Interests, Concerns and Knowledge Gaps around Open Licenses | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

"Scientists who publish their research in journals are typically eager for their work to be shared widely, and for that work to be reused to advance knowledge in their field or beyond. As part of this process, many researchers choose open licenses, like CC BY, for their papers. These licenses facilitate the broad reuse of scientific work.

While open licenses are commonly used in open-access publishing today, some of their impacts — particularly with respect to the accuracy of downstream use rights — are still unclear. Yet, the accuracy of downstream uses of a given work is among scientists’ greatest priorities when publishing; it stands to impact the way the public perceives a field, as well as the way they support it for years to come. 

In its own work with authors at the Science journals, the American Association for the Advancement of Science has heard from authors who did not feel comfortable approving select reuses of their work because they felt those reuses did not accurately represent their findings. In cases where those studies involved a publisher license and not an open license, as is the case for many studies at the Science family, AAAS has been able to intervene on behalf of the author and at their request. 

AAAS also receives direct requests to reproduce images in studies; some of these requests demonstrate that the entities that intend to reproduce them seek to do so even when the related journal content doesn’t support the intended use. AAAS can intervene when requests involve the reproduction of article content in ways that are not actually supported by the research findings.

AAAS’ experiences in these cases, combined with the growing use of open licenses, motivated us to undertake a survey of researchers. The goal of the survey was to evaluate researchers’ understanding of open license impacts, particularly with respect to the accuracy of downstream use rights, but where other impacts could result from the choice of license, too...."