Perspectives from Another Angle: Publishing Advisors By Nancy Sims (Copyright Program Librarian, University of Minnesota Libraries) <nasims@umn.edu> Contributors: Jennifer Chan (Scholarly Communications Librarian, University of California – Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA) and Emily Finch (Scholarly Communication and Copyright Librarian, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS) and Dr. Danny Kingsley (Associate Librarian, Content & Digital Library Strategy, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia) and Melanie Kowalski (Copyright & Scholarly Communications Librarian, Emory University, Atlanta, GA) and Jody Bailey (Head of Scholarly Communications Office, Emory University, Atlanta, GA) and Charles Oppenheim (Visiting Professor, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, Scotland)
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ach of these contributors has significant experience advising scholars about publishing options in multiple disciplines and at various stages in their careers. Although these advisory roles are often tangential to standard processes of scholarship and publishing, individuals working in these roles often encounter similar issues repeatedly from slightly different angles, which develops insights that complement and expand on those of people in more traditional publishing roles. Each contributor replied to a set of written questions/ prompts. These have been compiled and edited below, with specific quotes pulled to highlight interesting observations, areas of agreement, or points of departure. All of the respondents agreed that Creative Commons licenses are generally a good choice for academic authors — especially those interested in enabling sharing and reuse of their work. Kingsley: […] in the authors’ perspective, the commodity [in the publishing “market”] is not financial, it is reputational. Authors want their work to be read and reused in the form of citations which collectively contribute to various measures in academia. All of the respondents also agreed that Creative Commons licenses are not universally applicable. Chan pointed out that some authors are only interested in sharing their work with limited audiences, and Kowalski & Bailey highlighted that some academic authors do want to monetize their work. Respondents reflected on general advantages that CC licenses offer for authors. Kingsley highlighted the ease of reuse for authors that goes along with retaining copyright ownership, such as when reusing images or graphs in later publications, or for sharing with colleagues. Chan emphasized the “net effect of streamlining permissions and encouraging remix/reuse culture.” Kowalski & Bailey discussed the citation advantage for open access work,1 and Finch explained that the predictability of CC licenses ease burdens on researchers by creating certainty around reuse. But they also offered some thoughts about ways CC licenses disadvantage authors. Chan pointed out that CC licenses can “hide” some reuses from authors, by removing the need for permissions correspondence. Kingsley discussed the potential for reputational harm to authors whose works are reused in poor adaptations or translations. Kowalski & Bailey commented on the potential reputational harm of the “misperception that CC-licensed works lack quality and rigor, even though there are thousands of high-quality, peer-reviewed, CC licensed, open access journals and other publications.”
14 Against the Grain / November 2021
I asked whether there is one (or more) specific Creative Commons license that is particularly good for academic work, or any that are particularly bad. Here, responses ranged widely. Finch and Oppenheim preferred CC Attribution-Noncommercial (which requires attribution and limits reuse to noncommercial users), explaining that, “I recognise of course there are costs associated with some forms of redissemination but favour an open science approach rather than a profit making motivation.” (Oppenheim) and “the NC adds something significant in a realm where labor can be and is exploited.” (Finch) By contrast, Chan did not recommend NC licenses due to the limits they place on reuse (noting they prevent use in Wikipedia). These divergent perspectives on NC clauses among respondents reflect a point of principled divergence in the Creative Commons community in general on limiting commercial reuse versus enabling all reuse. This point of principled divergence also exists to some extent in the broader universe of open licensing beyond Creative Commons. Chan instead emphasized ShareAlike (SA) licenses, “since we wish to encourage further sharing of content.” But in yet another contrast, Kowalski & Bailey said they generally do not recommend SA licenses because “they force downstream users to apply a license that may be impractical or completely unworkable for their use case, and they also make remixing more complicated.” They instead preferred the simple Attribution-only (BY) license — and noted “Any CC license is better than traditional all-rightsreserved copyright that the creator transfers to a publisher. We cannot think of an instance where the creator losing control of their own intellectual property is better than CC licensing it.” I asked respondents if they think most authors are aware of the various benefits and drawbacks of different CC licenses. While Finch offered that “very few authors are completely unfamiliar with them,” others had less sanguine takes. Chan pointed out that even for authors who know about CC licenses, “further explanation is often still necessary.” Kowalski & Bailey noted that in their first encounters with CC licenses, authors tend to choose more restrictive licenses, imagining worst-case scenarios; they address this through discussion to “help them understand that highly restrictive CC licenses will hobble users and prevent their work from gaining a wide audience. It’s also helpful to remind them that even if they don’t openly license their work, bad actors still might copy their work without attributing them and sell it on the Internet.” Kingsley pointed out that even “[u]nderstanding of copyright in general is patchy, with many authors still not realising that their work is no longer theirs on
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