Creative Commons licenses in scholarly and scientific

publishing – an idea whose time has come

Ronja Addams-MoringISCRAM2007 conference Round Table presentation

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Disclaimer• The views, interpretations and opinions

expressed in this presentation are mine • There certainly are similarities with some

other persons' views but that is not their responsibility

• Feel free to copy, distribute, criticize, ignore or form derivative opinions as you see fit

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Presentation outline

• Task analysis: What we researchers do• Requirements: What we need• Historical overview• Current practices• Choosing our approach• Which CC license(s) fit?

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Task analysis

• A simplified ”circle of life” of scientific-scholarly knowledge

1) Researcher A publishes a new result2) Based on A’s result, other researchers

create more new knowledge 3) Researcher A uses other researchers’

results as input for more research 4) The process repeats: Body of Knowledge

grows larger and better with each ”round”

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Requirements• The essential necessities

– Access to previous publications– Visibility of own work– Plus a multitude of things not addressed here

• Coffee!• Equipment!• Finding the relevant previous publications!• Funding• Colleagues, students and staff• etc

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Historical overview 1(3)• Before 1886 only national laws

– Problem: legal to print and sell e.g. a Belgian book in France without author’s permission

– Solution: international copyright conventions– New problem: public domain only alternative

• Copyright protects the form (wording, lay-out, typography, pictures, etc) for ca. 100 years

• Copyright does not protect ideas or solution principles (that’s what patents are for)

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Historical overview 2(3)• 1980ies: Richard M. Stallman: Emacs, GNU

– Problem: RMS shared source code with a friend who developed it, sold it and the buyer forbade RMS to use any of the friend’s code

– Solution: GNU GPL, first copyleft license• The copyleft innovation: share-alike

– The license sticks to the work and its derivatives forever (”strong copyleft”)

• Limitation of strong copyleft’s social acceptability: absolute, all-in-one, no degrees, no exceptions

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Historical overview 3(3)• Many other approaches; attempts to

remedy strong copyleft’s shortcomings• 2001 Creative Commons

– authors choose which rights they license • Meanwhile, the cost for university libraries

of offering journals has skyrocketed– 1986-2005: +302% serial expenditures (ARL)

• Economic possibilities of offering monographs are growing ever slimmer?

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Current practices• Scholarly and scientific publishers

– Many require that author gives away copyright– Each has own principles and practices– Each has own vocabulary (“dialect of legalese”)Author must learn all or check every time what (s)he

may do with own work• Creative Commons (CC) offers

– Author keeps copyright, licenses work to users– Standardized vocabulary & ready-made legal jargon– Well-known ”brand”– Easy enough user interface for author and user

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Example 1(4)• Springer, Natural Hazards (1st issue March 1988)• “An author

– may self-archive an author-created version of his/her article on his/her own website and his/her institution's repository, including his/her final version;

– …may not use the publisher's PDF version which is posted on www.springerlink.com. Furthermore, the author may only post his/her version

– provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com".”

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Example 2(4)• Blackwell Publishing, Disasters (1st issue March 1997)• “you may use the accepted version of the Article …

updated … after peer review…– you may share print or electronic copies of the Article with

colleagues;– you may use all or part of the Article and abstract, without

revision or modification, in personal compilations or other publications of your own work;

– you may use the Article within your employer’s institution or company for educational or research purposes, including use in course packs;

– 24 months after publication you may post an electronic version of the Article on your own personal website, on your employer’s website/repository and on free public servers in your subject area.”

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Example 3(4)• Journal of Homeland Security and Emergency

Management (1st issue May 2003); semi-open• “The following uses are always permitted to the

author(s) ... provided … does not alter the articles …:– Storage and back-up of the article … provided that the article

… is not readily accessible by persons other than the author(s);– Posting of the article on the author(s) personal website,

provided that the website is non-commercial;– Posting of the article on the internet as part of a non-

commercial open access institutional repository or other non-commercial open access publication site affiliated with the author(s)'s place of employment …;

– Posting of the article on a non-commercial course website for a course being taught by the author at the university or college employing the author.”

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Example 4(4)• Open Medicine (1st issue 18th April 2007)• “Open Medicine applies the Creative

Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike License …

• because … there should be no financial barriers to access to information that can benefit medical practice. … authors should retain copyright to the article they have worked so hard to produce.”

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What makes a great idea?• It is right, because• In case any of e.g. these apply

– Research is done with public funds– The results influences public spending– Research addresses the well-being of the

general public (medicine, social psychology, political science, ISCRAM…)

• Then that research should be fully public– Available to be freely utilized– Open to critical comments from all

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What makes a great idea?• It is (often) profitable, because• Open access to electronic versions

boosts sales of printed versions (National Academic Press, since 1994)

• Open access -> higher impact (JHSEM)• Problem: funding of some academic

societies • One solution: HTML is free, small(ish)

sum for ”neater” PDF (Amer. Scientist)

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What makes a great idea?

• It is fun! because1. It really annoys an established industry who

is making a lot of money2. It’s legal3. It gets you excited to get out of bed every

morning• John Buckman (2007) How to piss off the Music

Industry for Fun and Profit. PDF via: http://blogs.magnatune.com/buckman/2007/05/how_to_piss_off.html

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Choosing our approach• Why should we authorize anyone to ”hide” our

work? (Blackwell, Elsevier & Co.)• Why would we agree to keep track of N

different copyright systems?• Why would we pay or work extra to make our

work fully public? (Kluver, ACM & Co.)• Why do we require reader identification?

(ISCRAM, JHSEM & Co.)• What else needs to be considered?

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Which CC license(s) fit?

a) The individual researcherb) A professional community as publisherc) The scientific-scholarly community

• Attribution (by) – always included• NonCommercial (nc) – smart, realistic• ShareAlike (sa) or NoDerivatives (nd) –

that is the question

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My answer• I want my work to be used & I like to get paid• Therefore, this work is licensed under the

Creative Commons license Attribution Non-Commercial ShareAlike 3.0 Unported– Attribution form: Ronja Addams-Moring (2007)

”Creative Commons licenses in scholarly and scientific publishing – an idea whose time has come”. Round Table presentation 14th May at the ISCRAM2007 conference, Delft, NL, EU.

– The license terms are available via: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/deed.en

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What say you?• Each of us should make her or his own copyright/left

decisions (with co-authors, preferably before starting)• Our decisions should be documented in such a manner

that others can easily understand them: therefore CC? ISCRAM conferences may need two CC licenses in the

future: by+nc for all, plus a choise: sa or nd

• Thank you for your time! Let’s talk more during these conference days.

• http://www.iki.fi/~ronja/• http://no-fate-but-what-we-make.blogspot.com/ • ronja [at] iki [dot] fi ; skype: ronja-am

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See for yourself, starters• http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/meet-the-licenses• Hal Abelson on MIT Open Courseware:

http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/hicss_40/Abelson-HICSS.ppt• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyleft• Ethical background: Steven Levy (1984)

Hackers. Dell Publishing, New York, NY, USA. ISBN: 0-440-13405-6.