New 'Coalition For Responsible Sharing' About To Send Millions Of Take-Down Notices To Stop Researchers Sharing Their Own Papers
from the how-responsible-is-that? dept
A couple of weeks ago, we wrote about a proposal from the International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) to introduce upload filtering on the ResearchGate site in order to stop authors from sharing their own papers without "permission". In its letter to ResearchGate, STM's proposal concluded with a thinly-veiled threat to call in the lawyers if the site refused to implement the upload filters. In the absence of ResearchGate's acquiescence, a newly-formed "Coalition for Responsible Sharing", whose members include the American Chemical Society (ACS), Brill, Elsevier, Wiley and Wolters Kluwer, has issued a statement confirming the move:
Following unsuccessful attempts to jointly find ways for scholarly collaboration network ResearchGate to run its service in a copyright-compliant way, a coalition of information analytics businesses, publishers and societies is now left with no other choice but to take formal steps to remedy the illicit hosting of millions of subscription articles on the ResearchGate site.
Those formal steps include sending "millions of takedown notices for unauthorized content on its site now and in the future." Two Coalition publishers, ACS and Elsevier, have also filed a lawsuit in a German regional court, asking for “clarity and judgement” on the legality of ResearchGate's activities. Justifying these actions, the Coalition's statement says: "ResearchGate acquires volumes of articles each month in violation of agreements between journals and authors" -- and that, in a nutshell, is the problem.
The articles posted on ResearchGate are generally uploaded by the authors; they want them there so that their peers can read them. They also welcome the seamless access to other articles written by their fellow researchers. In other words, academic authors are perfectly happy with ResearchGate and how it uses the papers that they write, because it helps them work better as researchers. A recent post on The Scholarly Kitchen blog noted:
Researchers particularly appreciate ResearchGate because they can easily follow who cites their articles, and they can follow references to find other articles they may find of interest. Researchers do not stop to think about copyright concerns and in fact, the platform encourages them, frequently, to upload their published papers.
The problem lies in the unfair and one-sided contracts academic authors sign with publishers, which often do not allow them to share their own published papers freely. The issues with ResearchGate would disappear if researchers stopped agreeing to these completely unnecessary restrictions -- and if publishers stopped demanding them.
The Coalition for Responsible Sharing's statement makes another significant comment about ResearchGate: that it acquires all these articles "without making any contribution to the production or publication of the intellectual work it hosts." But much the same could be said about publishers, which take papers written by publicly-funded academics for free, chosen by academics for free, and reviewed by academics for free, and then add some editorial polish at the end. Despite their minimal contributions, publishers -- and publishers alone -- enjoy the profits that result. The extremely high margins offer incontrovertible proof that ResearchGate and similar scholarly collaboration networks are not a problem for anybody. The growing popularity and importance of unedited preprints confirms that what publishers add is dispensable. That makes the Coalition for Responsible Sharing's criticism of ResearchGate and its business model deeply hypocritical.
It is also foolish. By sending millions of take-down notices to ResearchGate -- and thus making it harder for researchers to share their own papers on a site they currently find useful -- the Coalition for Responsible Sharing will inevitably push people to use other alternatives, notably Sci-Hub. Unlike ResearchGate, which largely offers articles uploaded by their own authors, Sci-Hub generally sources its papers without the permission of the academics. So, once more, the clumsy actions of publishers desperate to assert control at all costs make it more likely that unauthorized copies will be downloaded and shared, not less. How responsible is that?
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Filed Under: academic research, copyright, knowledge, sharing, takedowns
Companies: coalition for responsible sharing, elsevier, researchgate
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Re: Its their paper
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They're just trying to bring balance and prevent there being too much scientific knowledge.
They wouldn't want there to be too much of a good thing. Unless they get to erect a troll booth.
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violation of agreements between journals and authors
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Re: violation of agreements between journals and authors
Dang. Premature entry. Some key combination that I don't even know and never hit by intent sent that!
Anyhoo, IF there is such agreement -- a contract -- then the authors don't have any valid objection. Period.
