Monthly Archives: November 2018

Draft “Guidance on the Implementation of Plan S” fails to alleviate concerns about CC BY

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Earlier this week, cOAlition S released its draft Guidance on the Implementation of Plan S, which retains the requirement that publications resulting from cOAlition S funding be licensed under terms laid out in the Berlin Declaration.

For scholarly articles the public should be granted a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, irrevocable license to share (i.e. copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format) and adapt (i.e. remix, transform, and build upon the material) the work for any purpose, including commercially, provided proper attribution is given to the author.

Unfortunately, this guidance fails to respond adequately to the fact that many researchers – especially in the arts and humanities, but including also some scientists – would sometimes choose a license granting fewer reuse rights.

I know that my particular Twitter bubble doesn’t represent everyone; and it does include quite a few Open Access (OA) advocates, who tend to support the use of maximally open licenses (such as CC BY). Nonetheless, I’ve been surprised to find that most of the folks I interact with on Twitter seem either not to understand why anyone would object to mandating such an open license or have no problem supporting such a mandate over the objections of colleagues. Not understanding the objections is one thing. Not caring about the objections is quite another. I address each possibility, in turn. Here, I focus only on the problem of not understanding the objections. In a later post, I will address the problem of not caring.

First, though, a few points of clarification. The draft Guidance (at least with reference to licenses) explicitly concerns scholarly journal articles only, leaving guidance on books and book chapters until a later date.

The following guidance further specifies the principles of Plan S and provides paths for their implementation regarding scholarly articles. The guidance is directed at cOAlition S members and the wider international research community. cOAlition S will, at a later stage, issue guidance on Open Access monographs and book chapters.

I do think this makes some difference. Personally, I am much less likely to opt for a more restrictive license on scholarly articles than I would on a book. For me, book chapters are actually closer to journal articles in this regard. That doesn’t mean I fully support a license mandate for journal articles; but I do think I’d have less frequent or momentous worries about open-licensing an article or book chapter than I would a book.

For the sake of brevity, and since the draft Guidance will mandate CC BY 4.0 licenses for all scholarly articles, I use ‘CC BY’ to refer to the sort of open license mandated by the draft Guidance.

All scholarly articles that result from research funded by members of cOAlition S must be openly available immediately upon publication without any embargo period. They must be permanently accessible under an open license allowing for re-use for any purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship. cOAlition S recommends using Creative Commons licenses (CC) for all scholarly publications and will by default require the CC BY Attribution 4.0 license for scholarly articles.

I also refer to ‘the author’ throughout this post, even though the author may not be the copyright holder of the work. Plan S initially mandated that authors retain copyright. The draft Guidance seems to have opened the door to the idea that there may be other rightsholders (such as the author’s institution, although perhaps even the publisher). I don’t address this question in this post.

For the record, I have no objection to the requirement to make journal articles immediately available and free to read (gratis). It is the option virtually all authors would choose, given the power. Insofar as Plan S “mandates” immediate gratis OA, it actually empowers authors. Mandating CC BY (or CC BY-SA or CC0 versions of libre) does not. Adopting a license mandate is a matter of domination, not empowerment. More on that, later.

One more preliminary: acknowledgements. In addition to the inhabitants of my Twittersphere, with whom I’ve had some excellent exchanges, I heard a great presentation as part of the NJIT Department of Humanities Fall Colloquium Series that spurred my thinking on this matter. On November 7, Lisa DeTora of Hofstra presented on “Not Quite Mythology: The Functional Limitations of Biomedical Language.” The views I outline below owe much to her talk. 

FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND OBJECTIONS TO CC BY

Mandating CC BY treats all articles as if they were scientific articles. But published articles mean different things in different fields. In the sciences, for instance, it is more typical to perceive the publication as simply describing the experiment or reporting on the results of the research. Although priority in publication of results is vital, scientists fully expect others to build upon, modify, and eventually abandon their results as science progresses. A CC BY or equivalent license makes some sense in the context of articles considered as merely containers for information to which the scientist is not wedded in a personal way.

