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?

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: academic research, copyright, knowledge, sharing, takedowns
Companies: coalition for responsible sharing, elsevier, researchgate

Scientific Publishers Want Upload Filter To Stop Academics Sharing Their Own Papers Without Permission

from the where-there's-a-gate,-there's-got-to-be-a-gatekeeper dept

Back in March of this year, Techdirt wrote about ResearchGate, a site that allows its members to upload and share academic papers. Although the site says it is the responsibility of the uploaders to make sure that they have the necessary rights to post and share material, it's clear that millions of articles on ResearchGate are unauthorized copies according to the restrictive agreements that publishers typically impose on their authors. As we wrote back then, it was interesting that academic publishers were fine with that, but not with Sci-Hub posting and sharing more or less the same number of unauthorized papers.

Somewhat belatedly, the International Association of Scientific Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) has now announced that it is not fine with authors sharing copies of their own papers on ResearchGate without asking permission. In a letter to the site from its lawyers (pdf), the STM is proposing what it calls "a sustainable way to grow and to continue the important role you play in the research ecosystem". Here's what it wants ResearchGate ("RG") to do:

RG's users could continue "claiming”, i.e. agreeing to make public or uploading documents in the way they may have become accustomed to with RG's site. An automated system, utilizing existing technologies and ready to be implemented by STM members, would indicate if the version of the article could be shared publicly or privately. If publicly, then the content could be posted widely. If privately, then the article would remain available only to the co-authors or other private research groups consistent with the STM Voluntary Principles. In addition, a message could be sent to the author showing how to obtain rights to post the article more widely. This system could be implemented within 30-60 days and could then handle this "processing" well within 24 hours.

In other words, an upload filter, of exactly the kind proposed by the European Commission in its new Copyright Directive. There appears to be a concerted push by the copyright industry to bring in upload filters where it can, either through legislation, as in the EU, or through "voluntary" agreements, as with ResearchGate. Although the lawyer's letter is couched in the politest terms, it leaves no doubt that if ResearchGate refuses to implement STM's helpful suggestion, things might become less pleasant. It concludes:

On behalf of STM, I urge you therefore to consider this proposal. If you fail to accede to this proposal by 22 September 2017, then STM will be leaving the path open for its individual members to follow up with you separately, whether individually or in groups sharing a similar interest and approach, as they may see fit.

What this latest move shows is that publishers aren't prepared to allow academics to share even their own papers without permission. It underlines that, along with fat profits, what the industry is most concerned about in this struggle is control. Academic publishers will graciously allow ResearchGate to exist, but only if they are recognized unequivocally as the gatekeeper.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: academia, copyright, knowledge, papers, sharing
Companies: researchgate, sci-hub

Bill Gates And Other Major Investors Put $52.6 Million Into Site Sharing Unauthorized Copies Of Academic Papers

from the so-how-is-that-different-from-sci-hub? dept

As we've noted, the main reason the Sci-Hub site is so popular with academics is not because it is free -- researchers generally have free access to papers anyway -- but because it is so easy to use. Among other things, it provides a centralized store of a huge number of papers -- 58 million at the time of writing -- that can be downloaded with a single click. But an interesting post on the Green Tea and Velociraptors blog points out Sci-Hub's holdings are beaten by the total number of papers available on the ResearchGate site, which has 12 million members:

The platform boasts that 2.5 million published outputs are uploaded by its users every month, equivalent to around the total number of published scholarly research articles each year. The site claims to have around 100 million published articles, which is very impressive seeing as only around 20-25 million have ever been published Open Access [OA].

The same post points out that many of those 100 million articles seem to be unauthorized copies:

Based on a random sample of English language articles drawn from ResearchGate, the study [published last month] showed that 201 (51.3%) out of 392 non-OA articles infringed the copyright and were non-compliant with publishers' policy. While this sample size was small, there is no reason to think that the same cannot be said if we scale up to consider the entire corpus of articles shared on RG. This means that around half, or approximately 50 million, research papers on RG are most likely illegally hosted.

If that analysis is correct, it would seem that ResearchGate holds roughly as many unauthorized copies of academic papers as Sci-Hub. Despite that fact, ResearchGate has just revealed that back in November 2015, it received investments totalling $52.6 million from some rather starry names, including that famous hater of pirates, Bill Gates:

Wellcome Trust, Goldman Sachs Investment Partners, and Four Rivers Group with participation from Ashton Kutcher, Groupe Arnault, Xavier Niel, and existing investors Bill Gates, Tenaya Capital, Benchmark, and Founders Fund.

ResearchGate says it is the responsibility of the uploader to make sure that they have the necessary rights to post material to the site:

As we do not have any information about rights you may hold, or any license terms or other restrictions which might apply to such content, we necessarily rely on you to understand your rights and act accordingly. For this reason, we request that you fully investigate and confirm that you have sufficient rights to post particular content to ResearchGate before you post such content. As a general matter, if you are an author publishing in a journal, you may be allowed to publish certain versions of your article, but not others, and privately share certain content with others. However, many journals restrict publication of final versions and impose limitations on private sharing.

As that notes, authors are typically only allowed to post certain versions of their papers -- usually early ones. But most researchers don't bother with that detail, and simply upload the final version to ResearchGate, which is probably why the recent analysis mentioned by the Tea and Velociraptors blog found so many unauthorized copies. Along with laziness, or ignorance of the niceties here, another factor driving this phenomenon may be that academics are aware that much of their work has been paid for by the public, and therefore feel the definitive results should be disseminated as widely as possible.

Still, the contrast between ResearchGate, which has received major investments from some rather big names, and Sci-Hub, which is currently being pursued in the courts by Elsevier, is stark, given that their respective holdings turn out to be so similar. It's another indication that the academic publishing system is broken, and that copyright is an irrelevance as far as millions of researchers are concerned.

Follow me @glynmoody on Twitter or identi.ca, and +glynmoody on Google+

Filed Under: academic papers, bill gates, copyright, infringement, investment, research
Companies: researchgate