By your own text these publishers are doing some work; you wrote: "and then add some editorial polish at the end." -- You clearly need some "editorial polish" to not write so stupidly as to in same sentence invalidate your own assertions.
-- And then I was blocked! Trying again.
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Re: Re: violation of agreements between journals and authors
Because some guy at the carwash polishes my car after it's been cleaned does NOT mean he should get paid for having made the car in the first place.
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Re: Re: Re: violation of agreements between journals and authors
No, but if you sign a waiver to the exclusive rights of the car's polished exterior, you can't just go on to publish photographs of you with your car on Facebook.
The outrageous thing here is not that the publications insist on their contracts to be honored. The outrageous thing is that the contracts are what they are in the first place, and that the authors don't say "sorry, no deal then".
You don't get to sign a pact with the devil and then get to act surprised that you aren't in possession of your soul any more.
Large corporation's lawyers will put everything in contracts that they can get away with: that's what they are being paid for. And as long as an author does not say "no, you can't get this from me" this will only get worse.
I sent back music scores with conditions I could not agree to (only perform with mention of the edition, and not be allowed to deviate from the score? For a work by Johann fucking Sebastian Bach? Are you bullshitting me? Well, yes, but I am not going to pay for it).
This "nobody would write bad things in a contract I am sure" rationale led us there. It's what makes record companies tick. It's what has led to current EULAs.
As long as people don't say "no, not under those conditions", this madness will go on, and people will deserve it.
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Also, no meal then. If there is just the devil, and the alternative is starving, you'll go to the devil.
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Fatalistic lazy cowards are part of the problem.
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ftfy
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Another solution would be to put them in the public domain to start with. The journals usually have some way of handling that, because US-government papers are public-domain.
Separately, courts don't have to uphold unreasonable contracts. It's pretty obvious that there's no "meeting of the minds" for clickthrough contracts like this.
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Who hated the process of due
Each paper he'd paid
Was DMCAed
And shoved up his ass with a screw
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...and yet gain control over the whole work, even at the expense of the people who did the bulk of the original work.
It always helps if you address the whole argument, not cherry pick the bits you can wave away in blind defense of corporate profits.
"-- And then I was blocked! Trying again."
I'm sure you've had the reasons for that explained to you.
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Re: Re: violation of agreements between journals and authors
And then I was blocked!
Weinstein you are
Einstein you are not
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Re: violation of agreements between journals and authors
In my field, a research paper requires years of effort, often by five to ten people, paid for by tax dollars. We then hand it to a journal that expends (I'm guessing) 20 person hours getting the text into its final edited form. When a generally law-abiding researcher notices this gross asymmetry, and also notes that the vast majority of these contracts are honored in the breach, they share their work--contracts be damned.
Is it legal? No. Is it rational? Yes.
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Copyright transfer
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Re: Copyright transfer
And maybe after a few lawsuits authors will realize that signing away all their rights is not a good idea and will stop colluding with those publications in order to make science hidden behind paywalls.
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Though that would be going after the right targets it's something that you can be sure that they will never do, as it would draw too much public attention to just how bad the contracts they are offering are.
A researcher was sued for publishing their own research? How can that be? What do you mean it's not 'their' research any more, that the contract they signed means that a third-party that had nothing to do with the research now owns the right to it such that even the researcher cannot share it?
No, rather than line themselves up for a flurry of PR black-eyes, they'll go after the platforms that the researchers are sharing their works on, quite likely, as noted in the article, driving more than a few of the researchers to submit their works on services that don't care so much about that pesky 'legality' or 'takedown notices'.
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This racket must be crushed mercilessly!!
This is nothing but a scary tactics, RG should just lol at their fruitless efforts to stop the Progress of science.
All hail SciHub.
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That's the word we are talking about in "responsible sharing" and "responsible encryption".
It is a qualified "not actually".
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responsible taxation
responsible asset forfeiture
responsible fascist coup
irresponsible dissent
irresponsible protest
irresponsible revolt
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This sounds like suing musicians for singing their own songs
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So, let's review
The proper response to this is to blacklist their servers/network allocation permanently in order to stop the abuse they're generating from reaching its targets.
