From: John Willinsky <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2018 22:40:29 -0700

I welcome Sandy Thatcher’s concerns with my position. His experience and
wisdom around university presses have influenced me in the past and I’m
sure will again. Still, I’d rather not appear an enemy of academic freedom
and integrity, and will pursue two points he raises, the first of which
briefly appears epilogue in the Intellectual Properties of Learning, which
is otherwise, if I may, a history of learned publishing’s struggle to
establish, refine, and, at times, betray the rights that make the
advancement of learning possible.

On the first objection that Mr. Thatcher raises, I'd hold that if a
separate IP category were created for research, faculty might still opt to
publish trade books, much as they can start spin-off companies with
federally funded research (with some benefit to the university) as a result
of the Bayh-Dole Act. My current proposal for a new copyright category for
research grows out of how research funding organizations, both government
and private, have  created an extra-legal, piecemeal, and patchwork open
access IP category for some research. I happen to think that a legal IP
category for research, which would apply much as tax categories apply to
research organizations, will do more than the current mix "to promote the
progress of science and useful arts” (as the U.S. constitution puts the
point of IP). I have introduced this idea for consideration, while
continuing to follow and contribute to the research on open access, which
is testing its promotional value in this regard.

Still, Mr. Thatcher’s concerns about Creative Commons licensing and
translation seem fair enough. Given the CC principle of "some rights
reserved,” there should be a way for those reserve translation rights. And
finally, much as we at the Public Knowledge Project built the open source
platform Open Monograph Press to serve university presses (much as they
have served my work), I'll continue to look to Mr. Thatcher’s commentary in
trying to support their contribution, the history of which this book has
given me a much greater appreciation.

John Willinsky

On Mar 13, 2018, at 5:43 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

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, “An 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.”
>
>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 – The Intellectual
>Properties of Learning, A Prehistory from Saint Jerome to John Locke – is
>timely.
>
>More here: https://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2018/03/the-
>intellectual-properties-of-learning.html