Version 1.1 of the definition has been released. Please help updating it, contribute translations, and help us with the design of logos and buttons to identify free cultural works and licenses!

Editing Elements of journal freedom

Jump to navigation Jump to search

Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.

The edit can be undone. Please check the comparison below to verify that this is what you want to do, and then publish the changes below to finish undoing the edit.

Latest revision Your text
Line 3: Line 3:
In short:
In short:


* in our society, there is no way to ''eliminate'' (the right to) commercial usage and profit (or otherwise cancel the power of money): they are granted automatically and cannot be destroyed,<ref>As Pam Chestek put it [https://propertyintangible.com/2020/03/template-15.html This Is Why You Don't Call It "Intellectual Property"], hoping that no new exclusive rights will not be created is like hoping that the sun won't rise tomorrow. You can write it in a contract too, but it won't help much.</ref> so you can only fragment and distribute them as much as possible or needed;
* in our society, there is no way to ''eliminate'' (the right to) commercial usage and profit (or otherwise cancel the power of money): they are granted automatically and cannot be destroyed, so you can only fragment and distribute them as much as possible or needed;
* there are also few legal and technical ways to ensure your work is "owned" forever by its scientific community (i.e. that it stays in the commons), while there are many ways it can become private property of someone to the exclusion of others.
* there are also few legal and technical ways to ensure your work is "owned" forever by its scientific community (i.e. that it stays in the commons), while there are many ways it can become private property of someone to the exclusion of others.


Line 17: Line 17:
* If you are an author, you generally have no idea who holds the exclusive rights: [https://www.coalition-s.org/blog/exclusive-licence-to-publish-now-heres-a-thing/ in the case of Elsevier], the NC-ND clauses only protect Elsevier, but authors are often misled into thinking otherwise.
* If you are an author, you generally have no idea who holds the exclusive rights: [https://www.coalition-s.org/blog/exclusive-licence-to-publish-now-heres-a-thing/ in the case of Elsevier], the NC-ND clauses only protect Elsevier, but authors are often misled into thinking otherwise.
* As long as no public commercial license exists, somebody can always buy out commercial rights from the authors: maybe some publisher or entity is already doing it secretly or surreptitiously, since [http://wiki.law.miami.edu/commons/ so many copyright contracts are secret]. Or at some point somebody will make an offer which can't be refused and will end up having more rights on the journal than you have.
* As long as no public commercial license exists, somebody can always buy out commercial rights from the authors: maybe some publisher or entity is already doing it secretly or surreptitiously, since [http://wiki.law.miami.edu/commons/ so many copyright contracts are secret]. Or at some point somebody will make an offer which can't be refused and will end up having more rights on the journal than you have.
Buying out exclusive rights on a number of small titles, previously thought to be worthless, is exactly how the big publishers became the powers they are now and how the [[w:Serials crisis|serials crisis]] came to be in the 1970s. Only pre-emptive neutralisation of such rights can ensure that they don't end up in the wrong hands and that they don't become a weapon against the scholarly community.


What are some things to consider when selecting a license for a paper or journal? Some links follow.
What are some things to consider when selecting a license for a paper or journal? Some links follow.
Line 31: Line 29:
In the Creative Commons toolset, only the "Attribution" and "Share-Alike" clauses qualify for the [http://freedomdefined.org/ freedom definition] and [http://opendefinition.org/ open definition].
In the Creative Commons toolset, only the "Attribution" and "Share-Alike" clauses qualify for the [http://freedomdefined.org/ freedom definition] and [http://opendefinition.org/ open definition].


Unfree licenses such as NC and ND (non-commercial and no-derivatives) alienate anyone who believes in free knowledge or open content: because they cannot know whether at some point the journal will become somebody's exclusive property, it makes no sense for well-meaning hackers and technologists to provide technical support. You wouldn't drop a gold bar at the front door of a billionaire's office hoping that a good person picks it up, would you?
Unfree licenses such as NC and ND (non-commercial and no-derivatives) alienate anyone who believes in free knowledge or open content,


Additionally, because [[the non-commercial provision obfuscates intent]], using such a license increases implicit legal costs for everyone, except perhaps for giant for-profit companies which thrive on copyright confusion.
Additionally, because [[the non-commercial provision obfuscates intent]], using such a license increases implicit legal costs for everyone, except perhaps for giant for-profit companies which thrive on copyright confusion.
Line 39: Line 37:
Beyond copyrights, many systems are available to gain monopoly or market power, which can be used against an OA journal. [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html Intellectual property is a controversial name] for systems which allow anything immaterial to be bought and excluded from the use of others. This is a poorly researched area of OA journals (business) models.
Beyond copyrights, many systems are available to gain monopoly or market power, which can be used against an OA journal. [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html Intellectual property is a controversial name] for systems which allow anything immaterial to be bought and excluded from the use of others. This is a poorly researched area of OA journals (business) models.


Some suggestions:
* EFF on patents: [https://www.eff.org/reclaim-invention/pledge public interest patent pledge].
* Follow the EFF advice on patents: [https://www.eff.org/reclaim-invention/pledge public interest patent pledge].
* Most journals have a generic name which cannot be trademarked [citation needed]
* Keep in mind that most journals have a generic name which cannot be trademarked [citation needed].
** If your name is not a generic name yet, you might manage to make it one, by doing the opposite of [[w:Generic_trademark#Avoiding_genericization|what every trademark lawyer suggests]] to those who want to keep their trademark. However, there is no certainty of success.
* Ensure any logo or name is public property, or better nobody's property ([https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_Logo#Proposal_and_withdrawal_of_trademark_protection example]).
* Ensure any logo or name is public property, or better nobody's property ([https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_Logo#Proposal_and_withdrawal_of_trademark_protection example]).
Trademarks are [https://2020.copyleftconf.org/schedule/presentation/5/ sometimes considered] a possible tool for a specific kind of [[w:Business models for open-source software|business model for open-source software]], although this is controversial as of 2020. It might be possible to devise a way for a trademark to be both valuable and innocuous in the long-term for the scholarly community around an academic journal, but that requires at a minimum:
# a significant initial investment in legal services to make sure that the trademark does what you want (probably tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars);
# the existence and perennial upkeep of some kind of entity to which the trademark can be assigned and which can be trusted to forever be better than any other possible entity or person out there which might want to use the trademark.
We have learnt from history that any incorporated entity is at risk of being captured by forces hostile to the academic community, and when it comes to scholarly communication that's a near certainty. Once again, therefore, the only solution might be a creative way to fragment the property of the trademark, possibly by splitting it among thousands of individuals, for instance scholars in advanced age whose property will then be further fragmented by inheritance after their death. However, trademarks are subject to a number of requirements, including actual use, and no example of such public property of a trademark exists yet.


== Technical ==
== Technical ==
Line 55: Line 46:
* [https://wiki.code4lib.org/OSS_Directory Free/libre software]
* [https://wiki.code4lib.org/OSS_Directory Free/libre software]
* Interoperability (e.g. [https://openarchives.org/ OAI and OAI-PMH standards]).
* Interoperability (e.g. [https://openarchives.org/ OAI and OAI-PMH standards]).
== Notes ==
<references/>


== References ==
== References ==
Please note that all contributions to Definition of Free Cultural Works are considered to be released under the Attribution 2.5 (see Definition of Free Cultural Works:Copyrights for details). If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, then do not submit it here.
You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource. Do not submit copyrighted work without permission!

To protect the wiki against automated edit spam, we kindly ask you to solve the following CAPTCHA:

Cancel Editing help (opens in new window)