But in the humanities, to paraphrase Nietzsche, nothing is impersonal. In the humanities, the publication itself actually constitutes the research. I still quote the Ancients in my own field of philosophy. That’s not because I haven’t read the latest literature. It’s because Plato and Aristotle have stood the test of time. At the risk of sounding as if I have delusions of grandeur, I hope the same for my own works.

In the sciences, articles might be thought to contain information that, like water, could be poured into various containers and retain its essential characteristics. Although one might prefer to be published in Science or Nature, ultimately, the container doesn’t matter. What matters most is the discovery, and to a lesser extent, the discoverer. Attribution is sufficient.

In the humanities, we have similar preferences for pet journals. I agree that this tendency should be corrected, and that the particular journal in which one is published should matter less than what’s published. But our conception of what’s published — of articles — is different. It’s not so easy to separate form and content in the humanities. To suggest that a philosophy article is simply information that could be transferred easily from place to place would be akin to suggesting we try to pour a marble statue — not water — into a container that could barely hold the statue’s volume of material. To manage it, one would have to destroy the statue.

One tends to attach a name to a theory or discovery in the sciences in one of a few circumstances: 1) when the discovery is new or big or a prize is awarded — as with the Higgs boson (though everyone seems uncomfortable focusing on Higgs alone, and credit is shared around); 2) when the theory has been surpassed — as with Aristotelian physics; or 3) when one wants to undermine a theory — as with creationist attacks on ‘Darwinism’.

In the humanities, attaching names to works or theories is important and routine.  Despite what you may have heard, there’s no such thing as ‘Utilitarianism’, but rather Bentham’s, Mill’s, or Singer’s versions thereof. It makes a difference whether one refers to a Jamesian or Deweyian pragmatism. The practice of naming in the humanities is not reserved for a flash in the pan or for theories that didn’t pan out. In the humanities, one’s name — including, but not limited to, one’s reputation as a good researcher — is important.

Derivative works are a more sensitive matter in the humanities than in the sciences. One’s works present oneself — not just one’s findings — to the scholarly community. The focus of a translated work in the humanities is on the author, not on the translator. It is the author’s introduction to a new country’s readers. It is not by chance that most works in the humanities are single-authored.

Translating a work of philosophy, to pick my own field, is not something that can be done willy-nilly by an algorithm without destroying vital aspects of the work, thereby misrepresenting the author. Nor can a translation simply be thrown together by anyone who understands both languages. A good translation of a difficult text is more difficult than that.

A good translation depends on forming a relationship with the translator, such that he or she is actually familiar with the author’s work in the original language. They need to understand the subtleties of the argument and the choices the author made between terms in the original language in order to craft a good translation in the new language. Ideally, the author would have a relationship with more than one such person, so that the translation could be checked by someone the author trusts. All of this would involve a great deal of time, effort, and discussion.

A bad translation of a difficult text misrepresents the author’s views in ways that can severely damage their name. A good translation can help make it. Rumor has it that even native speakers of German read Norman Kemp Smith’s English translation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. No one, however, is under the impression that the author of the work is anyone other than Kant.

On the link to the Google Books version of the Critique of Pure Reason, the preview is from Kemp Smith’s introduction, in which he describes the process of translating Kant. He was careful and meticulous and thought everything through. He studied and benefited from previous translations. He was writing commentaries on Kant — which is to say, he was a Kant scholar, not simply a Scotsman who spoke fair German. It took years. Kemp Smith’s is the sort of translation we need and generally aspire to in the humanities.

This is not to say that all translations in the humanities are good. Martin Paul Eve discusses the controversy over a particular translation of Michel Foucault, noting that perhaps some translation — even a poor or controversial one — is better than no translation at all. An author who holds such a view and has no objection to subjecting their work to rough translations can always choose a CC BY or equivalent license. Mandating that all authors explicitly grant permission for their works to be treated roughly, though, is unfair and fundamentally misunderstands the nature of research in the humanities.

