Is Creative Commons Flexible Enough for Historians?

Gumby and Monkey, by Joe (CC-BY-SA)

Creative Commons licenses are incredibly useful. They're easy to use. More and more people understand them. It's even possible to do web searches of Creative Commons content making it easy to find content you can use with confidence. The Open Access movement, particularly in the UK, seems to be promoting Creative Commons licensing as the best way to move towards open access to research, because it means we can (largely) leave lawyers out of it all and implement a standard set of licenses that everyone understands (or should understand). I see the practical merits in that and am a big fan of keeping costs at a minimum. But I also see the counterpoint, that many historians feel Creative Commons just isn't designed for them (see my previous post on Alternative Licensing). Sometimes that feeling is based on a misunderstanding. Sometimes, I think, it's justified. In the interest of opening that discussion, I thought I'd present a couple of scenarios in which I believe Creative Commons is not flexible enough for historians looking to manage the rights associated with their research.

For all of these scenarios, let's assume the work in question is an academic monograph written solely by me.

1) Supporting certain derivations

What I want: I'd like people to be able to translate my book into a range of formats (braile, French, audio, stage performance) without having to ask me, provided that every effort is made to ensure that the translation accurately represents the arguments and positions of the original, and the translator is listed as such on the title page or where applicable. This reuse is only permitted if the entire work is included in the translation.

Why this is important to me: I'm a big supporter of accessibility; I wouldn't want anyone working to provide access to my work for the blind to feel they were prevented from doing that good work by a legal restriction.

Why CC is not sufficient: CC-BY would allow this type of reuse. But it would also allow someone to translate only the introduction, or to pick and choose parts and rearrange them in a way that changes my message. I'm worried if they do that someone might get the wrong idea about my work. You may not think that's important, but it's my book and my reputation, and I am worried. I could use a 'no derivatives' license, CC-BY-ND, but I do want to allow certain types of derivatives under certain conditions.

2) Supporting certain commercial reuses

What I want: I'd like professors creating course readers to feel empowered to use parts of my book with their students. I'd also like private individuals to be able to use individual chapters in edited collections with modest print runs (let's say less than 500). I don't want Evil Publishing Ltd to be able to do the same without asking.

Why this is important to me: I'm a big supporter of ensuring students and my colleagues have access to my work. I also think it's important to support small entrepreneurs. But I know that the publishing industry is big business, and if they're going to make big money from my ideas, I think it's fair to ask that I get a cut of that. Anyone who has ever licensed stock imagery to use on a website or in print knows that the price of the license changes with the number of 'impressions'. In essence, the bigger the advertising campaign, the more money they want to charge you to use the image. This merely attempts to apply those types of restrictions on my book.

Why CC is not sufficient: CC-BY wouldn't give me the power to put the restrictions on Evil Publishing Ltd that I believe is important. Forcing me to use CC in this instance forces me to give away rights I would like to hold onto.

* * *

Those are just a couple of simple examples, which I don't believe are far fetched when considering licensing and reuse from the historian's perspective. For them to work, I think at the very least we need to adopt a CC-BUT license, in which creators are allowed to add restrictions to their license. As I said before, if the concerns of licensors aren't met, they won't get on board. I'd like them on board, but that may need to come at the expense of what seems on the surface to be a simple CC solution.

Academic Freedom License: An Alternative to CC-BY

Professor Peter Mandler, President of the Royal Historical Society allegedly made this comment today at an Open Access event held in London. I was not at the event, but I have heard this concern expressed before: CC-BY licenses allow someone to take an academic work, completely twist the words of the author, and republish it in a way that suggests those are the opinions of the author (either intentionally or through ignorance).

The fear is certainly valid, whether you agree with the interpretation of the license or not. No academic would be happy with the idea of someone twisting their words and republishing something that, if misconstrued, could damage their reputation as a scholar.

I'm inclined to suggest that a CC-BY license does not in fact grant these rights, as the fine print about 'moral rights' points out, noting that 'derogatory treatment' of the licensor's work is not permitted.

