Category: Creative Commons/Open Licenses

"Is Creative Commons a Panacea for Managing Digital Humanities Intellectual Property Rights?"

Yi Ding has published "Is Creative Commons a Panacea for Managing Digital Humanities Intellectual Property Rights?" in Information Technology and Libraries.

Here's an excerpt:

Digital humanities is an academic field applying computational methods to explore topics and questions in the humanities field. Digital humanities projects, as a result, consist of a variety of creative works different from those in traditional humanities disciplines. Born to provide free, simple ways to grant permissions to creative works, Creative Commons (CC) licenses have become top options for many digital humanities scholars to handle intellectual property rights in the US. However, there are limitations of using CC licenses that are sometimes unknown by scholars and academic librarians. By analyzing case studies and influential lawsuits about intellectual property rights in the digital age, this article advocates for a critical perspective of copyright education and provides academic librarians with specific recommendations about advising digital humanities scholars to use CC licenses with four limitations in mind: 1) the pitfall of a free license; 2) the risk of irrevocability; 3) the ambiguity of NonCommercial and NonDerivative licenses; 4) the dilemma of ShareAlike and the open movement.

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"The Landscape of Rights and Licensing Initiatives for Data Sharing"

Sam Grabus and Jane Greenberg have published "The Landscape of Rights and Licensing Initiatives for Data Sharing" in Data Science Journal.

Here's an excerpt:

Over the last twenty years, a wide variety of resources have been developed to address the rights and licensing problems inherent with contemporary data sharing practices. The landscape of developments is this area is increasingly confusing and difficult to navigate, due to the complexity of intellectual property and ethics issues associated with sharing sensitive data. This paper seeks to address this challenge, examining the landscape and presenting a Version 1.0 directory of resources. A multi-method study was pursued, with an environmental scan examining 20 resources, resulting in three high-level categories: standards, tools, and community initiatives; and a content analysis revealing the subcategories of rights, licensing, metadata & ontologies. A timeline confirms a shift in licensing standardization priorities from open data to more nuanced and technologically robust solutions, over time, to accommodate for more sensitive data types. This paper reports on the research undertaking, and comments on the potential for using license-specific metadata supplements and developing data-centric rights and licensing ontologies.

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"An Open Impediment: Navigating Copyright and OER Publishing in the Academic Library"

Lindsey Gumb has published "An Open Impediment: Navigating Copyright and OER Publishing in the Academic Library" in College & Research Libraries News.

Here's an excerpt:

Most academic librarians are accustomed to assisting faculty with locating and acquiring quality, copyrighted learning resources to support the curriculum. Therefore, slightly realigning this process in order to point these individuals toward quality, openly licensed content hasn't required a significant learning curve beyond identifying appropriate open repositories for consultation. What happens, however, when these same faculty want to go beyond simply identifying and adopting OER content and ask for help in revising, remixing, and creating new content?

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Good News from Flickr about 500 Million CC and Public Domain Images: "Update on Creative Commons Licenses and ‘In Memoriam’ Accounts"

Flickr has released "Update on Creative Commons Licenses and 'In Memoriam' Accounts."

Here's an excerpt:

When we recently announced updates to Flickr Free accounts, we stated that freely licensed public photos (Creative Commons, public domain, U.S. government works, etc.) as of November 1, 2018 in excess of the free account limit would not be deleted. . . .

In this spirit, today we're going further and now protecting all public, freely licensed images on Flickr, regardless of the date they were uploaded. . . .

In conjunction with this announcement, we've disabled bulk license change tools in the Settings, the Camera Roll, and the Organizr for Flickr Free accounts. . . . Any member (Free or Pro) can still change the license of any of their photos on the photo page.

In memoriam accounts will preserve all public content in a deceased member's account, even if their Pro subscription lapses.

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"Merits and Limits: Applying Open Data to Monitor Open Access Publications in Bibliometric Databases"

Aliakbar Akbaritabar and Stephan Stahlschmidt have self-archived "Merits and Limits: Applying Open Data to Monitor Open Access Publications in Bibliometric Databases."

Here's an excerpt:

Identifying and monitoring Open Access (OA) publications might seem a trivial task while practical efforts prove otherwise. Contradictory information arise often depending on metadata employed. We strive to assign OA status to publications in Web of Science (WOS) and Scopus while complementing it with different sources of OA information to resolve contradicting cases. We linked publications from WOS and Scopus via DOIs and ISSNs to Unpaywall, Crossref, DOAJ and ROAD. Only about 50% of articles and reviews from WOS and Scopus could be matched via a DOI to Unpaywall. Matching with Crossref brought 56 distinct licences, which define in many cases the legally binding access status of publications. But only 44% of publications hold only a single licence on Crossref, while more than 50% have no licence information submitted to Crossref. Contrasting OA information from Crossref licences with Unpaywall we found contradictory cases overall amounting to more than 25%, which might be partially explained by (ex-)including green OA.

