CC BY can make
more sense. If I were a humanities scholar, though, I would not fully
trust in the type of informal norms you cite as prevalent in science,
especially since once a translation is done and offered for free, the
incentive for anyone to do another translation is greatly reduced and
a poor translation may be worse than having none at all.
With respect to your second point, I am curious whether the CC BY
license waives "moral rights," which exist under European but not
(except with respect to certain types of fine art) in the US. If not,
then isn't this an additional "restriction" that the CC license
should acknowledge? When the CC licenses were first promulgated, they
were accompanied by a statement that acknowledged the existence of
such moral rights, but in later versions this language has
disappeared.
Sandy Thatcher
> 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 ? 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
|