Nevertheless, the terms of the license do suggest it is up to the licensor to monitor and police this activity, and if necessary, turn to the courts to enforce it. That's just not practical for a busy academic.

Remixing isn't the only problem. Copyright of images or graphs can also be an issue. Anyone who gives a public lecture these days will be familiar with the release forms that you're asked to sign that require you to grant someone the right to reproduce images and graphs you don't own that happen to be on your powerpoint slides. Academic monographs have the same problem. How can we release our content as open access if the work contains someone else's work for which we have had to ask permission?

If I'm not mistaken, these two issues are the biggest objections to CC-BY licenses for the humanities and social sciences. Thankfully, Professor Mandler has offered another solution, and I'm all for solutions:

New License needed for HSS (Humanities and Social Sciences)

What a fabulous idea. What on earth are we waiting for? I present to you all for consultation: the Academic Freedom License, designed specifically with the needs of academics in mind, that both promotes open access and reuse, and prevents the types of abuses outlined above.

Academic Freedom License

For works released under an 'Academic Freedom License', you are granted the right:

To Share - to copy, distribute and transmit the work in its entirety only.
To Analyse - to data mine and study the work and publish or create work of your own based on that analysis.
To Sell - to make commercial use of the work in its entirety only.

Under the following conditions:

Attribution - You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work)

Excluding - You are prohibited from sharing, analysing, or selling any aspects of the work specified by the author or licensor (such as images under copyright or sections not produced by the author)

With the understanding that:

Waiver - Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from the copyright holder.

Public Domain - Where the work or any of its elements is in the public domain under applicable law, that status is in no way affected by the license.

Other Rights - In no way are any of the following rights affected by the license:

• Your fair dealing or fair use rights, or other applicable copyright exceptions and limitations;
• the author's moral rights
• Rights other persons may have either in the work itself or in how the work is used, such as publicity or privacy rights

Students should be empowered, not bullied into open access

'Bully Free Zone' by Eddie-S

The American Historical Association (AHA) has just adopted a resolution in support of recent graduates, encouraging them to feel empowered to keep their dissertations offline while they seek a publisher to turn that dissertation into a scholarly monograph.

Surprise, surprise, open access advocates everywhere have started snivelling.

No! they cry. We shouldn't support a resolution passed in good faith to protect the career progression of new scholars against scholarly presses that are allegedly refusing to accept manuscripts based on openly available dissertations. We should be burning books and the organizations that publish them. Down with books, up with free information on the Internet!

Lovely, but you can't eat free information. Makes a shit shelter as well.

Now, I certainly understand, sympathize, and even agree with the complaints of the open access community. Trevor Owens posted some great suggestions last night for ways to amend the AHA statement into one that recognizes some real flaws in the publication / promotion / tenure model that is over-reliant upon books. I certainly agree with Owens that it makes no sense to leave career progression of historians in the hands of acquisition editors at famous scholarly presses.

I'd also suggest that the AHA's claim that history is a "book" discipline is a bit too narrow. From where I live in London England, hundreds of thousands of people make their living either directly or indirectly off of history. That can be anything from freelance tour guides who offer historic walks through the City, to the cafeteria workers in the museums and historic sites, the actor who draws you into his theatre for a rendition of Richard III or the actress who portrays Elizabeth Woodville in a television series, or even her Majesty the Queen whose very presence and connection to a historic institution draws in millions of tourists every year.

The AHA's perspective is probably flawed in terms of the negative reaction of presses towards open access of dissertations. A yet to be published (and open access) article Do Open Access Electronic Theses and Dissertations Diminish Publishing Opportunities in the Social Sciences and Humanities suggests that the vast majority of publishers are willing to consider submissions based on openly available theses.

With all of this in mind, let's give the open access community what they want: You're right.

But dear God you're obnoxious.

