Survey results

Here are the results of my survey on concerns about republication of CC-BY articles.  I've put a screenshot of the survey questions below the graphs of the results.  I discuss the implications in a separate post.

The survey link was emailed to the Evoldir and Ecolog-L mailing lists and posted to the SSE and CSEE facebook sites (reaching ~20,000 evolutionary biologists and ecologists), and emailed to four UBC departmental faculty lists.  It was also posted on this blog.  The text of the email is provided at the end of this post.

Survey participants:

Survey opinions:

I would be happy to have the quality of my paper recognized. I would be happy that my scientific contribution is being widely disseminated. I would welcome this as another entry in my publication list. I would want to have received a share of the profits. I would want the collection to be freely available. I would want the collection to be a high-quality contribution to the field. I would want the paper's original publication to be conspicuously credited. I would want the paper to be unaltered. I would worry about editing errors. I would worry that the editing has changed my interpretations. I would worry that the book's goals may conflict with mine. I would worry that my citation record will be confused. I would worry that colleagues will think I've self-plagiarized by publishing the same article twice. I would want to learn more about copyright options. I would not have accepted the CC-BY license if I'd known this could happen. In future I would not publish in journals that require the CC-BY license. In future I would not publish in open-access journals. - See more at: http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2013/08/why-authors-are-concerned.html#sthash.l1d0a9eh.dpuf

I would be happy to have the quality of my paper recognized. I would be happy that my scientific contribution is being widely disseminated. I would welcome this as another entry in my publication list. I would want to have received a share of the profits. I would want the collection to be freely available. I would want the collection to be a high-quality contribution to the field. I would want the paper's original publication to be conspicuously credited. I would want the paper to be unaltered. I would worry about editing errors. I would worry that the editing has changed my interpretations. I would worry that the book's goals may conflict with mine. I would worry that my citation record will be confused. I would worry that colleagues will think I've self-plagiarized by publishing the same article twice. I would want to learn more about copyright options. I would not have accepted the CC-BY license if I'd known this could happen. In future I would not publish in journals that require the CC-BY license. In future I would not publish in open-access journals. - See more at: http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2013/08/why-authors-are-concerned.html#sthash.l1d0a9eh.dpuf

The survey choices:

(A thread on Twitter claimed that this survey was very biased.  However, all of the negative choices were ones authors had raised with me; the positive ones I added to give balance.  Perhaps the tweeters mistakenly thought this was a general survey about open access instead of a very narrowly focused survey about one particular form of CC-BY reuse.)

Comments/concerns from survey participants:

