7 ms·

Every time I read about the incredibly exploitative scientific publishing industry, I can’t help but think: can we just make scientific papers not copyrightable

Every time I read about the incredibly exploitative scientific publishing industry, I can’t help but think: can we just make scientific papers not copyrightable? Researchers and their institutions don’t benefit from the copyright protection; they barely make any money from their work. Sure, someone can take your work and claim it as their own, but we already handle them as plagiarism rather than copyright infringement. Currently all the works by the federal government are not subject to copyright, and many are scholarly work by NASA, Congressional Research Service, etc, and we never hear problem about it. It is also not that far fetched. Copyright protects expression of ideas rather than ideas themselves, and I would argue for most papers, the expression is the less interesting part of it.

godelski 7y ago
In addition to what you said, I want to remind everyone that a significant portion of money that is used to fund research at universities (and other institutions) is from the government.
- xiii1408 7y ago
  At least with most DOE-funded research, we're required to retain the copyright to the official "release" copy of papers. This allows us to redistribute the official paper ourselves. Even if you don't retain the copyright to the camera-ready version of your paper, you can just redistribute a preprint version that is almost identical (on arXiv and/or your website).
refurb 7y ago
Not sure why you'd want to start making scientific papers non-copyrightable. The easiest solution is just have scientists publish in open-access journals. Easy right? Nope, they are judged by the impact of their papers and it's higher in better quality journals. That's the value these journals offer - exclusivity. Scientists and universities could solve this issue immediately. Scientists publish in open-access journals and universities stop judging based on the journals "impact factor". However, neither one wants to do that.
- JudgeWapner 7y ago
  Because there is no reason they should be, so the decision can be handled at the legal level and not be as subject to the influence of the journals. They would have one chance to fight it before it was cemented into law.
  - refurb 7y ago
    Why should an author not have rights to their own work, just because it’s scientific in nature? You’re also opening the door to unintended consequences - are scientific textbooks not copyrightable also? If not, why not?
    - trolololooo 7y ago
      You're making a big assumption that the author of a scientific paper gets to have any rights whatsoever. But that aside - these journals keep valuable research locked up from plenty of long-dead researchers. Their estates aren't getting the money when a grad student is grifted for $90 to view the paper.
    - ethbro 7y ago
      I'd argue we'd be much better off if textbooks weren't eligible for copyright.
    - golemiprague 7y ago
      Because the researcher is an employee of the university, I don't get a right to my work when working for someone, I get salary instead.
TaylorAlexander 7y ago
I honestly feel like intellectual property is harmful in almost every field I look at. It concentrates wealth and slows innovation (the opposite of what IP proponents claim). I voluntarily waive copyright protection for most of my work, but I’d ideally see the dissolution of the concept more broadly. Our government protects these laws which I see as unjust, and some change to that would be beneficial I believe.
- api 7y ago
  What I've seen in tech is that a patent is a straw asset to make the bean counters feel more comfortable. The value of non-capital-intensive tech companies is almost entirely ephemeral. Even for capital intensive ones most of the value is usually not in the physical capital but in the brand, ideas, collective employee knowledge, and customer relationships. A patent looks like a physical asset on the books so it makes accountants and investors sleep better even if it doesn't actually mean much of anything. It'll probably fade away for the most part once a new generation that is comfortable with the dematerialization of value takes high leadership positions. Copyright is a bit of a different beast as it covers a specific work, not an "idea."
