[LINK] UK publicly funded research free to read

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

> Comment here:

Yes, a great find on resarch open-access, Kim. Although, one may ask
how far these 'open-access but CC-NC online rather than paper-journal'
resources actually *extend* access and use over-and-above traditional 
journals? One would assume the online versions are a part-way step to
open world access anyway, better than locked into expensive journals.

However, one would certainly wish to agree with the article you quote
Kim wherein it asserts, "It looks like the funding organizations that 
mandate open access need to be more specific in forbidding limited, non-
commercial licensing. If they don't, it may turn out that all those open 
access resources that are starting to appear will deliver rather less 
than the "full potential benefits of publicly-funded research" the UK 
government and others are hoping for." Yes, IP issues certainly appear
to be inappropriate regarding, especially, publically-funded research.


> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111214/02070517078/open-access-is-
spread> ing-is-it-really-open-access.shtml
> 
> > Open Access Is Spreading -- But Is It Really Open Access?
> >
> 
> > from the let's-do-this-properly dept
> >
> 
> > The latest big boost to open access has come from in UK government's
"Inn> ovation and research strategy for growth" (pdf), which says:
> >
> 
> > The Government, in line with our overarching commitment to 
transparency
a> nd open data, is committed to ensuring that publicly-funded research
should>  be accessible free of charge. Free and open access to taxpayer-
funded
rese> arch offers significant social and economic benefits by spreading
knowledge> , raising the prestige of UK research and encouraging 
technology transfer.
> At the moment, such research is often difficult to find and expensive to
ac> cess. This can defeat the original purpose of taxpayer-funded academic
rese> arch and limits understanding and innovation. We have already 
committed,
in>  our response to Ian Hargreaves’s review of intellectual property, to
fac> ilitate data mining of published research. This could have 
substantial
bene> fits, for example in tackling diseases. But we need to go much 
further if,
> as a nation, we are to gain the full potential benefits of publicly-
funded
> research.
> > That sounds like great news. But one of the leading proponents of
opennes> s in science, Peter Murray-Rust, thinks that the open access 
movement is
be> ing short-changed with existing open access publications. His concerns
aros> e when he attended the annual general meeting of the UK version of 
PubMed
C> entral, which is "a free full-text archive of biomedical and life 
sciences
> journal literature at the US National Institutes of Health's National
Libra> ry of Medicine (NIH/NLM)".
> > Here's what happened:
> >
> 
> > I was at the AGM of UK PubMedCentral last Monday and asked about the
Open>  Access subset of PMC – those papers where authors/funders have paid
larg> e amounts of money to ensure their papers are “Open Access”. I asked
ab> out the licence, fully expecting these to be all CC-BY and was 
appalled to
> hear that most of them were only available as CC-NC. This appears to be
nea> r universal – most major publishers only allow “Open Access” to be
CC> -NC.
> 
> >
> 
> > Very simply, this is a disaster.
> 
> >
> 
> > Because CC-NC gives the reader or re-user almost no additional rights.
Th> e author is paying anything up to 3000 currency units for something 
which
i> s little more than permission to put the article on their web page.
> > The issues surrounding the use of non-commercial licenses have been
discu> ssed on Techdirt before. Some people feel that open content 
released under
> a non-commercial license such as cc-nc is not really open, because you 
are
> severely limited in terms of what you can do with it. The Open Source
Defin> ition, for example, does not allow limitations of this kind. 
Others, by
con> trast, think that something is better than nothing, and that
non-commercial>  uses are important enough that cc-nc materials are still 
valuable.
> > Murray-Rust explains the problems of cc-nc in the field of science:
> >
> 
> > I and others have written at length on the restrictions imposed by NC.
NC>  forbids any commercial use. Commercial is not related to motivation –
pr> ofit/non-profit, etc. It is whether there is an exchange of some form 
of
go> ods. Among the things NC forbids are:
> 
> >
> 
> > Public text- and data-mining. A third party could make commercial use 
of
> the results
> 
> >
> 
> > Republication of diagrams, etc. in journals. Publication is a 
commercial
> act.
> 
> >
> 
> > Creation of learning materials. Students pay for their education.
> > The key thing here is that publishers have been paid for full open
access> , not a watered-down version, so there's no justification for 
holding back
> rights that reduce the scientific value of papers considerably. It looks
li> ke the funding organizations that mandate open access need to be more
speci> fic in forbidding limited, non-commercial licensing. If they 
don't, it may
> turn out that all those open access resources that are starting to 
appear
w> ill deliver rather less than the "full potential benefits of
publicly-funde> d research" the UK government and others are hoping for.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 2011/Dec/24, at 1:27 AM, stephen at melbpc.org.au wrote:
> 
> > UK to make publicly funded research free to read
> 
> >
> 
> > 09 December 2011 by Andrew Purcell
> 
> >
> 
> >
> 
> > All scientific research funded by British taxpayers will be made
> 
> > available online free of charge, according to a government report
> 
> > published earlier this week.
> 
> >
> 
> > And it doesn't stop there ˆ the government intends the website, to be
> 
> > named Gateway to Research, to eventually incorporate research funded 
by
> 
> > other bodies.
> >
> 
> > http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/innovation/docs/i/11-1387-
innovation-
> > and-research-strategy-for-growth.pdf
> 
> --
> 
> Kim Holburn
> IT Network & Security Consultant
> T: +61 2 61402408  M: +61 404072753
> mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
> skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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