Welcome to the Free Online Scholarship
Newsletter
August 7, 2001
This was a relatively slow news week for FOS issues, which gave me time to
work on my (still forthcoming) Guide to the FOS Movement. This will be a
web-based guide to the terminology, acronyms, initiatives, standards,
technologies, and organizations in the movement to publish scholarly literature
online and make it accessible to readers free of charge. The movement is
extensive, but I'm only waiting until I have a critical mass of major entries
before I put the first edition online. I estimate that I'm now 1-3 weeks
from launch.
I'll be out of town August 9-12, attending the Computers and Philosophy
conference at Carnegie Mellon and moderating a panel on publishing. The
trip will delay the next issue and explain my temporary email silence.
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Commercial exploitation of free online scholarship
When you make scholarly articles available to readers free of charge, then
you also make them available to commercial services free of charge. What
happens when a commercial publisher copies your content and directly or
indirectly profits from it? Should you rejoice that your service has been
useful, or should you feel ripped off? Here's a case study in the
commercial exploitation of FOS. (For another case study, see the story on
eScience and Chemical Abstracts in our July 17 issue.)
Research Papers in Economics (RePEc) is the largest decentralized digital
library in the world. It's a network of 200+ archives of research papers,
journal articles, and software in economics. All of it is available to
readers free of charge. It was conceived and launched by Thomas Krichel in
1993, and is now maintained by over 100 volunteers around the world. On
Saturday, I interviewed Krichel by telephone.
In June of this year Krichel noticed that Ecommunics, a web-based community
and archive of economics research, had copied RePEc's papers, and was making
them available to its own users without any credit or acknowledgement to
RePEc. Fortunately, the RePEc papers were accompanied by metadata, like an
email header, in a format Krichel invented. This had the welcome
side-effect of making the RePEc papers unmistakably identifiable.
Ecommunics was not selling the papers. But it was selling other
services, and apparently it intended to use the free papers, and its packaging
of them, as a demonstration or advertisement of its technical skills, which
would in turn bring in paying customers.
Krichel confronted the Ecommunics creators and asked for an acknowledgement
that the papers came from RePEc. After some delay, Ecommunics
agreed. The Ecommunics acknowledgement now accompanies each paper, and is
not simply displayed once on the front page.
This wasn't Krichel's first experience with commercial exploitation.
In 1995, the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) copied some RePEc papers for
its service, which offered free abstracts to all and full-text articles to
paying subscribers. Soon after Krichel confronted them, SSRN stopped the
practice.
After these experiences, RePEc changed its statement of restrictions on the
use of its data. The statement now says (inter alia) that users may not
charge for the content "or include it in a service or product that is not free
of charge."
I asked Krichel whether he was satisfied with Ecommunics' current
position: acknowledging RePEc, but continuing to copy and use the data,
without compensation, to promote a for-profit business. He said yes.
As long as Ecommunics doesn't charge for the papers, it should be able to use
them to enhance its bottom-line. If it succeeds, this proves the value of
RePEc's service.
Questions. What restrictions should FOS providers put on the use of
the scholarship in their collections? If copyrights are necessary to
enforce these restrictions, should FOS providers welcome copyrighted
papers? Which is better, prohibiting commercial publishers from copying
free online papers into priced products or making them pay for the
privilege? If a publisher can actually sell scholarly articles which are
available elsewhere online free of charge, why shouldn't it be allowed to do
so? Are there conceivable add-ons (navigation aids, search engines,
citation data, link lists, etc.) which would justify commercial publishers in
selling papers available elsewhere to anyone for free? Please post your
answers or thoughts to our discussion forum.
Thomas Krichel's home page
RePEc
RePEc's restrictions on the use of its data
List of archives participating in RePEc
Ecommunics
SSRN
FOS discussion forum
(Anyone may read; only subscribers may post; subscription is
free.)
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Developments
* On August 5, netLibrary gives access to its Public Collection only to
members with borrowing privileges at one of its partner libraries. There
is no longer a Public Collection for free members.
* Mibrary has shut down from lack of funding. It produced KeyChain,
software to ensure that buyers of digital texts received the appropriate
versions and formats.
* Eprints 2 Alpha-1 has been released. This will be the successor to
eprints 1. While it isn't ready to run yet, you can still download and
study the code. (Eprints is the first and still leading software for
constructing OAI-compliant archives.)
* The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) has created the Electronic
Conference Proceedings Archive (eConf). eConf streamlines the process of
providing free online access to conference proceedings. Unfortunately the
archive is limited to conferences in physics.
* The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has created the Portal to
Computing Literature. This online archive is free until September 30 of
this year. After that access will require payment, which is discounted for
ACM members. Payment will not only give full-text access, but personalization
services and hardcopy document delivery.
* ContentGuard has been given a patent on a method give content buyers an
encrypted electronic "ticket" which is "punched" when the buyer reads or uses
the content. The punch travels with the content when it is copied.
The digital ticket can work with both online and offline content.
ContentGuard is owned by Microsoft and Xerox.
* The HeadLine Project (Hybrid Electronic Access and Delivery in the
Library Networked Environment) ended on July 31, and all its reports,
newsletters, presentations, articles, and software are available at its web
site.