• In future it will be obligatory in the UK to publish in an open access format (Green or Gold)
• Frustrating but an acceptable by product of the shifting landscape of publishing
• I would want to be contacted before publication and have the right to decline
• I would want to be consulted first and appropriately recognized for the original contribution and if being sold for profit the authors should receive a share of profits
• Editing of published manuscripts should be illegal.
• In addition to accurate citation of my original publication, I would want the citation to clearly indicate if the paper was copied exactly or adapted.
• always assumed OA was so people could read freely only
• I got my book!! republished this way! I guess that a intermediate (no commercial use) CC license should be required.
• I would be infuriated that I was not notified that they stole my work. I have published in PLOS and this would make me seriously reconsider doing so ever again - especially since I paid $1350 to PLoS so the work would be freely available to everyone and anyone having to pay $100 for this book is being ripped off
• is there a different license, still making freely available / disseminable, but restricting this kind of republishing?
• I would want a disclaimer on the book that clearly states that the individual articles are free on the web.
• The whole idea offends me
• I believe authors are bound by the agreements they make.
• I know these are not mutually compatible responses but its a complicated problem!
• Some of the above seem to conflict with the explicit wording of the CC-BY. Seems like if you agree to CC-BY, you can't really argue some of these.
• I would like to be asked and it should be after a number of years
• I should be able to expect nothing less than ethical conduct by publishers, regardless of what is legal
• I would like the licensing to be more transparent
• Who is making money off of this? It is creepy that they don't have to ask.
• This is truly frightening. Surely profiting from this is in violation, no?
• I don't think it would put me off publishing entirely using CC-BY, but it has certainly made me think twice!
• The CC-BY license should proscribe for-profit use by individuals other than the author(s).
• I would want them to let me know before they do any changes and ask me if these changes are correct!
• I think this would be fine, if proper attribution were clearly given for original work
• It is not clear from the situation description whether the original authors are listed as authors of the paper in the volume. If so, I would also have checked 1-3
• While I know that the CC BY requires only attribution, I think this scenario presents some outcomes that are potentially unintended by many parties who publish in OA journals. I worry that this scenario is essentially duplication of the original work in a way that is anathema in academia. I'm very happy to allow someone to profit by using the CC BY licenses as long as such reuse was actually transformative. As it is, it appears that the CC BY license essentially allows plagiarism to be carried out for profit. In my opinion, such works should not be treated as citable literature in academics, and perhaps the open access licenses should be modified to reflect this goal.
• I would want them to make clear the origins of the work and original context
• I would be absolutely furious if my work was used without my explicit permission. How dare someone attempt to profit off my without doing anything.
• The point is we pay extra to make an article open to the public. No one should be profiting from the information later. Also the book will be somewhat out of date by publication time and may not be that cohesive since it wouldn't include subscription articles. In other words I would worry about the overall quality of the book.
• I do not want people to make money from my work which is published OA. The idea behind OA is to disseminate science freely for everybody!
• I would be angry that others are making a profit of my work while I paid extra to have it FREELY available
• This practice is clearly unethical and violates normative publication standards of the scientific community
• In the future I would publish with the CC-BY-NC-ND license, which would legally prevent abuse by publishers: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
• I would like to have at least been contacted, even though probably not required under the cc license terms
• I would prefer to be contacted about this before they edit my paper, as a courtesy.
• I'd prefer the CC non-commercial share alike license.
• I don't care because my colleagues are smarter than that.
• Either the paper should be unaltered, or it should be marked clearly as a derivative work with a different set of authors, citing the original from which it was derived conspicuously.
• Regarding the answers to the last two I will try not to publish in these type of journal unless absolutely necessary
• I would not be happy to have the work reprinted for profit. Science should be not for profit: the main objection is that others are making profit from something that they ethically should not be selleing even though it is currently legal.
• I'd be furious!
• I would be surprised and annoyed I was never told that my work would be re-published somewhere else (I should have the option to decline).
• My main concern is that it is scientific plagiarism, whether it is legal or not. It would be inappropriate to publish the same data twice without clearly referencing it, therefore it is inappropriate that anyone can do this to our work.
• If I agreed to the copyright contract, then this is acceptable. An author has an obligation to understand these things.
• It certainly makes me think twice about publishing in OA journals, but I will probably continue to do so.
• You are doing massive harm to the OA cause by trying to scare the children
• Above all, they need to actually notify authors when this happens
• authors should definitely be notified of this possibility and preferable be given an option to opt in or out
• Once someone alters text in the paper- the editors should get approval for that. I have no problem with someone bundling papers (similar to Amazon reading lists) and selling that "value added service". However, they shouldn't change the underlying articles. Perhaps provide an introduction to the volume and then introductions for each paper and why it is significant / ties into the theme of the volume. It should also be made perfectly clear in these volumes what the original citation should be. Also, authors of the original papers could be offered a page or two for commentary - how their paper fits into the theme of the volume and relates to other research.
• I would have liked to be asked for permission
• Except for reediting, which is unacceptable, this practice is entirely legal, and not necessarily directly against the spirit of open access. Two points are important: (1) insisting that a book chapter is clearly labeled as available for free, and (2) educating researches about these kinds of phenomena so that they know they don't have to pay for access.
• if you have research council funding in the UK, then you must publish open access.
• I would want notification my paper was being reprinted
• There are several aspects that seem highly unethical, but the least ambiguous is the publication under my name of words that are not my own.
• I would want to be warned that my paper should be used
• I don't find the major difference from people just printing my papers. Then money goes to the manufacturer of the printer, ink and paper.
• I believe altering the text and putting my name on it would be against the license, so I would demand a copy of the chapter to check if it is altered in any way. If not I would accept it because I accept the license agreement I have signed (and checked before signing).
• I don't think distribution per se is a problem at all, as long as the source is cited and correctly reproduced. Actually, I would like being asked for an "update" of a previous paper
• I would want authors to contact primary authors as a professional courtesy; however, I still support open access publishing
• I would opt for CC-BY-SA as I do for open source code
• I would worry that the work may no longer be up to date, and may be incorrect in light of more recent findings.
• I'd prefer a CC-BY-NC license to stop this
• In the future I'd license under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License (CC BY-ND 3.0 US)
• I wish I knew before this was done
• I would like to be asked if I agree with the re-publication and the alterations by the publisher of the multi-author book!
• I feel that this violates the spirit of open-access publication and may discourage other authors from publishing open-access
• Maybe shifting to CC-BY-ND in future would help to avoid these issues...
• If the original paper isn't being cited, it's breaking the terms of CC-BY and should be disallowed
• For the first two... it would really depend on the book. What if it's a creationist book that's re-using my work, with or without editing, to trash evolution? I wouldn't be happy!
• My feelings are mixed. Communication with the authors should be required and authors should have a say in the editorial process
• I would want to have given permission or been made aware of the book
• I would be angry that this practice might confuse and weaken the peer-review and merit-based foundation of research science publication.

Here's the full text of the email:

Dear Colleagues,

I've recently discovered that some commercial publishers are re-editing articles from open-access journals and publishing them as multi-author books, without the authors' knowledge (example here).  Although most authors I've spoken with find this objectionable it's quite legal, since open-access articles are usually published under Creative Commons attribution-only (CC-BY) licenses. 

Before pressing for any changes I'd like to get a broad set of researchers' opinions on this, so I've prepared a short (3 question) survey.  Here's the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5SFQSG2.

Please feel free to pass this survey link on to other researchers or scientific email lists (I've already sent it to Evoldir and Ecolog-L).

Thanks,

Rosie

p.s.  If you'd like more information I've also discussed this issue on my blog:

• http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2013/07/apple-academic-press-predatory.html
• http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2013/07/informing-authors-of-real-consequences.html
• http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2013/08/how-many-for-profit-publishers-are.html
• http://rrresearch.fieldofscience.com/2013/08/who-edits-books-for-apple-academic-press.html

Dr. Rosemary J. Redfield     redfield@interchange.ubc.ca  

  Professor, Dept. of Zoology    Univ. of British Columbia                             
  Rm. 2551 Life Sciences Centre, Vancouver, B.C. V6T 1Z3 Canada  
  Office: (604) 822-3744   Lab: (604) 822-6323
  Cell: (778) 960-4950   Fax:    (604) 822-2416 
                 
  Web site:  http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~redfield
  Research blog:  http://rrresearch.blogspot.com