Arnoud de Kemp, Science can’t accept technical barriers of content use!INDICARE, August 9, 2005. An interview with Arnoud de Kemp, former director of marketing and sales at Springer Verlag, former member of the Springer board, and former member of the board of International Association of Scientific, Technical, and Medical Publishers (STM). He is currently building up digilibri, his new company. Excerpt:
INDICARE: Where do you see the difference between the entertainment industry which has strongly pushed the debate on DRM and the scientific publishing domain?
A. de Kemp: There is a whole series of differences. The most important is that in science there is a long tradition of free exchange of research results....For journal articles, there are no royalties involved. [...]
INDICARE: What is actually happening at publishers with respect to the introduction of DRM in the stricter sense?
A. de Kemp: Next to nothing is happening, as in the world of publishing, people feel that everything is already taken care of. Through the consortium licenses and copyright laws, there is the possibility for unlimited use of scientific literature. Students can log in from home and access literature from the databases that are licensed by the university libraries. In this way, scientific literature for the end-user is in most cases in principle freely accessible. There is little inclination to copy and disseminate scientific articles as an alternative. [...]
INDICARE: What would be the alternative [to DRM]?
A. de Kemp: The open route using contracts. We will conclude framework contracts with editors, image agencies, designers etc. and give them open access to our material in a special catalogue, controlled by their IP address, user name and password. [...]
INDICARE: How do you view the relationship of scientific publishers to the open access movement?
A. de Kemp: As I have said before. "Open Access" wishes to make all published material free of charge. In their view, libraries and scientists stand on one side and the publishers and their helpers on the other. In principle however, the publishers should not be against "Open Access". If the money that the libraries currently pay to publishers for the use of the publications is re-allocated by the funding agencies and similar organisations, to finance the publishing process and dissemination of electronic publications, we as publishers should be happy as life will be easier. Springer very quickly presented "Open Choice" with good arguments: we don't care who pays, but whoever pays, can determine the rules of use. The "Open Access" movement is a real anti-DRM movement. The danger of "Open Access" is that relevant scientific literature becomes grey literature and there are big issues like originality, exploitation of the results described all the way up to patent application, that are not addressed at all.
Comment. Three quick replies: (1) Literature licensed by libraries is not freely available, in principle or in practice. It's very expensive for the library and only accessible to users affiliated with the institution. There's still a huge incentive for alternatives like open access. (2) Access "controlled by...IP address, user name and password" is not open access. (3) "Grey literature" has two common meanings: not priced and not peer-reviewed. In the first sense, it's no objection to call OA literature grey. In the second sense, it would certainly be an objection, but de Kemp gives no reason to think that peer-reviewed OA literature will cease to be peer-reviewed. The other "big issues" he mentions are vague and undeveloped in this interview. I'd be glad to respond if I knew more about the objection.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 8/10/2005 11:13:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