* The ACLU's lawsuit to overturn the Children’s Internet Protection Act
(CIPA), which requires public libraries to filter web content for all patrons,
has been set for trial. The government had argued that the case should be
dismissed.
* In its new draft budget, the Senate more than doubles the amount of money
to be spent on agents and attorneys to enforce federal copyright law.
Currently we spend $4 million for 75 copyright cops. The Senate's new
budget would spend $10 million for 155.
* The latest way for commercial providers to give away free content and
still generate revenue is to bundle the content with spy software which copies
information about the user (surfing habits, connection speed, system
configuration, downloads), and then sends it back to the company. Some
companies this information to pop up ads that match the user's apparent
interests, and some simply sell the information to advertisers and
marketers.
* If you want to sound off on the Sklyarov affair, join the eBookWeb online
debate, "Digital Rights, DMCA and the Hackers." Among the participants is
John Rutledge, a lawyer for ElcomSoft.
* How well are different governments doing at using the net to improve
democracy and basic services? Here are two new ways to find out.
Comparing UK e-govt initiatives with those in other countries
Search for U.S. e-govt initiatives by type
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In other publications
* In the August 6 issue of _First Monday_ Shanthi Kalathil and Taylor C.
Boas have an article based on the research they did for the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace (reported in our last issue). They document the
ways that oppressive regimes protect themselves from the liberalizing tendencies
of the internet and actually turn its reach and power toward oppressive
ends. Kalathil and Boas use China and Cuba as case studies.
* On August 1, the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) posted the latest draft
of version 4 of its Text Encoding and Interchange guidelines. Version 3
has been in use since 1994.
* In the August issue of the _Journal of Electronic Publishing_, Alison
Buckholtz describes the rationale of SPARC's "Declaring Independence" (DI)
initiative and the reaction from researchers and publishers. The DI
initiative encourages journals to cut loose from publishers whose exorbitant
subscription prices limit readership and defeat the research purpose of the
journal. It also helps journals analyze their publishing options,
including free online publication. (More on the DI initiative in our
May
18 issue.)
* Also in the August issue of the _Journal of Electronic Publishing_,
Michael K. Bergman describes the problems and possible methods of searching the
"deep internet" --the databases uncrawlable by standard search engines where
most academic content resides.
* In the July/August issue of _CLIR Issues_, Abby Smith describes the
problems of building digital library collections. Her overview summarizes
research commissioned by the Digital Library Federation and soon to be published
in separate articles.
* In the July/August issue of _D-Lib_, Steven Bell identifies a trend for
database aggregators to obtain the exclusive rights to distribute certain
academic journals. The result, he warns, could be a new digital
divide.
* Also in the July/August issue of _D-Lib_, Herbert Van de Sompel and Oren
Beit-Arie introduce the Bison-Futé model for generalizing the OpenURL linking
framework beyond scholarly resources to the web in general.
* Also in the July/August issue of _D-Lib_, Lucia Snowhill summarizes the
recommendations of the California Digital Library's Ebook Task Force on the
infrastructure and policies for using eBooks in academic libraries.
* In the spring 2001 issue of _Future of Print Media_, Stephen Wood
describes the advantages of e-books and the difficulties faced by libraries in
lending them. He imagines some technical advances that would benefit both
readers and librarians.
* The Global Development Network (GDNet) and the International Network for
the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) met in June to work out a
plan for delivering free scholarly journals in electronic form to underdeveloped
nations. The meeting's report is now available online.
* Phase 3 of JISC's eLib Programme began in 1997 and has just been
evaluated by an independent consultant from outside higher education. The
positive evaluation report, now online, is useful in part to appreciate the very
large number of FOS-related initiatives that we owe to eLib and JISC.
* The three power-point presentations delivered at the "EJournals and the
Web" program of the June ALA conference are now online at the NISO web
site.
* England's Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER) has just posted
its first FAQ.
* Version 38 of Charles W. Bailey, Jr.'s Scholarly Electronic Publishing
Bibliography is now online. The latest edition includes over 1,400 books,
articles, books, other sources on publishing online scholarship.
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Conferences
If you plan to attend one of the following conferences, please share your
observations with us through our discussion forum.
* INSPIRAL workshop on integrating digital learning environments with
digital library services
Leicester, August 21
Milan, September 3-7
* 5th European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital
Libraries
Darmstadt, September 4-8
* DELOS Workshop on Interoperability in Digital Libraries
Darmstadt, September 8-9
* Experimental OAI Based Digital Library Systems
Darmstadt, September 8
* Preserving Online Content for Future Generations
Darmstadt, September 8
* International Autumn School on the Digital Library and E-publishing for
Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics
Geneva, September 9-14
* Digital Libraries: Advanced Methods and Technologies, Digital
Collections
Petrozavodsk, September 11-13
* Digital Resources for Research in the Humanities
Sydney, September 26-28
* EBLIDA Workshop on the Acquisition and Usage of Electronic
Resources
The Hague, September 28
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This is the Free Online Scholarship Newsletter (ISSN 1535-7848).
Please feel free to forward this newsletter to interested colleagues.
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Peter Suber
Copyright (c) 2001, Peter Suber