The application of a more restrictive license — CC BY-ND, say, which would prevent others from making derivative works without the author’s permission — does not bar the author from granting permission for other uses in the future. Indeed, since the potential translator would actually need to contact the author to obtain permission to translate the work, such an arrangement could facilitate the formation of the sort of trusting relationship necessary for a good translation.

FAILURE TO CARE ABOUT OBJECTIONS TO CC BY

I hope that the vast majority of those currently willing to impose a CC BY mandate as part of Plan S suffer only from a failure to understand why someone might sometimes object to a CC BY license. I fear that some, however, fully understand why someone might sometimes opt for a different license and yet feel fully justified in mandating CC BY for everyone, always. Those who understand the objections to a CC BY license mandate, yet fail to take those objections into account, are guilty of embracing domination.

Since this is a strong charge, I want to take my time in making it. I also want to appeal relatively quickly to those who simply misunderstand objections to a CC BY license mandate. For these reasons, I will publish this post now and issue a promise to complete the second post later. [EDIT: part 2 now available HERE.]

I should add, briefly, that I am now rethinking my position on the CC BY license mandate. Heretofore, I had floated the possibility that cOAlition S could safely mandate a CC BY license without dominating authors as long as they were to offer a no-questions-asked waiver. Providing such an opt-out option would mirror the Harvard Open Access Policy, which I discuss in some detail here. Upon further review, however, I am leaning toward the position that even a mandate with a waiver would dominate authors. If anyone is interested in how my thinking has developed and cannot wait for the second post on this topic, here’s a hint.

 

 

 

Open Reflections: OpenCon 2018

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So good to see folks connecting research, education, and a concern to avoid injustice!

The Future is Inclusion

Critical Openness

At OpenCon 2018, attendees built upon inclusive practices in open education and open research. Denisse Albornoz, an OpenCon alum, a Research Associate for the Open and Collaborative Science in Development Network and The Knowledge G.A.P. kicked off the conference with the concept of “critical openness.” This reflection is influenced by her as well as the other speakers who shared their incredible work with the OpenCon community this weekend including Jasmeen Patheja, Alexis C Johnson, Leslie Chan. For those interested, I highly recommend that you view the panel on Diversity and Inclusion. It is by far one of the best panel presentations I have ever seen.

Critical openness is a call for challenging questions – ones contextualized in the histories and lived experiences from people around the globe – with the goal of generating productive and meaningful dialogue across power and difference. Critical openness…

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If you take the red pill, Plan S will show you the way to academic freedom

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As readers of this blog and a few people on Twitter know, I’ve been talking a lot recently about academic freedom, especially as it relates to Plan S. In case anyone wants to explore the blog or things I’ve published, they’ll see three things: 1) I generally argue against the idea that Open Access (OA) mandates infringe upon academic freedom; 2) I am generally in favor of OA, especially insofar as it empowers researchers to have positive impacts on society; and 3) I have some specific issues about the way Plan S is formulated. I make distinctions between Plan S and other OA mandates and don’t think that being critical of certain aspects of Plan S means that I’m anti-OA. It doesn’t even mean I’m anti-Plan S. It means I have some specific concerns about how Plan S might impact academic freedom.

In the past couple of months, I’ve had nice exchanges on the topic with Rebecca Lawrence, Stephen Curry, Martin Eve, Peter Suber, and others. Along with Lynn Kamerlin, Stephen and I published a correspondence piece in Nature arguing that discussions of academic freedom are vital, ongoing, and ought not to be dismissed as stifling debate surrounding Plan S.

Indeed, the Fair Open Access Alliance Board recently penned a set of recommendations on Plan S that included the following:

We recommend formulating a detailed statement on how the demands of Plan S interact with legal and cultural norms of academic freedom to select a publication venue. Laws and customs vary enormously around the world. In the UK, for instance, there is no legal statute that confers an explicit right of researchers to select publication venue, but in the States this is more thoroughly encoded, since, academic freedom explicitly extends to choosing the publication venue under the 1940 AAUP declaration. In Germany, authors have a constitutional right to publish where they want.

This is not to suggest that the FOAA Board agrees that Plan S infringes on academic freedom.