The decision of the AHA to support this measure is nothing but a well-intentioned gesture designed to protect and empower those at the most vulnerable point in their career from a perceived threat. How could anyone could criticize them for that? The AHA and scholarly societies like it are not the enemy, and they don't operate to keep scholarship in the 19th century. They exist to promote the interests of their members, and that's exactly what the AHA has done with this resolution. If you want to change their direction, join them. Run for positions of power within their ranks, and influence the opinions of their membership. The historians who belong to these organizations aren't stupid, so if your ideas are good and your models sound, there's no reason we can't expect gradual change towards open access.

Both scholarly monographs and open access have their merits. We shouldn't be pushing for either / or, just like we havn't driven actors from the stage because we have television. Scholarly monographs are an effective way of preserving historical knowledge; they're in a format that the vast majority of us understand and even appreciate. We don't need to give that up.

And while I can appreciate the advantages of open access, its advocates often ignore the problems of an open access model. We live in a society in which things that have no cost have no perceived value. You wouldn't expect your lawyer to work for free, so why your historian? The scholarly presses defend their (failing) business model because it keeps their friends and family employed, their kids fed, and their bills paid. This isn't just a matter of profits funneling into the pockets of the rich. It's the way people like you and me make modest and honest livings.

If we start giving everything away we're promoting a model in which certain professions operate without the security of a paycheque while others doing important work continue to charge for their services. It's all well and good for open access advocates to tell us the benefits of their model, but until they come up with some solutions for its failings, they won't gain any friends who are sitting on the fence. Especially not if every well-intentioned effort by a scholarly society is met with a hostile barrage on Twitter by an extremist perspective that ignores the fact that we're all on the same team: We love history and we want to spend our careers sharing it with others.

If you want to give your dissertation away online, by all means do so. But it is your dissertation. You should feel equally empowered to bury it in a hole in the back yard, or throw it off a bridge. Anyone who tells you that you're bound by some moral obligation to give it away has a job, or a trust fund, and has no business putting any demands on your labour. Even if your scholarly book never earns you a cent, it's your prerogative to try and flog it any way you like. That doesn't make you a bad person. Neither does withholding your thesis from the Internet if you think that will help your pursuit towards a career that allows you to provide for your family. I hold my right to support my family far above your right to read my ideas for free.

I wholeheartedly want to thank the AHA for standing up for and empowering new scholars. No good deed goes unpunished, but there are many of us out there who appreciate your efforts and look forward to continued progress in what we hope becomes a civil debate and progression towards increased open access.

Making Open Access and the UK's Scholarly Society Work

This past Friday at a one-day colloquium on Open Access I learned why academic publishing is so expensive, and I was disappointed to discover that resistance to open access from scholarly societies is not linked to the costs of publishing, but to the cost of non-publishing activities. The UK is in the midst of a heated debate about Open Access, following the Finch Report and an incoming policy that will require all research funded by the taxpayer to be published open access. For this to work, publishers are to be paid up front for lost revenue in what has been called the "Gold Model" of author pays for publication.

Nearly everyone agrees open access is a good thing, but how to pay for it is a matter of contention. The government's policy works much better in the sciences where large research budgets are common and a few thousand quid for publication costs is a drop in the bucket. The Wellcome Trust's representative Simon Chaplin argued at the colloquium that they've been funding this practice for years and thought it was a great use of money.

I don't disagree with Chaplin, but few historians will ever see a grant the size of a typical Wellcome Trust award that can run hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds. Many historians operate entirely without funding, but those working in academic departments will have to find the money to publish in an open access format, else their work will not "count" towards the 2020 REF (the UK's program of counting up who does good research, used to disseminate future research funding). The government's proposal is also potentially disastrous for early career researchers who will find it difficult to secure funding to publish and who may have to choose between paying for food and "investing" in their career by paying for publications. Why would a department give a temporary employee (eg, Post Docs) access to funding for publishing that could go to permanent staff, when there's a good chance that employee will be contributing to another university's research outputs by the time the tallies are next taken?

While I did symapthize with many of the positions speakers took at the colloquium, it was the position of the scholarly societies in particular that I found most frustrating.

