Re: [c4lj-articles] Re: Licensing: A Plan of Sorts

[Jonathan Rochkind]

[Redirected to open discuss list]

Thanks for prodding us to move forward on this, Emily. Is this an
official plan then?

I think the proposal was to require all authors to license their article
under CC-BY, and to encourage them to consider an open source code
license of their choice for any significant code included (otherwise the
code too will be included under the CC-BY).

So, if this is to become official journal policy (perhaps we should vote
on _this_ on the spreadsheet :) ), the only unanswered question in my
mind is, how do we ensure that the authors have applied such licensing?
Is an email from one of the authors sufficient? Do we need boilerplate
text? Do we need to keep a copy of the actual email around, rather than
just recording that we received such an email?

Any suggestions?

Jonathan

Emily Lynema wrote:
> I added a column to the Accepted Articles spreadsheet as a place where
> we could start trying to track licenses granted by authors.
>
> -emily
>
> Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
>
>> Since we _generally_ have only code snippets, and not actually complete
>> programs, I think it would actually work to have them just licensed by
>> CC too, even though it's not really designed for code.
>>
>> So, yeah, I think you raise a good point about us not wanting to make
>> authors go through beaurocratic nightmare with institutions on licensing
>> by your code. I think it might work to say: Your article and any
>> attached code NEED to be licensed CC-BY. We _encourage_ you to attach
>> an open source code license of your choice to the code itself seperately
>> instead of CC-BY for the code, but that is not required.
>>
>> If this is our policy, the next thing we need is a way to make sure
>> we've secured these permissions from the authors, to track this and
>> record this somewhere. Without it being a pain for us. For the code
>> licenses, I guess we'd also need to make sure to advertise in the
>> article on an article-by-article basis what the code license is.
>>
>> Jonathan
>>
>> Andrew Darby wrote:
>>
>>> The CC-BY is the one required by DOAJ.
>>>
>>> I am recommending that, I suppose, since I think it's all or nothing
>>> if we wish to be recognised by this SPARC Europe program. You can't
>>> really be "open access--except for those two articles."
>>>
>>> While it might be nice to be able to go and sell your article later to
>>> someone else, is this a realistic possibility?
>>>
>>> With the code, it occurs to me now, you might have an issue where
>>> someone has to ask permission from their institution to attach a
>>> license, which might be a big problem. Maybe if they don't want to do
>>> that, we could just stick in some "as is" info at the top, like from
>>> the GPL:
>>>
>>> Copyright 2008 Joe Blow
>>> This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
>>> WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
>>> MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
>>>
>>> Andrew
>>>
>>> On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 10:31 AM, Jonathan Rochkind <roch...@jhu.edu> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Thanks for the research, Andrew.
>>>>
>>>> Is the CC-BY license the one that was reccommended/requested by the DOAJ
>>>> project too?
>>>>
>>>> Are you reccommending that we require all authors to license their text
>>>> under a particular CC license, rather than give them options of some
>>>> sort? Originally I thought that it was okay to give authors the
>>>> _option_ of not in fact CC licensing, but _only_ licensing the journal
>>>> to publish it (not licensing the journal's audience to re-use it in any
>>>> particular way). While I still like the idea of letting the authors do
>>>> what they will with it (including making money by selling the article at
