August 14 Creative Commons Policy Roundup

[Timothy Vollmer]

Half of all research free to read online

A recent study published as a PeerJ preprint showed that 47% of scientific research papers were legally available to read for free somewhere on the web. Around half the papers being accessed were published in the past 2 years. The study also corroborated the open access. It found that OA articles receive 18% more citations than average. Says Barbara Fister, in Inside Higher Ed: 

There seem to be certain things that people want and have come to expect: to be able to read research without a hassle, to be able to share their own research without having to ask permission, and to be able to develop new ways to understand what the research is telling us without endless legal roadblocks. These things can only happen if research is open access.

No-brainer confirmed: text mining works better with full text access

Researchers analyzed more than 15 million scientific articles published in English from 1823 to 2016. After creating two databases of those articles—one of full-text and one of abstracts—the researchers directly compared the results of mining either. Text mining full research articles gave consistently better results than text mining abstracts. In one example test, the authors identified far more associations between genes and a variety of diseases from the full-text articles than the abstracts—potentially creating a treasure trove of ideas for future research targets.

Elsevier gobbles up Bepress

Publishing giant Elsevier has acquired Bepress, a company focusing on academic publishing software and scholarly communications started in Berkeley in 1999. The move is being criticized by some in the scholarly publishing community. TechDirt calls it a "shrewd acquisition": 

It continues to move [Elsevier] beyond the role of a traditional publisher into one that can offer a complete solution for the academic world, with products and services handling every aspect of scholarly work. By acquiring more and more parts of this solution, Elsevier can integrate them ever-more tightly, which will encourage users of one element to adopt others. If this process of integration can be carried out successfully, it will leave Elsevier with almost total control of the sector, beyond even today's already profitable position.

This purchase is yet another indication of the shift in publishing companies focusing on selling services to authors, instead of just access to content. Roger Schonfeld observes:

To think beyond the work and role of the library it is vital that librarians and library leaders take the perspective of the scholars and the university, not that of our own background and training...In doing so, we must guard against taking a collections perspective. For example, when Ithaka S+R examined the practices and needs of academic chemists several years ago, we found substantial needs for assistance with data management. These chemists were not principally interested in data preservation or data sharing, which is the essence of many library data management initiatives and is essentially collections-centric. Rather, they needed help managing data as it is gathered and in support of its analysis, involving normalization and organization, among other functions.

More university pushback against incumbent publishing practices

A coalition of German universities are threatening to cancel their big deal agreements with Elsevier. Says one of the chief negotiators on behalf of the schools: "Comprehensive, free and – above all – sustainable access to scientific publications is of immense importance to our researchers. We therefore will actively pursue the transformation to open access, which is an important building block in the concept of open science." Also, Aarhus University in Denmark is reviewing how it manages its intellectual outputs. They want to "shift away from patenting research conducted in partnership with the private sector to pursue an open science model."

NAFTA kicks off re-negotiations in Washington, D.C. this week

We’ve been tracking the NAFTA discussions and doing some organising in anticipation of the first round of negotiations that are happening this week in Washington, D.C. A coalition of orgs has drafted a statement on digital issues and transparency in NAFTA. It’s now final and is open for endorsements. If you want to endorse it please do so using the link above, and you can also forward the link to other groups who might be interested.

Senate Democrats call for improved transparency and public input into NAFTA negotiations

Senate Democrats released a policy proposal called "A Better Deal on Trade and Jobs". It includes new transparency and public input provisions, including the following two points: 

"Revamp the Trade Advisory Committees. For too long, USTR trade advisory committees have been captured by large corporations and their teams of lobbyists. U.S. businesses small and large, unions, and public interest groups must all be given meaningful opportunities to provide their views in the negotiating process. To that end, the industry trade advisory committees should be revamped to represent a broad swath of interest and limit the current influence of multinational corporations. USTR should publish all of their NAFTA meetings with stakeholders. Additionally, USTR trade advisory committees should be led by businesses and organizations that support strong labor, environmental, and public health standards in trade agreements, and have not used or sought to use the investor-state dispute settlement mechanisms to undermine U.S. sovereignty or regulatory standards. 

"Negotiate in an open, transparent process. The public should regularly be given detailed information about the negotiations so that they know what is at stake at every step of the way. U.S. Trade Representative’s staff should hold town hall meetings open to the public in at least 10 different states to discuss specific NAFTA priorities before draft text can be finalized. The American people and Congress must know what the administration seeks to achieve in the agreement before and throughout the negotiations. 

Canada should hold the line for balance in IP in NAFTA talks

Writes Michael Geist: 

"As the country embarks on a new round of NAFTA talks, it should be recognized that Ottawa already meets its international obligations when it comes to respect for copyright and patents, and has largely addressed long-standing US demands regarding additional reforms [...] At a broad level, the Canadian negotiating goal should be to retain an appropriate balance, one that fosters creativity and access while ensuring that there is room for Canadian-specific policies that sit within the flexibilities of the international IP framework.

Advocates urge for flexible fair use in South Africa

Sean Flynn writes about the progress of the copyright reform efforts in South Africa. Law reform advocates are calling for the adoption of a flexible fair use right. Such a right "would authorise any fair use of a copyrighted work, not just uses for prescribed purposes like criticism and review. The reason this is important is that, in the digital world we live in today, there are an increasing number of technological uses that are fair in that they do they do not substitute for the work in the market but that are not for traditional purposes like criticism."

ALA report: U.S. Copyright Office should stay within the Library of Congress

In March the House of Representatives introduced a bill that would alter the role of the Register of Copyrights, and possibly the future of the Copyright Office itself. H.R. 1695, the Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act of 2017, bill would give the President—not the Librarian of Congress—the power to appoint the Register of Copyrights. The position would be subject to Senate confirmation and would last for a term of 10 years (with the possibility of renewal). The American Library Association has produced an interesting report that shows that over the years Congress has repeatedly reconsidered where to situate the Copyright Office, and consistently reaffirmed that the Library of Congress is its most effective and efficient home. The report finds that Congress has examined this issue at roughly 20-year intervals, declining to separate the Copyright Office and Library each time. 

FASTR back on the table in Congress
Both the House and Senate have reintroduced the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR). The bill, which has been introduced in several past years, requires federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to the research articles stemming from that funding within 6-12 months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.