Licensing Controversy — Balancing Author Rights with Societal Good « The Scholarly Kitchen

"Requirements for a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license for scholarly papers are based on the societal good that unfettered reuse provides. This public good, however, must be weighed against the interests of the research community, particularly the rights of authors. While much of the discussion about the recent UK House of Lords Select Committee hearing on open access focused on embargo periods, the submitted written comments bring to light a strong level of concern over demands for a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license for scholarly papers. The list of concerns is lengthy, but here are a few highlights: [1] As noted by a cohort of history journal editors recently, the CC-BY license raises questions of lost revenue for authors and worries about scholarly integrity. [2] I have previously suggested that CC-BY will result in lost revenues for journals, shifting the financial burden to the research community, rather than putting on those seeking to profit from reuse of journal articles. [3] CC-BY licensing terms are a difficult match for journals that require reproduction of previously copyrighted material (art journals, literary analysis journals, and review journals of all sorts). Although it is possible to include differently licensed material within a CC-BY article, this can be confusing for readers, potentially expensive for authors to secure permissions, and worrisome in that it may possibly make the author and publisher liable for damages if the work is illegally redistributed. More details on this at about the 8 minute mark of this talk. [4] Disturbing scenarios have been raised in which CC-BY could lead to violations of researcher ethics and patient consent laws... It’s also unclear if CC-BY truly 'removes any doubt or ambiguity as to what can be done with papers.'  Taking a look at journals that currently offer articles under a CC-BY license, all have Terms and Conditions required for use of their websites. These Terms and Conditions often contradict the unfettered reuse offered by the CC-BY license. In the case of Elsevier and Wiley, it appears that there is one standard set of Terms and Conditions used for all journal websites regardless of license. Contradictions with the CC-BY license abound, but may just be an oversight in need of an updated terms and conditions page for these types of articles. I am not a lawyer, but this seems ambiguous to me — if not corrected, do the CC-BY license terms supersede those of the journal?  Even PLoS and BioMedCentral, which exclusively use CC-BY licenses, require reuse restrictions. PLoS forbids the user from emailing 'any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, promotional materials, ‘junk mail,’ ‘spam,’ ‘chain letters,’ ‘pyramid schemes,’ or any other form of solicitation.' It would seem then, that harvesting author email addresses for mailing lists, a commercial reuse of articles allowed under the CC-BY license, is prohibited. Similarly, BioMedCentral states that, 'Collecting these [corresponding author] email addresses for commercial use is not permitted.'  Further, the user is prohibited from using any PLoS site for any 'unauthorized purpose.' That sounds an awful lot like the publisher permission the RCUK was hoping to avoid.  Many of these journal site terms are in the best interests of authors. No one wants more spam. But the CC-BY license is not about what’s best for authors — it’s about unlimited reuse of the authors’ work. That may mean the development of an incredibly valuable tool for researchers. Unfortunately, it also may mean crass commercial exploitation by an unsavory entity looking to flood your mailbox with scams. Such are the tradeoffs of using such a blunt instrument as CC-BY.  For a funding agency, the value that CC-BY offers needs careful analysis, rather than being automatically assumed. The Nature Publishing Group already charges authors an additional fee for the use of a CC-BY license, ranging from $200-$500, depending on the journal. This serves to replace the revenue brought in by secondary rights licensing, revenue that currently subsidizes the article processing charge for non-CC-BY articles. I’ve heard through the grapevine that similar options are coming soon from many other publishers in response to CC-BY requirements.  Are the funding agency’s gains from the CC-BY license worth paying an additional $500 per paper that could instead be used to fund further research? Is providing free raw material for a company in San Francisco or