Ludicrously closed access; or how to alienate readers and look foolish

Posted on 23 September 2008
Filed under Libraries, Open access, Publishing
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It started with a post the liblicense mailing list, announcing a new journal entitled the Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship. The journal, the post said, was published by the Haworth Press (a subsidiary of Taylor & Francis since its acquisition last year). The inaugural issue had been released, according to the announcement, and it appeared to include an article on open access (Ross Singer, “Opening Up Access to Open Access”), so I wanted to check out the article to see if it was something worth posting at OAN.

Oddly, the post pointed to a Web site for the journal which is run on the Open Journal Systems platform — software designed for open access journals. This was odd for two reasons:

I didn’t know Haworth published OA journals (and the announcement didn’t refer to the journal as OA)
The Web site actually contained no OA content (although the inaugural issue had been released)

My confusion was resolved upon determining that the journal is not, in fact, OA. (I’m still not clear what the point of the OJS site is.)

So I searched for the article, to see if it was available from the Haworth site or if it had been self-archived by the author. Google did find a link on the Haworth site (I’d link to the DOI handle, but it doesn’t resolve), but the article isn’t available OA; in fact, not even an abstract is available. Google didn’t find a self-archived version of the article. It did seem to find a Web site for the author, although the site doesn’t point to a copy of the article or even mention it. Nor could I find a copy in the apparent author’s institutional repository (nor any other papers by the author). Since the article’s from a library-related journal, I tried E-LIS, but again, nothing by the author.

So apparently there are no OA versions of the article available, or even an abstract. But the announcement noted that a complimentary copy of the inaugural issue was available. I emailed to request a copy, and eventually received a reply:

Can you please send me your mailing address?

Having little interest in waiting several more days (at least) to get my hands on the article, I replied:

Can you send me an electronic copy?

And, can you believe it — here’s the response from T&F:

We do not have electronic copies available. You can only view the journal online if you already have a subscription. Sorry for any inconvenience.

In summary: neither gold nor green OA; no abstract; and the sample issue is available in print form only. For an article about open access!

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Open access and the new WIPO director

Posted on 23 September 2008
Filed under Copyright, Open access, Science
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This week, the World Intellectual Property Organization named a new director general, Francis Gurry of Australia. In his acceptance speech, Gurry called for the world “IP” system to serve the goals of access to knowledge and information equity. He also commended the goals of the Development Agenda. Both are welcome statements from the new DG. Of course, that’s not all he said, and that’s what I want to analyze here, particularly vis-à-vis open access.

In his acceptance speech, Gurry calls upon countries to develop “National Intellectual Property and Innovation Strategies”. His own country, Australia, recently released a report on its innovation system which called for OA to public sector information and to publicly-funded research.
Gurry also calls for a greater role for evidence in IP policy-making, noting:

… The [WIPO] Secretariat needs to be better equipped with resources for economic research and statistics in order to provide the Member States with a sound empirical basis for reflection. I intend to establish a Division for this purpose. …

The need for evidence-based policy-making echoes a call in the Adelphi Charter (see previous OAN posts) and many others (e.g.). As someone who thinks that evidence will bear out the merits of OA, a greater role for evidence in policy-making (and an accordingly lesser role for shrill lobbying) would be a welcome development.
Gurry also echoes another welcome theme for IP policy, against maximalism for the sake of maximalism:

… [I]t is useful to remember that intellectual property is not an end in itself. It is an instrumentality for achieving certain public policies, most notably, through … copyright, the stimulation and diffusion of innovation and creativity on which we have become so dependent … In the end, our debates and discussions are about how intellectual property can best serve those underlying policies: whether modifying the international framework will enhance or constrain innovation and creativity and contribute to their diffusion …
Not all of Gurry’s comments are so favorable. He notes with concern that the Internet raises “the most radical of threats” to 20th century business models for creative content, and states that “[t]he widespread illegal downloading of music and films from the Internet raises more generally the question of respect for intellectual property”. Although OA is a wildly different question than unauthorized downloading of pop songs, we have seen repeated efforts to equate them (mostly recently by Rep. Howard Berman’s linking of the NIH policy with Napster) in order to raise fear, uncertainty, doubt, and to distract from the many valid and pressing arguments in favor of OA. That Gurry gives such credence to content industry concerns suggests a certain bias in favor of protectionism and against openness, and that he may be able to be mislead by the same claims.
More broadly, Gurry’s comments focus largely on economic rather than scientific concerns, although both are subject to the same IP system over which he now presides. Where he discusses science, it’s about developing new technologies and solutions to global challenges, and mostly not about the advancement of learning and inquiry. This suggests the direction of Gurry’s priorities for WIPO. While OA requires no changes to the global IP framework, there are a number of amendments to national or international law which could benefit research and education, from guaranteeing the public domain status of data to strengthening limitations and exceptions for academic purposes. Based on the priorities evinced in his acceptance speech, the interests of scientists and students will be of less concern to Gurry than those of Miramax and Metallica.

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I’m on Rocketboom

Posted on 8 September 2008
Filed under Creative Commons, DRM, Personal
1 comment

…after a fashion. They use a photo of me around the one minute mark in today’s video, during a discussion of DRM. The photo’s from the DRM protests at the Students for Free Culture conference in Boston last year. I’m photogenic enough to be Generic Protester, then.

I forget who took the photo, either Karen or Fred. Either way, it was CC-licensed. I don’t know whether they attributed; anyway, it’s fair use. (Thanks to Hendrik for the tip.)

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