>>>> a later date)---now I'm starting to realize (in part from the DOAJ
>>>> arguments) that maybe we DO need to require a CC license to make our
>>>> journal as useful as it could be. Thoughts?
>>>>
>>>> Jonathan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Andrew Darby wrote:
>>>> > Hi, all. I poked around a bit, consulted my old boss Charles W.
>>>> > Bailey (who compiles the rather exhaustive Scholarly Electronic
>>>> > Publishing Bibliography), and it seems to me that a Creative Commons
>>>> > license for the text is a reasonable course. You're probably familiar
>>>> > with the CC licenses [1], but just in case, there are a number of
>>>> > different options, with different levels of restrictiveness, from the
>>>> > very open ("by", where one can do anything they like with the item, so
>>>> > long as they attribute the original creator), to the quite closed
>>>> > ("by-nc-nd", which allows redistribution and nothing else).
>>>> >
>>>> > Since an embarrassing mashup of someone's article doesn't really make
>>>> > sense, and fair use would dictate that people could use portions of it
>>>> > anyway (with attribution), I don't really see the downside to the most
>>>> > liberal license, cc-by. Although I guess someone could put up a
>>>> > Code4Evil site, with an exact duplication of all the Journal's
>>>> > contents, but with orange text on a cyan background.
>>>> >
>>>> > The upside is, a) I think this sort of license is in tune with the
>>>> > spirit of the Code4Lib community, and b) it is the level of license
>>>> > required for the SPARC Europe Seal (and, presumably, would meet the
>>>> > conditions of any forthcoming North American equivalent).
>>>> >
>>>> > That's for the text; there's also the code. Presumably all code that
>>>> > is included inline would be covered by the CC license--but they don't
>>>> > recommend a CC license for code:
>>>> >
>>>> > "Creative Commons licenses are not intended to apply to software. They
>>>> > should not be used for software. We strongly encourage you to use one
>>>> > of the very good software licenses available today." [2]
>>>> >
>>>> > Since inline code is not software (?), maybe that's okay, but we might
>>>> > also occasionally include code as a downloadable file. If the author
>>>> > doesn't attach a license to this code, does the CC license cascade
>>>> > down, a la CSS? What if this code with no license, but appearing on
>>>> > the Code4Lib Journal website, blows up someone's server or unleashes a
>>>> > deadly virus on the Intranet? Is the Journal and/or it's editorial
>>>> > committee at risk of being sued? Of course, this is a far-fetched
>>>> > scenario, but I know if I were to ask my dad (a retired law prof),
>>>> > it's just such improbable doomsday scenarios that would spring to his
>>>> > mind. (Like when we bought a house, and the first question he asked
>>>> > was how close was the nearest fire hydrant.)
>>>> >
>>>> > So, I'd say we go for the CC-BY license, and ask that people attach
>>>> > some sort of license (MIT, GNU, whatever) to any external files we
>>>> > host. If this is agreeable, I'd suggest for issue 4, we include
>>>> > something about this in emails of acceptance, and put something up on
>>>> > the website.
>>>> >
>>>> > So, those are my few cents. I'm no expert! Feel free to disagree.
>>>> >
>>>> > Andrew
>>>> >
>>>> > [1] http://creativecommons.org/about/license/
>>>> > [2] http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Can_I_use_a_Creative_Commons_license_for_software.3F
>>>> > Although there is a CC-GPL license available . . . .
>>>> >
>>>> > >
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Jonathan Rochkind
>>>> Digital Services Software Engineer
>>>> The Sheridan Libraries
>>>> Johns Hopkins University
>>>> 410.516.8886
>>>> rochkind (at) jhu.edu
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> >
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>
> >
>