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    Copyright is what keeps billions of people from accessing every book ever written for free. Google really tried to do this but stopped digitizing books halfway through the worlds collection because of copyright law. It hurts to think of all the knowledge we could have shared if this had been permitted.
    - marksomnian 7y ago
      Copyright as an idea is fine - as in, how it was described in the Constitution: "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries", emphasis on "limited times". It's our current batarnak of an implementation that's causing all the problems. Getting rid of copyright and instituting a copy-anarchy would mean that creatives would have no real incentive to publish (no matter how much you do for passion, you still need to keep the lights on and put food on the table) - but our current system, with lifetimes tied to the time since Walt Disney's death, is a bit of a mess too. Can there ever be a happy medium?
btrettel 7y ago
There are few open access journals in my field, and the ones that will publish open access charge absurdly high fees for it. I have a spreadsheet for my field: $2000 to $3140 per article, average $2690. I tried to negotiate with one smaller and more specialized journal in my field on the fee without any luck. I've also tried to find journals willing to take my paper without copyright transfer, as if commonly done for US government employees, but few journals seem willing to do that without the law requiring it. My solution at the moment: Publish only in conferences that don't require you to transfer copyright so I can distribute my paper open access without paying anything. Yes, the peer review, if there is any, is less rigorous, but my experience suggests that peer review typically offers only shallow critiques of my work. Peer review doesn't need to work that way, but that's how it is in practice at the moment. I think review is valuable, but this makes getting good reviews my responsibility, not a publishing venue's. This solution also precludes me from working in most tenure-track academic positions, but I believe those positions are a bad deal anyway, so I'm not too worried. Government research positions seem usually okay with publishing mainly in conferences. If there are any other issues with this scheme, I'm interested in hearing about them. I'm against subsidizing open access publication as that seems to basically be a subsidy for publishers and not researchers. That would maintain the absurdly high open access feeds. Instead, let's make the journals compete on price, and they'll have to compete against free (e.g., Arxiv), so hopefully this would drive the prices down to a reasonable level. I'm fine with paying publishers if they actually provide a service commensurate with what they charge. The issue is that they don't right now.
- patall 7y ago
  Interesting that you did not succeed negotiating. We had a case where our open-access fund would only help out if the fee was $2000 maximum. We communicated that to the journal and they obliged without further comment. (Though this was after review and that journal really wanted our paper as it was obvious that we would raise their impact factor). I agree that $2000 still seems like a lot of money for an online-only document that journal is not doing anything for aside a little adjusting of the final pdf + paying the editor.
  - btrettel 7y ago
Vinnl 7y ago
While not 100% what you mentioned, in the Netherlands authors are allowed to freely share (semi-)government-funded however they please, after (I believe) six months. The universities now take care of that for you, if you're an author: https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care
mkl 7y ago
I doubt you could come up with a workable definition of "scientific paper" to decide what is or isn't copyrightable.
rsa4046 7y ago
"they barely make any money from their work." Researchers make zero direct money from publications. Yes, they are paid a stipend or salary to publish results, but by their University or Institute, not by Elsevier. I've published dozens of papers over my career. I have no direct access to any of them, save Sci-Hub or "authors' copies" I've saved. Of course, I could always pay the fee, ranging from $40-$110 on up , for a copy I would still be unable to legally distribute. Elsevier, Springer, et al., are the true pirates here. Its way past time this business model died the death it deserves.