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"Creative Commons Awarded $800,000 from Arcadia to Support Discovery and Collaboration in the Global Commons"

The Creative Commons has released "Creative Commons Awarded $800,000 from Arcadia to Support Discovery and Collaboration in the Global Commons."

Here's an excerpt:

CC Search—together with the Commons Metadata Library and the Commons API—will form the Commons Collaborative Archive and Library, a suite of tools for discovery and collaboration. CC aims through the development of this suite of tools to make the global commons of openly licensed content more searchable, usable, and resilient, and to provide essential infrastructure for collaborative online communities. The project elements will feature an index of every openly licensed and public domain work on the web (the Library); an API allowing developers to query the metadata library and to develop services and integrations for content in the Commons; and CC Search, a search engine that harnesses the power of open repositories and allows users to search across a variety of open content through a single interface.

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"The UK Scholarly Communication Licence: Attempting to Cut through the Gordian Knot of the Complexities of Funder Mandates, Publisher Embargoes and Researcher Caution in Achieving Open Access"

Julie Baldwin and Stephen Pinfield have published "The UK Scholarly Communication Licence: Attempting to Cut through the Gordian Knot of the Complexities of Funder Mandates, Publisher Embargoes and Researcher Caution in Achieving Open Access" in Publications.

Here's an excerpt:

Whilst take-up of open access (OA) in the UK is growing rapidly due partly to a number of funder mandates, managing the complexities of balancing compliance with these mandates against restrictive publisher policies and ingrained academic priorities, has resulted in UK higher education institutions (HEIs) often struggling with confused researchers, complex workflows, and rising costs. In order to try to address this situation, the UK Scholarly Communication Licence (UK-SCL) was formulated to bypass the root causes of many of these challenges by implementing a licensing mechanism for multiple-mandate compliance in one single policy. This is the first empirical study to focus on the genesis of the UK-SCL and how its implementation has been conceived thus far. A qualitative research method was used, taking the form of 14 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders from the initiative across the UK. The results indicate that those working within UK HEIs are concerned with the complexity of the current OA policy landscape and are frustrated with the inertia within the current system, which has resulted in higher costs, further publisher restrictions, and has not addressed the underlying tensions in academic culture. The UK-SCL is seen by its initiators as a way to achieve further transition towards OA and take back some element of control of the content produced at their institutions. The study concludes by modelling the ways in which the UK-SCL is intended to impact relationships between key stakeholders, and discussing possible implementation futures.

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"Conflicting Academic Attitudes to Copyright Are Slowing the Move to Open Access"

Francis Dodds has published "Conflicting Academic Attitudes to Copyright Are Slowing the Move to Open Access" in LSE Impact of Social Sciences.

Here's an excerpt:

Moreover, many researchers are concerned to protect the integrity of their work by restricting its potential use by others. Some studies suggest that many academics across both the sciences and humanities are opposed to commercial reuse, adaptations or inclusion of their work in anthologies (a particular aspect of humanities publishing), whilst there are mixed views about allowing data mining of their work. An example of these contrasting views is the bioRxiv site which hosts preprint papers in biology. A study of the site by Lindsay McKenzie (2017) found that over a third of authors had selected the most restrictive Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) license, which bars commercial use and “derivative” works, including translations and annotations. Another 29% had not selected any license which, by default, reserved all rights in the work, requiring permission from the author for copying and reuse. It is noticeable that the Scholarly Communications License has been criticised by both publishers and academics as being too inflexible.

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Creative Commons: State of the Commons 2017

The Creative Commons has released State of the Commons 2017.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

People, projects, and programs make up the bulk of this year’s report, but the data also supports our vision of a more creative, open world. 1.4 billion works is 200 million more than last year, and that growth has accelerated compared to the previous two years. To provide concrete examples: The Metropolitan Museum released 375,000 pieces of content under CC0 in February 2017. PLOS counts 7,000 editorial board members and 70,000+ volunteer peer reviewers to release 200,000 pieces of content. Wikipedia, one of our closest allies and partner in the “Big Open”, hosts 42 million freely licensed pieces of content. Our search tool has responded to 1,500,000 queries, and our website has been visited 50,000,000 times. And that’s only a part of our impact.

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"Managing Copyright in Digital Collections: A Focus on Creative Commons Licences"

Caroline Korbel has published "Managing Copyright in Digital Collections: A Focus on Creative Commons Licences" in the Dalhousie Journal of Interdisciplinary Management.

Here's an excerpt:

Digital collections in public institutions can benefit from Creative Commons licenses, as they allow the responsible sharing and use of information online by faculty, students, researchers, and the public at large. This essay outlines the proper management of Creative Commons licenses in the following order: first, the current state of copyright in Canada; second, how the Creative Commons functions and its relation to free culture and Open Access; third, Creative Commons for public institution collections, and not just as a holding body, but as a repository; fourth, tools for managing Creative Commons licences online, including digital rights management (DRM) and technological protection measures (TPMs); and fifth, future impacts of the Creative Commons on digital collections. Creative Commons licences offer libraries that opportunity to expand their patronage and explore broader uses of their collections.