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"Free"?
This is untrue.
Academics need to pay to submit articles. It's literally negative value. They charge you for the privilege of making money off of you.
Those publishers still exist only because administration uses them to evaluate the academics.
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Publisher Surrender and an Alternative
But, what if we don't care about them staying in business?
An alternative is to have researchers publish directly to ResearchGate and then submit their papers to one or more "foundations". The foundation would be a non-profit supported by universities that would perform actual peer review and other supposedly valuable functions that the current publishers now perform.
Instead of researchers getting a better reputation by being published in a prestigious journal, their reputation would be the result of being featured by prestigious foundations.
All it would take is for several universities or charitable foundations (Ford, Kellogg, etc.) to financially support some non-profits INSTEAD of paying for scientific journal subscriptions.
But of course, as an anonymous coward, I will not be the one trying to make this happen.
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Re: Publisher Surrender and an Alternative
Yes, everyone pays to publish in "prestigious" journals. And those journals charge subscriptions. But the publishers, editors, peer review, clerks, typesetters, etc can't work for free. And the print runs just don't bring in enough advertising.
Moving the operation to a university is just putting the cost on someone else. Many universities have publishing houses. But they don't make a profit or at best, a very small one. Foundations are not in the business of publishing.
I don't have the answer as this is another paradigm from the analogue world to digital. But free is not the answer.
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Re: Re: Publisher Surrender and an Alternative
The editors and peer reviewers certainly work for being other academics, while for most journals, the author is expected to submit the work almost ready for print. University librarians are good curators, and paper copies are much less important, hence the increasing number of online academic run journals, where the entire editorial team have left the big publishers and moved to a journal with a different name.
Also note, with many of the big publishers, the academics have to pay a per page charge to cover any typesetting work carried out by the publishers, and so they have to pay to get printed, and their colleagues and collaborators should pay to get a copy of their papers, which is why the academics making their papers for free is what the publishers are trying to stop by indirect means. Suing those who provide the paper you need would only speed up the flight of academics to new academic run online journals, especially when they are the editors of the titles that you own.
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But the foundation would not be publishing anything in print and would only be publishing their value-add electronically - their peer review and editorial notes.
The idea of a foundation is that multiple universities would contribute to a foundation in order to support the salaries of those working in the foundation. Ideally, the funds given to the foundation would be similar to what the universities paid originally as subscriptions.
Its not perfect, but if the papers are already being freely distributed, then subscriptions are out of the question. And a subscription to ResearchGate would not be ideal, because we wouldn't want one monolithic site that distributes all papers AND is the sole peer review source.
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'Coalition For Responsible Sharing'
'Responsible Encryption'
Dang, another good word ("responsible") has been politicized and gutted.
Where is Orwell when we really need him?
s/responsible/Big Brother/
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Re: 'Coalition For Responsible Sharing'
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Unfair Contracts?
- it would cause a significant imbalance in the parties’ rights and obligations arising out of the contract
- it is not reasonably necessary in order to protect the legitimate interests of the party who would be advantaged by the term; and
- it would cause detriment (whether financial or otherwise) to a party if it were to be applied or relied on.
Unfair terms in these contracts are deemed to be void.
I suspect that some other countries have similar provisions in contract law (Canada?, France?). I wonder if this will, in the longer terms, influence a move of research to jurisdictions that are more friendly to researcher rights?
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RG should just put a clause in their upload page like "you certify that you are entitled to upload this" - it probably already has this. It would be unreasonable to ask any more than this, RG just has no practical way to know apart from what uploaders tell them.
What the copyright-exploiters are demanding under the guise of "filters" is a unilateral veto over everything before it's put on RG. But RG has no contract with them; they should be suing their authors instead.
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And yes, the RIAA. Perfect 10 got the RIAA on their side. Music or otherwise, the RIAA is a global spokesperson for copyright no matter how misapplied it is.
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Help me out. . .
Or am i just completely misunderstanding the way scientific research and publishing are done?
Yes, I know the requirement for a take-down notice are minimal compared to a lawsuit.
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