As we have said before, academic freedom does not extend to burying one’s research behind a paywall. To paraphrase a well-known dictum: your academic freedom to publish wherever you want ends where my right to freely access your research starts.

But it is to suggest that, despite the fact that they tend to think that Plan S does not infringe upon academic freedom, they nevertheless recommend working out in detail how Plan S impacts academic freedom. Academic freedom is a serious, non-trivial issue whether you think Plan S infringes upon it or not.

Unfortunately, too many OA advocates are too dismissive of any discussion of academic freedom. In what follows, I’m going to examine a thread on Twitter from today that I saw when Micah Vandegrift tweeted about it.

I know Micah and we’ve been tweeting back and forth on the question of academic freedom. So, I replied; but I also looked at the thread by Jason Hoyt. I don’t know Jason. After reading Hoyt’s thread, I intended to ignore it and simply continue my discussion with Micah. I still plan to continue that discussion. However, Hoyt’s thread came up again today in a context that made it unavoidable for me to discuss.

For those who don’t know, David Sweeney (along with John-Arne Røttingen) has taken on the task of composing the implementation language — drafting the actual policy — that will be based on the Plan S principles. Given that I think the most serious problems with Plan S are those surrounding its impact on academic freedom, and given that I think issues surrounding academic freedom are generally growing in importance in today’s political climate, what Sweeney thinks about academic freedom is too important to ignore.

Let me preface this discussion with the following caveat. What follows is not a personal attack. I do not know Jason Hoyt, and I have no reason to attack him personally. I am, however, going to attack the argument he put forward in his thread.

Hoyt’s thread is more involved than other dismissals of discussing academic freedom in connection with Plan S; but it also jives with many other tweets I’ve seen from OA advocates who aren’t as inclined to think critically about OA and academic freedom as the folks already mentioned, above. In order to attack Hoyt’s argument, I’ll try my best to reconstruct it in the strongest possible form; then, I’ll show why it fails.

To put my critique of Hoyt’s argument in a nutshell, the thread employs more pseudoreasoning than actual argumentation. It unfairly represents the position of those it is arguing against (that’s a strawman); it attacks its opponents, rather than arguing against their claims (that’s an ad hominem);  and it ends in a way that preempts any criticism of the thread (this sophistic-ated move doesn’t have a name with which I’m familiar).

Let’s begin at the end, with this sophistic-ated move.

These are the penultimate and final tweets in the thread. Focusing on the final tweet, it impugns those who would pick out the weakest points of Hoyt’s argument to attack as “weaker-minded critics,” who “won’t volunteer their Conflicts of Interest.” We’re warned to “keep that in mind” in order to inoculate  Hoyt’s argument against attack. Holbrook thinks Hoyt’s argument is weak? Holbrook must be weak-minded. I wonder what Holbrook is hiding? It’s a sort of preemptive ad hominem that I’ve dubbed a ‘sophistic-ated’ move, because it’s reminiscent of the — rationally illegitimate — moves Plato describes the Sophists making against Socrates.

Since it appears Hoyt thinks the weakest part of his argument is his extended metaphor comparing our academic freedom to that of a frog in a pot of water being brought slowly to a boil,

I won’t spend any time attacking it. (Who wants to embrace a charge of being weak-minded, after all?)

As we’ve seen, Hoyt begins the thread by calling the argument that Plan S infringes on academic freedom a red herring. In order to substantiate that claim, Hoyt would have to examine the actual argument and show that the truth of the premises is irrelevant to the truth of the conclusion. He doesn’t do either. He just asserts that the academic freedom argument is a red herring.

He then proceeds to make some assertions about academic freedom.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that it’s true that we misunderstand academic freedom. Let’s assume it’s true that it was invented “decades ago” and now has taken on a new meaning very different from “being in control.” We think we have academic freedom, he suggests, but we are mistaken. The academic freedom of old has been reduced to the illusion of control.

He continues, suggesting that the academic freedom that doesn’t exist is merely a manipulative ploy.

