Better Sharing Through Licenses? Measuring the Influence of Creative Commons Licenses on the Usage of Open Access Monographs
abernard102@gmail.com 2015-03-18
Summary:
Use the link to access the full text article from JISC. "Introduction Open Access and licenses are closely intertwined. Both Creative Commons (CC) and Open
Access seek to restore the balance between the owners of creative works and prospective users. Apart from the
legal issues around CC licenses, we could look at role of intermediaries whose work is enabled through CC
licenses. Does licensing documents under Creative Commons increase access and reuse in a direct way, or is
access and reuse amplified by intermediaries? OAPEN Library and DOAB The OAPEN Library contains
books available under both open licenses, for example Creative Commons, as well as books that are published
under terms that only allow for personal use. The Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) functions as an
intermediary, offering aggregation services exclusively focused on books with an open license. Methods
Downloads are used as a proxy for the use of books in the OAPEN Library. The data set that this paper
analyses data that was captured over a period of 33 months. During this time, 1734 different books were made
available through the OAPEN Library: 855 books under a Creative Commons license and 879 books under
a more restrictive regime. The influence of open licenses, aggregation in DOAB, and subject and language are
evaluated. results Once the effects of subject and language are taken into account, there is no evidence that
making books available under open licenses results in more downloads than making books available under
licenses that only allow for personal use. Yet, additional aggregation in the DOAB has a large positive effect
on the number of times a book is downloaded. Conclusion The application of open licenses to books does
not, on its own, lead to more downloads. However, open licenses pave the way for intermediaries to offer new
discovery and aggregation services. These services play an important role by amplifying the impacts of open
access licensing in the case of scholarly books."