From: SANFORD G THATCHER <[log in to unmask]> Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2018 03:25:44 -0400 John Willinsky's case for a distinctive type of IP for scholarly work does not--in this interview at least (I have not read the book)--confront the problem of what counts as scholarly work for this purpose. There are a substantial number of books written by faculty who publish them as "trade books" with commercial publishers that are indistinguishable--except for the breadth of audience appeal and sales potential--from academic monographs published by university presses (which themselves regularly publish some books to which they assign trade discounts). Does Willinsky want to remove such general-interest books from the commercial marketplace? Why would he want to do so? This would certainly be to deny faculty the right to make decisions about how best to make their works available to the general public. Or does he want to bracket out books of all kinds and just apply this new type of IP to journal articles? But even some journal articles have proven to be very profitable to their authors, as reprints in anthologies, for example. (I can cite an article published in a journal we published at Penn State that earned its author well over $10,000 in such reprint fees.) And no one should forget the success that Harry Frankfurt had in turning a journal article into a short book "On Bullshit" and selling over 300,000 copies courtesy of Princeton University Press! Establishing a "gift economy" by legislative fiat also seems a roundabout way of accomplishing a goal that universities have always had it in their power to accomplish directly, viz., by fully subsidizing the operation of their university presses (as has indeed happened recently with the launching of the fully subsidized Amherst College Press). It also seems roundabout to set up publishing companies within libraries when there are already some 100 presses operating at universities today. Why reinvent the wheel? Just remove the market incentives that presses have been compelled to have for a long time by their parent universities and the problem is solved. Finally, it astonishes me that someone in the HSS fields like Willinsky goes to bat so strongly for CC BY when it should be apparent that every faculty member in these fields has very good reason to want to exercise control over some reuses of their work, as in translation. Authors have a strong stake in making sure that translations are done well and accurately. Denying them this "traditional" right through a CC BY license seems counterproductive and not in keeping with the protection of important academic values such as integrity. BOAI got off on the wrong foot by addressing the needs and concerns only of STEM scholars and inappropriately generalizing from them to implicate all scholars in their campaign for a certain type of OA. Perhaps Willinsky has addressed some or all of these concerns in his book. I did not see them addressed in the interview, however, and they raise questions in my mind about how effective his proposed strategy could be. Sandy Thatcher On Mon, Mar 12, 2018 05:00 PM LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > >From: Richard Poynder <[log in to unmask]> >Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2018 16:08:20 +0000 > >Sixteen years ago, the Budapest Open Access Initiative predicted the dawn >of a new age of scholarly communication. Its declaration begins, βAn old >tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an >unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of >scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in >scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. >The new technology is the internet.β > >Looking back, we might want to suggest that OA advocates spent too much >time in the early years promoting the merits of *openness*, and too little >time working out the best way of marrying *the old tradition* with the *new >technology*. In addition, more time should have been spent on establishing >what other old traditions of learning would need to be accommodated (and >how) if the new world of scholarly communication that BOAI envisaged was to >be realised. That too little consideration was given to these matters >doubtless explains why so much confusion surrounds open access today, and >why we are seeing growing frustration with it. > >In light of this, a new book by John Willinsky β The Intellectual >Properties of Learning, A Prehistory from Saint Jerome to John Locke β is >timely. > >More here: https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the- >intellectual-properties-of-learning.html