Researchers opt to limit uses of open-access publications : Nature News & Comment

"Academics are — slowly — adopting the view that publicly funded research should be made freely available. But data released yesterday suggest that, given the choice, even researchers who publish in open-access journals want to place restrictions on how their papers can be re-used — for example, sold by others for commercial profit. That stance is directly opposed to the views of major funding agencies, such as the seven UK research councils and the Wellcome Trust in London, one of the world's wealthiest biomedical charities. Advocates of open access say this shows that researchers don’t understand how publishing licences affect ‘open’ research papers, and that more work needs to be done to explain why licences matter. But some publishers argue that restrictions are needed...  One piece of evidence on researchers’ opinions comes from the open-access journal Scientific Reports, which since July 2012 has been offering researchers a choice of three types of licence. One is CC-BY. A more restrictive version, CC-BY-NC-SA, lets others remix, tweak and build on work if they give credit to the original author, but only for non-commercial (NC) purposes, and only if they license what they produce under the same terms (SA, or 'share-alike’). A third licence, CC-BY-NC-ND, is the most restrictive, allowing others to download and share work, but not to change it in any way (ND, ‘no derivative works’), or use it commercially.  The journal’s publisher, Nature Publishing Group (which also publishes Nature) yesterday revealed that of 685 papers accepted between July 2012 and mid-January 2013, authors chose either of the more restrictive licences 95% of the time — and the most restrictive, CC-BY-NC-ND, 68% of the time. In November 2012, the publishers wondered whether the ND licence might be most popular because it was the middle option listed on the copyright form. They changed the order, putting the ND licence first — only to find that even more researchers began to choose this option..."