Fwd: Permission of a paper's figure

[Cody Hinchliff]

Did y’all see this request yet?

Hope you’re all doing well!!

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Laura Iliana Fuentes Lopez <laura....@macmillaneducation.com>
Date: Thu, Nov 1, 2018 at 5:47 PM
Subject: Permission of a paper's figure
To: cody.hi...@gmail.com <cody.hi...@gmail.com>
CC: Cinthya Sainz Villegas <cynthi...@macmillaneducation.com>

Dear Cody E. Hinchliff,

I write from Macmillan Education publishing house. We are editing a book of Biology for high school students of México. The authors want to use a figure from the article “Synthesis of phylogeny and taxonomy into a comprehensive tree of life”, published in PNAS (http://www.pnas.org/content/112/41/12764/tab-figures-data), as an example of the result of a phylogenetic study related with the evolution of species. The image is the circle A of figure 1. I hope we can get your permission to use it. We would really appreciate it. Thank you!

Regards from Mexico

Iliana Fuentes

Asistente Editorial de Bachillerato

T  (55) 5482-2200 ext. 2924

laura....@macmillaneducation.com

www.macmillan.com.mx

 

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[Jonathan Rees]

Thanks Cody. I didn't see it.

The terms between PNAS and the author are sort of twisted. They didn't use the CC license the way you are supposed to.

http://www.pnas.org/page/subscriptions/open-access
http://blog.pnas.org/PNAS_CC_BY_NC_ND_License.pdf

The authors retain copyright but have agreed to PNAS's requirement that they license the work CC-BY-NC-ND.  Of course this license is useless to almost everyone, because NC is extremely vague, and ND doesn't allow particular passages or figures to be separated from the rest of the article.

But I don't see anything in PNAS's terms that prohibits dual licensing.  By my reading, PNAS permits us to license the work (or our individual contribution to it) under CC-BY 4.0, or under pretty much any license we want.

There is a clause that seems to have the intent of making use of the work by the authors subject to CC-BY-NC-ND, but relicensing (which is the right you get by holding the copyright, which we do) is not a use of a work, so it is not restricted by this clause.

There is also a clause about the license being CC-BY if the funder required that, but I don't think they did.

Can someone check my legal work? I don't want to have to hire a lawyer (although it's clearly PNAS's intent that I should!). Remember that what's important is what they say, not what they intend.

Under this theory, if all of us proclaim a second license (CC-BY), then everyone, not just this particular requestor, will benefit. The mechanism for letting people know about the new CC-BY 4.0 license would be a short announcement in any suitable public forum, such as the taxacom list or the New York Times :)

Short of unanimous licensing by all authors, if some subgroup of the authors wants to claim copyright to parts such as figures, and license those parts, I certainly have no objection - whether or not I have any standing to object, or whether or not the practice is sound.

Jonathan

[Cody H]

Thanks for researching that Jonathan.

I am certainly fine with proclaiming a second (less restrictive) license, if that is a reasonable thing to do. I don’t have the bandwidth or expertise to confirm Jonathan’s legal analysis though.

Anybody else have thoughts?

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[Jonathan Rees]

There is another legal theory, which is that the figure presents factual information (is not 'creative expression') and is therefore not subject to copyright.

In this case, the figure can simply be used without obtaining permission, as it is public domain, and there are no rights to be licensed. None of us has to, or can, do anything. (I assume Mexican copyright law is compatible with US law on this point, but have not checked it.)

Jonathan

[Karen Cranston]

I just fielded a similar query, and my assessment is the same as Jonathan's. What PNAS does is confusing, but the authors do retain copyright and therefore we can re-license as CC-BY. 

Do you want me to respond to this request?

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[Cody H]

Hi Karen,

That would be great if you are willing to do so.

[Hilmar Lapp]

The only problem that I can see here is the question on what you actually have the copyright on. Is it the final published article for which you have the copyright? Then yes, you should be allowed to redistribute that under a new license as you wish, unless (as some publishers have you do) you signed an agreement with the publisher agreeing that you would not do so. So, in the agreement you signed, did you agree to license the copy _only_ in this way, or in this way for the purposes of PNAS’ journals?

  -hilmar

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Hilmar Lapp -:- genome.duke.edu -:- lappland.io