Re: using Creative Commons licences

[Sandy Thatcher <sgt3@psu.edu>]

Under the Creative Commons license, what constitutes a 
"commercial" purpose? Suppose another non-profit journal wants to 
republish the article? Suppose no money is involved in any way, 
i.e., the journal is offered open access. Is this ok because it 
is putatively "noncommercial"? Suppose further that this is a 
startup OA journal that is trying to build a reputation by 
stealing first-class articles from other journals without 
contributing to the cost of peer review? It provides a service by 
further distribution of the article, perhaps to different 
audiences than the original journal normally reaches, and the 
article has already passed the peer-review hurdle.

Or take another example. Suppose a scholar wants to put together 
a collection of top articles on the subject and includes articles 
from this journal in the anthology, publishes it through a 
non-profit society or university press, and accepts no royalty 
payment. Is this "noncommercial" or "commercial?"

What does this distinction really mean in today's world?

Sandy Thatcher
Penn State University Press


> [from Knowledgespeak Newsletter, Dec 11 2007]
>
> NPG to publish genomes using Creative Commons licence - 11 Dec 2007
>
> Scientific publisher Nature Publishing Group (NPG)
> <http://npg.nature.com/>, UK, has announced that is introducing a
> Creative Commons licence for original research articles
> publishing the primary sequence of an organism's genome for the
> first time in any of the Nature journals.
>
> The Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0
> Unported licence will enable researchers to freely share and
> adapt the work, provided the original is attributed and not used
> for commercial purposes, and that any resulting work is
> distributed under a similar licence. No publication fees will be
> applicable, and the articles will be available free of charge.
>
> Nature Publishing Group has published first reports on many
> significant publicly-funded genome sequencing and analysis
> projects, most notably the human genome, published in Nature in
> February 2001. Wherever possible, NPG will apply the Creative
> Commons Attribution-Non- Commercial-Share Alike licence
> retrospectively to original research articles reporting novel
> primary genome-wide sequences that have previously been published
> in Nature journals. Only original research articles publishing
> the primary sequence of an organism's genome for the first time
> will be offered to users under the Creative Commons licence.
>
> Molecular Systems Biology, an open access journal published
> jointly by NPG and the European Molecular Biology Organisation
> (EMBO), announced in October that it will offer all authors the
> option of publishing articles under the Creative Commons
> Attribution -Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence.
>
> All other articles published by the Nature journals will remain
> under NPG's existing licensing and copyright agreements. Under
> these agreements authors of original research articles retain
> their copyright, giving NPG an exclusive licence-to publish.
>
> ************************************
>
> William W. Armstrong
> Sciences Collection Development Coordinator
> Chemistry Librarian
> Liaison to Physics & Astronomy
> Middleton Library
> Louisiana State University
> Email: notwwa@lsu.edu