The illusion of academic freedom — perhaps that’s why Hoyt keeps putting ‘Academic Freedom’ in scare quotes — is being used by a minority to defeat the emerging new normal of OA.

There’s an extended frog-in-water interlude, followed by this:

The meaning of academic freedom — now without scare quotes, so maybe a non-illusory version? probably just a typo — can change. Sometimes, in order for old (now illusory, presumably) norms to change, we need an outside agent (because frog).

Enter Plan S to save us!

Plan S cannot single-handedly restore academic freedom to its true glory, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Trying hard to offer a charitable reading here, I think Hoyt’s claim is that the illusion of academic freedom is propping up the current monopoly of “subscription paywall” journals. From the previous tweet, though, Plan S will help us recover actual academic freedom, I guess by breaking this illusion-supported monopoly?

OK, good — it seems I was following. So, far from impinging on academic freedom as the illusionistas would have us believe, Plan S is actually our only hope for restoring academic freedom to its original glory.

Embrace Plan S, because it’s your only hope of regaining your freedom from the illusionistas!

Now to attempt to reconstruct the argument in its strongest possible form. When Hoyt claims that the academic freedom argument against Plan S is a red herring, he doesn’t actually mean that he’s examined the argument and found its premises irrelevant to the conclusion that Plan S impinges on academic freedom. What he means is that those making the argument are trying to fool us with a false notion of academic freedom. Opponents of Plan S are telling us they’re protecting our academic freedom, but they are lying. In reality they are keeping us trapped in a monopoly of subscription journals. Plan S can’t be impinging on academic freedom, because Plan S is trying to kill the monopoly of subscription journals and open up space for new OA entrants to provide the reality, rather than the illusion, of academic freedom.

Notice that I left out the final tweet in my reconstruction of Hoyt’s argument. That’s because it’s really a low blow that has no place in a good faith argument. Imagine if I were to suggest here that anything that Hoyt or anyone who defends his argument says is a clear indication that they are merely publishing populists who want to destroy scientific institutions and profit from the resulting confusion. It’s not fair play to employ such a preemptive attack on critics.

Unfortunately, even the strongest possible reconstruction of Hoyt’s argument utilizes both the strawman and ad hominem attacks.  It’s a strawman because it presents its opponents as arguing Plan S impinges on academic freedom only to fool us into supporting the status quo monopoly of subscription publishers. That’s simply not what I or anyone else I’ve seen making the academic freedom argument about Plan S is saying.  It’s an ad hominem, as well, since — even leaving out the preemptive attack at the end — it impugns our motives. Hoyt’s thread suggests that anyone arguing against Plan S on academic freedom grounds is a liar.

There’s plenty of room for rational disagreement on the issue of Plan S and its impacts on academic freedom. Unfortunately, there’s also a plethora of tweets that echo the tone of Hoyt’s thread. Some advocates of Plan S have simply dismissed the academic freedom argument as ‘baloney’. Saying it doesn’t make it so. Arguments are needed. I and others have presented some arguments that Plan S, as written, has the potential to infringe on academic freedom. I invite anyone to offer an argument in response. I’m very happy to engage. But those merely offering disdain and dismissal should reconsider.

I am currently waiting to see the implementation language that Sweeney and Røttingen are crafting. Since it will be made available for public consultation, we’ll all have the opportunity to examine the draft policy and offer our input. I hope that people realize that we might disagree; but there’s a way to do that respectfully and without resorting to misrepresenting others and personal attacks.

I expect that Sweeney and Røttingen and others charged with finalizing the implementation of Plan S will listen to input from a wide variety of perspectives. No doubt, they are already aware that some have their own prejudices already built in to their positions. Many established subscription publishers may resist the implementation of Plan S. Many emerging OA publishers may embrace it. Researchers views are likely to vary pretty widely. I hope the implementers of Plan S are able to take these different perspectives into account and to distinguish carefully between rational arguments and pseudoreasoning attacks. If we work together in good faith, we can attempt to craft a policy that actually empowers researchers and society to engage in open knowledge practices for the benefit of all.