--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu

[Edward M. Corrado]

I think we have a couple of issues. One is trying to get permission to license articles from back issues. The next is dealing with future articles.

For the latter, we can make it official journal policy. I think then we need to have some sort of form that people fill out agreeing to the license before anything is published. I'm happy enough to have this done electronically via a Web form of some sort, although I guess a print copy would be better, but that brings up a whole different can of worms. Maybe this is worth asking other journal editors how they do this. I know I had to agree to an open access license for an article in ISTL and I'm pretty sure I didn't do any "on paper" agreement.  Once we decide ona   method for this, we can go back and ask if we can relicense the articles from previous authors

I have a question about the software code license. Will it cause an issue if it is licensed under something other then CC-BY for DOAJ? I think we are then asking for dual licensed code if we suggest they use another license for code, aren't we? If so, is this an issue? It may be for some people. I guess as long as only snippets are included, they can link off-site to the full code that is only licensed GPL (or whatever license they choose).

Edward

[Jonathan Rochkind]

Hm, re the dual-licensing issue, is it in fact a problem if we say it's
dual licensed? The entire article will be licensed CC-BY, including
code. We encourage you to ALSO provide an open source license if you
have significant code (probably not neccesary just for a few snippets).

Is this a problem? Are there reasons NOT to license code under CC-BY?

Another easy way to handle this is that CC-BY won't apply to any
"attachments" that we have on our ftp server, but only to actual inline
examples, as part of the article. I think that would be fine with the
SPARC/DOAJ thing.

But snippets in the article probably HAVE to be included under the CC-BY
license for the article--and this in fact makes sense to me. The point
of the CC-BY license for the article is to make it clear that the
article can be reproduced in full. To say the article can be reproduced
but you have to omit all the code excerpts would be annoying. So it
makes sense to me that at least for the actual in-line article itself,
it's all CC-BY. It seems reasonable to say that the CC-BY doesn't apply
to any attachments.

Jonathan

[Jonathan Rochkind]

I think what a CC-BY license attached to code would mean is that you're
authorized to reproduce the code, in source form. To reproduce the
source. It wouldn't neccessarily license you to actually _use_ the
code, or modify the code, which is why actual open source licensing
would be encouraged. But I don't think there's neccesarily a problem
with "dual license", with licensing the code under CC-BY too. Because,
after all, even baring an actual open source license, at a minimum, as
an attachment to an article in our open access journal, it makes sense
to say that people can reproduce the source code examples.

Jonathan

[Edward M. Corrado]

Thanks Jonathan. I think my understanding is the same as yours.

Edward

[Jodi Schneider]

On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 11:18 AM, Edward M. Corrado <ecor...@ecorrado.us> wrote:

I think we have a couple of issues. One is trying to get permission to license articles from back issues. The next is dealing with future articles.

I think we can ask assigned editors to request licensing from back issues. If we don't get it, that's ok, but it's worth asking.

For the latter, we can make it official journal policy. I think then we need to have some sort of form that people fill out agreeing to the license before anything is published. I'm happy enough to have this done electronically via a Web form of some sort, although I guess a print copy would be better, but that brings up a whole different can of worms. Maybe this is worth asking other journal editors how they do this. I know I had to agree to an open access license for an article in ISTL and I'm pretty sure I didn't do any "on paper" agreement.

As for best practices, there are some best practice guides and listservs/fora listed on the OpenAccess Directories wiki:
http://oad.simmons.edu/oadwiki/Main_Page
Perhaps someone can take the lead on finding out how other journals do it?
 

  Once we decide ona   method for this, we can go back and ask if we can relicense the articles from previous authors

/me nods

-Jodi

[Jonathan Rochkind]

I think that it won't be much of a problem to get permission from past
authors. But we'll see.

But yeah, someone needs to take the lead on pushing this through to
actual Journal policy/practice. I suppose if noone else does, it could
be me. I have no assigned articles this issue accidentally, but that
ended up good because I needed a break cause I was getting burnt out and
super busy at work! But I suppose I can add coordinating this "figure
out what to do with open access" project on to my plate too, if nobody
else is interested in taking the lead to keep moving it forward.

Jonathan

--

[Jonathan Rochkind]

Ha, and humorously enough, the only links to useful 'best practice'
guides I could find off that page were... not themselves available open
access. :)

Also, I'd plug that a non-editor that is interested in coordinating this
'implementation' project potentialy could. If this strikes the fancy of
a reader interested in helping out with the journal who isn't on the
editorial committee, raise your hand and say so.

Jonathan

--

[Jodi Schneider]

Where are we with the CC project?

I went to a great talk by Vicky Reich from LOCKSS today, and it looks like posting CC licensing (when we're there) will also make us LOCKSS compliant:
http://www.lockss.org/lockss/For_Publishers#Making_Your_Titles_LOCKSS_Compliant

-Jodi