Let me first say that I think scholarly societies are wonderful. In particular I think they have been instrumental at supporting promising early career researchers through funding, bursaries, prizes, fellowships, and opportunities to publish. I should also note that I have been employed by a scholarly society since 2008 and take pride in the work we do.

What I do not like is how many scholarly societies get their money, which became clear to me this past Friday. Jane Humphries, President of the Economic History Society, spoke on the business model of her society. According to Humphries, 1/3 of their income comes directly from the subscriptions raised by the society's journal. These subscriptions are then used to fund the activities of the society rather than to pay the costs of publication alone. Humphries argues that without these subscriptions the society could not continue to function, which is a major push behind resistance to open access because most societies and publishers assume they will be forced to take what amounts to a paycut under the proposed models.

One of the activities of the Economic History Society is to fund 5 postdoctoral fellowships at a cost of £70,000. This fellowship scheme is a wonderful one and it's something I'd be very sad to see discontinued. However, it is NOT a publishing cost. Instead, the subscriptions are increased well above the cost of publication in order to participate in non-publishing activities. That means libraries are being charged a surplus. And libraries get much of their money from the pockets of students paying tuition who are indirectly funding these postdoctoral fellowships without a say in the matter. While the scheme is entirely and undoubtedly good intentioned, the society is not working as hard as it could to reduce the costs of publishing because it has a vested interest to constantly increasing its income and expanding its activities. They are effectively robbing Peter to pay Paul. And I'm Peter.

The problem therefore is not that publishing is expensive. It's not that open access is bad. It's that publishing in its current model pays for other good things which will not be supported under the new model. But that does not mean these wonderful extra activities need to cease, or that open access will not work. It means we need to get behind scholarly societies to find a new way to fund these activities.

So what can we do about the lost income? Well we might need to get creative, but here are two ideas.

Fundraising

I've yet to see any scholarly society attempt to fund a postdoctoral fellowship through crowdfunding on Kickstarter or a similar service. No one likes to pay taxes, but many people are willing to support a specific initiative. A £50 annual membership fee to a scholarly society feels much different than does a £50 donation that I know will go directly towards a fellowship.

Many societies also have natural connections to certain types of businesses, which could surely be approached for donations. In particular I'd imagine the Economic History Society, based near London's financial core, and peopled by many a former London banker-turned-historian could make use of its personal network to solicit donations from their sector. Saying you don't like to ask people for money is not an excuse, particularly if the alternative is to continue taking it from unwilling students.

Wikipedia runs entirely on a fundraising drive and I've never thought ill of them for it. In fact, I gave them $50 last year to support their continued activities.

Advertising

Ads are entirely under-used in academia. The Old Bailey Online is one of the few academic projects I've seen that freely uses Google Ads to cover some of the project's ongoing costs. There is absolutely nothing immoral about allowing someone to underwrite a society's activities in exchange for some exposure. Even if it is only a partial solution, it's one every society owes it to their communities to pursue.

* * *

Scholarly societies need to acknowledge that open access is not the problem. They need to be honest about what the REAL costs of publishing are, and they need to be open to ideas that can reduce those costs. Open access is good for nearly everyone. So let's embrace it, and then let's work together to find ways to continue to support the great activities of the scholarly societies. The future may not work the same as yesterday, but that doesn't mean we can't make it work.

How Best to Approach Academic Journals

Are you a humanist trying to get published in an academic journal? Trying to decide if it's worth the time and effort? Do you know someone who fits this category?

The round table discussion (audio) at the American Society for Environmental History, recorded in Talahassee this past month, offers some excellent tips for grad students and post docs. The round table was made up of editors from several academic journals and offers insights into what they like, what they hate, what to do and what not to do. A must listen for any grad student and a great recommendation for any prof to give to their students. Don't let the environmental history topic scare you away; it doesn't factor into the equation at all. This recording is useful for anyone in the humanities; including profs with poor writing skills.