Re: Open Access

["Michael Carroll" <Carroll@law.villanova.edu>]

Peter,

In the post below you write, "Personally, I think that something like the
Creative Commons License would be disaster for authors, publishers, and
librarians, since it affords no protection against the misstatement,
exploitation, and diffusion of a work."

How so?  Like any other copyright license, a Creative Commons license
permits certain uses of the copyrighted work.  All other uses are reserved
exclusively to the copyright owner.  There is a menu of Creative Commons
licenses.  The copyright owner can choose to permit commercial uses or
restrict the licensee to non-commercial use.  Similarly, the copyright
owner can choose whether to permit the creation of derivative works or
not, and, if derivative works are permitted, the licensor can demand that
the derivative work also be licensed under the same terms as the
underlying work.

Hardly a disaster.

Regards,  

Michael W. Carroll
Associate Professor of Law
Villanova University School of Law
299 N. Spring Mill Road
Villanova, PA 19085
610-519-7088 (voice)
610-519-5672 (fax)
Research papers at 
http://ssrn.com/author=330326 

See also www.creativecommons.org

>>> pbanks@diabetes.org 2/27/2005 7:19:52 PM >>>

I am pleased to see that, having reached what I thought was a very
unexciting middle age, I (along with other seemingly solid citizens) have
become a member of a "gang." That would be the "DC Principles Gang," which
I guess is like the Bloods or Crips of Scholarly Publishing. How exciting!
I await delivery of my motorcycle.

Seriously, Mr. Crawford faults our gang for asserting ("with no evidence
at all") that we feel using Google to link to publishers' Websites would
be of more benefit to patients than the NIH repository. He's right--our
stance wasn't evidence-based. However, if we are going to go by the
standard of evidence-based science, then virtually nothing from the gospel
of Open Access or its prolific proponents, Peter Suber and Rick Johnson,
is evidence-based, either. Please show me the evidence for the central
tenet of the OA crusade: that open access would speed research and enhance
patient care. It sounds logical and may be true, but it is not a
conclusion that emerges from any kind of evidence.

Our gang is also faulted for claiming, "that the PubMed Central version
will be "an unedited version."  This is a simple statement of fact. The
NIH policy requires submission of the "author's final manuscript, " which
is defined as "the final version accepted for journal publication,"--that
is, after peer review but BEFORE editing. Mr. Crawford may not think
copyediting amounts to much (in clinical medicine, it certainly does), but
it is NIH policy to post the unedited version of manuscripts.

Although I always enjoy a writer like Mr. Crawford who's passionate enough
about his subject to bang a few heads around--including my own--hasn't
enough gasoline been poured on the Open Access fire already? Rather than
employing our energies for rhetorical excess, as I myself am prone to do,
why don't use them to solve some of the problems arising from the NIH
plan? For example, there is the question of copyright. Personally, I think
that something like the Creative Commons License would be disaster for
authors, publishers, and librarians, since it affords no protection
against the misstatement, exploitation, and diffusion of a work. On the
other hand, a traditional "give us your firstborn child" copyright
transfer doesn't work, either, in a time when authors have a legitimate
need to post their work in institutional or personal archives (and in the
NIH repository) and to use the work for educational purposes or to promote
further scholarship. Surely there is a middle-ground compromise that
respects the needs of authors while also protecting the investment
publishers make in bringing the author's work to press. I would welcome a
suggestion of appropriate language for a copyright agreement.

Peter Banks
Publisher
American Diabetes Association
1701 North Beauregard Street
Alexandria, VA 22311
703/299-2033
FAX 703/683-2890
Email: pbanks@diabetes.org