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"Sustainable Book Publishing as a Service at the University of Michigan"

Jason Colman has published "Sustainable Book Publishing as a Service at the University of Michigan" in the Journal of Electronic Publishing.

Here's an excerpt:

To solve this problem [publishing open access books], Michigan Publishing Services has developed both a house service publishing imprint, Maize Books, and a white-labeled book publishing program, branded by University units, all running on the same technical and financial infrastructure. With an emphasis on Open Access with flexible Creative Commons licensing and affordable Print on Demand and EBook options combine workflow efficiencies with a menu of chargeback services to cover the costs of their production and allow staffing to be scaled to meet emerging needs.

This brief case study details Michigan Publishing Services’s program for books as it stands today, explains its approach to sustainability, and offers a few thoughts about when this model is suitable and when it is not.

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"Copyright: The Immoveable Barrier That Open Access Advocates Underestimated"

Richard Poynder has published "Copyright: The Immoveable Barrier That Open Access Advocates Underestimated."

Here's an excerpt:

In calling for research papers to be made freely available open access advocates promised that doing so would lead to a simpler, less costly, more democratic, and more effective scholarly communication system. To achieve their objectives they proposed two different ways of providing open access: green OA (self-archiving) and gold OA (open access publishing). However, while the OA movement has succeeded in persuading research institutions and funders of the merits of open access, it has failed to win the hearts and minds of most researchers. More importantly, it is not achieving its objectives. There are various reasons for this, but above all it is because OA advocates underestimated the extent to which copyright would subvert their cause.

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Creative Commons Releases CC Search Beta

The Creative Commons has released CC Search Beta.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Our goal is to cover the whole commons, but we wanted to develop something people could test and react to that would be useful at launch. To build our beta, we settled on a goal to represent one percent of the known Commons, or about 10 million works, and we chose a vertical slice of images only, to fully explore a purpose-built interface that represented one type but many providers. . . .

After a detailed review of potential sources, the available APIs, and the quality of their datasets, we selected the Rijksmuseum, Flickr, 500px, the New York Public Library as our initial sources. Later, after discussions with the Metropolitan Museum of Art regarding their collection of public domain works, which were released under CC0 on February 7, 2017, we incorporated their 200,000 CC0 images as well. . . .

The prototype of this tool focuses on photos as its first media and uses open APIs in order to index the available works. The search filters allow users to search by license type, title, creator, tags, collection, and type of institution.

CC Search Beta also provides social features, allowing users to create and share lists as well as add tags and favorites to the objects in the commons, and save their searches. Finally, it incorporates one-click attribution, giving users pre-formatted copy for easy attribution.

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Metropolitan Museum of Art Puts Images of Public Domain Artworks under Creative Commons Zero (CC0) License

The Metropolitan Museum of Art has put images of public domain artworks under the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) License.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This morning, we announced a major update to the Museum's policy governing the use and reuse of images in our collection: all images of public-domain artworks in the Museum's collection are now available for free and unrestricted use under Creative Commons Zero (CC0). This updated policy, known as Open Access, enables everyone to utilize more than 375,000 images of public-domain artworks in The Met's collection in any media without permission or fee.

See also: "Introducing Open Access at The Met."

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"Write up! A Study of Copyright Information on Library-Published Journals"

Melanie Schlosser has published "Write up! A Study of Copyright Information on Library-Published Journals" in the Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication.

Here's an excerpt:

INTRODUCTION Libraries have a mission to educate users about copyright, and library publishing staff are often involved in that work. This article investigates a concrete point of intersection between the two areas—copyright statements on library-published journals. METHODS Journals published by members of the Library Publishing Coalition were examined for open access status, type and placement of copyright information, copyright ownership, and open licensing. RESULTS Journals in the sample were overwhelmingly (93%) open access. 80% presented copyright information of some kind, but only 30% of those included it at both the journal and the article level. Open licensing was present in 38% of the journals, and the most common ownership scenario was the author retaining copyright while granting a nonexclusive license to the journal or publisher. 9% of the sample journals included two or more conflicting rights statements. DISCUSSION 76% of the journals did not consistently provide accurate, easily-accessible rights information, and numerous problems were found with the use of open licensing, including conflicting licenses, incomplete licenses, and licenses not appearing at the article level. CONCLUSION Recommendations include presenting full copyright and licensing information at both the journal and the article level, careful use of open licenses, and publicly-available author agreements. External Data or Supplements:

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"The Mystery of Creative Commons Licenses"

De Gruyter Open has released "The Mystery of Creative Commons Licenses" by Witold Kieńć.

Here's an excerpt:

While more than half of open access papers are published under the terms of a liberal Creative Commons Attribution Licence, the majority of authors of open access works seem not to accept the terms of either this or any other Creative Commons license.

Despite the fact that the majority of journals indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals use liberal Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) licence as a default, and that probably more than half of all articles published in open access serials are published under the terms of this licence, academic authors seem not to support liberal licensing. How is it possible? Are authors of more than 600 thousand CC-BY licensed works invisible in surveys? Or do they publish under the terms of this license against their will?

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