From: Sandy Thatcher <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:10:35 -0600

There was a discussion of this issue on the Scholarly Kitchen and on
the SCHOLCOM site that is relevant here. I posted this on SCHOLCOM:

At 7:03 PM -0600 12/9/11, Sandy Thatcher wrote:

>Just today, over at The Scholarly Kitchen, there was a posting in response to a statement by Michael Carroll about just this issue. Carroll favors the CC-BY license, for reasons that he explains in his statement: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001210;jsessionid=5A171AD9283AC8C6480848AEE4FFAF00
>
> The SK discussion is here: http://scholarlykitchen.sspnet.org/2011/12/09/blinded-by-ideology-open-access-advocate-continues-to-fight-the-battles-of-yesteryear/
>
> My comment, which is relevant to some of what Heather discusses here, was:
>
>> Kent, with all due respect, i think you have missed the main point of the argument that Michael Carroll was trying to make in this statement. He is really addressing the difference between what Peter Suber and others have called "libre" and "gratis" OA where only the former, according to Carroll, qualifies as "full" OA because it does not include any restrictions on reuse rights. Carroll seems to be claiming that using only "gratis" OA somehow impedes the progress of scholarly communication. I don't think that argument can withstand serious scrutiny, however, because noncommercial reuse is what scholarly communication is all about in journal publishing where royalties are not typically paid to authors. I don't see how posting to Wikipedia constitutes a "commercial" reuse either. His complaint also is directed here at those big bad commercial publishers we all love to hate, but the truth is that many OA journals that are published on campus and by other noncommercial entities use the CC license that allows authors to retain commercial reuse rights and so why isn't Carroll criticizing them as well? In those cases, it is not the publishers who hold the reuse rights but the authors themselves. My main complaint is different from Carroll's: I don;t think the commercial/noncommercial distinction is conceptually clear enough to do the job it is supposed to do. Even Larry Lessig, in one of his books, admitted as much.


Sandy Thatcher


> From: Michael Carroll <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2011 10:20:09 -0500
>
> Dear Jennifer,
>
> Thanks for the news, but I'm afraid your press release is misleading
> and should be corrected.  You say that T&F is now publishing " fully
> Open Access journals", but unless I've misread the licensing
> arrangements this simply is not the case.  A fully open access journal
> is one that publishes on the web without delay *and* which gives
> readers the full set of reuse rights conditioned only on the
> requirement that users provide proper attribution.
> http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1001210
>
> T&F's "Open" program and "Open Select" offer pseudo open access.
> Could you please explain why T&F needs to reserve substantial reuse
> rights after the author or her funder has paid for the costs of
> publication?
>
> If your response is that the article processing charge does not
> represent the full cost of publication, what charge would?  Why aren't
> authors given the option to purchase full open access?
>
> Thanks,
> Mike
>
> Michael W. Carroll
> Professor of Law and Director,
> Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property
> American University, Washington College of Law
> Washington, D.C. 20016