godelski 7y ago

In addition to what you said, I want to remind everyone that a significant portion of money that is used to fund research at universities (and other institutions) is from the government.

xiii1408 7y ago
At least with most DOE-funded research, we're required to retain the copyright to the official "release" copy of papers. This allows us to redistribute the official paper ourselves. Even if you don't retain the copyright to the camera-ready version of your paper, you can just redistribute a preprint version that is almost identical (on arXiv and/or your website).

refurb 7y ago

Not sure why you'd want to start making scientific papers non-copyrightable. The easiest solution is just have scientists publish in open-access journals. Easy right? Nope, they are judged by the impact of their papers and it's higher in better quality journals. That's the value these journals offer - exclusivity. Scientists and universities could solve this issue immediately. Scientists publish in open-access journals and universities stop judging based on the journals "impact factor". However, neither one wants to do that.

JudgeWapner 7y ago
Because there is no reason they should be, so the decision can be handled at the legal level and not be as subject to the influence of the journals. They would have one chance to fight it before it was cemented into law.
- refurb 7y ago
  Why should an author not have rights to their own work, just because it’s scientific in nature? You’re also opening the door to unintended consequences - are scientific textbooks not copyrightable also? If not, why not?
  - trolololooo 7y ago
    You're making a big assumption that the author of a scientific paper gets to have any rights whatsoever. But that aside - these journals keep valuable research locked up from plenty of long-dead researchers. Their estates aren't getting the money when a grad student is grifted for $90 to view the paper.
  - ethbro 7y ago
    I'd argue we'd be much better off if textbooks weren't eligible for copyright.
  - golemiprague 7y ago
    Because the researcher is an employee of the university, I don't get a right to my work when working for someone, I get salary instead.

TaylorAlexander 7y ago

I honestly feel like intellectual property is harmful in almost every field I look at. It concentrates wealth and slows innovation (the opposite of what IP proponents claim). I voluntarily waive copyright protection for most of my work, but I’d ideally see the dissolution of the concept more broadly. Our government protects these laws which I see as unjust, and some change to that would be beneficial I believe.

api 7y ago
What I've seen in tech is that a patent is a straw asset to make the bean counters feel more comfortable. The value of non-capital-intensive tech companies is almost entirely ephemeral. Even for capital intensive ones most of the value is usually not in the physical capital but in the brand, ideas, collective employee knowledge, and customer relationships. A patent looks like a physical asset on the books so it makes accountants and investors sleep better even if it doesn't actually mean much of anything. It'll probably fade away for the most part once a new generation that is comfortable with the dematerialization of value takes high leadership positions. Copyright is a bit of a different beast as it covers a specific work, not an "idea."
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  Copyright is what keeps billions of people from accessing every book ever written for free. Google really tried to do this but stopped digitizing books halfway through the worlds collection because of copyright law. It hurts to think of all the knowledge we could have shared if this had been permitted.
  - marksomnian 7y ago
    Copyright as an idea is fine - as in, how it was described in the Constitution: "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries", emphasis on "limited times". It's our current batarnak of an implementation that's causing all the problems. Getting rid of copyright and instituting a copy-anarchy would mean that creatives would have no real incentive to publish (no matter how much you do for passion, you still need to keep the lights on and put food on the table) - but our current system, with lifetimes tied to the time since Walt Disney's death, is a bit of a mess too. Can there ever be a happy medium?

btrettel 7y ago

There are few open access journals in my field, and the ones that will publish open access charge absurdly high fees for it. I have a spreadsheet for my field: $2000 to $3140 per article, average $2690. I tried to negotiate with one smaller and more specialized journal in my field on the fee without any luck. I've also tried to find journals willing to take my paper without copyright transfer, as if commonly done for US government employees, but few journals seem willing to do that without the law requiring it. My solution at the moment: Publish only in conferences that don't require you to transfer copyright so I can distribute my paper open access without paying anything. Yes, the peer review, if there is any, is less rigorous, but my experience suggests that peer review typically offers only shallow critiques of my work. Peer review doesn't need to work that way, but that's how it is in practice at the moment. I think review is valuable, but this makes getting good reviews my responsibility, not a publishing venue's. This solution also precludes me from working in most tenure-track academic positions, but I believe those positions are a bad deal anyway, so I'm not too worried. Government research positions seem usually okay with publishing mainly in conferences. If there are any other issues with this scheme, I'm interested in hearing about them. I'm against subsidizing open access publication as that seems to basically be a subsidy for publishers and not researchers. That would maintain the absurdly high open access feeds. Instead, let's make the journals compete on price, and they'll have to compete against free (e.g., Arxiv), so hopefully this would drive the prices down to a reasonable level. I'm fine with paying publishers if they actually provide a service commensurate with what they charge. The issue is that they don't right now.

patall 7y ago
Interesting that you did not succeed negotiating. We had a case where our open-access fund would only help out if the fee was $2000 maximum. We communicated that to the journal and they obliged without further comment. (Though this was after review and that journal really wanted our paper as it was obvious that we would raise their impact factor). I agree that $2000 still seems like a lot of money for an online-only document that journal is not doing anything for aside a little adjusting of the final pdf + paying the editor.
- btrettel 7y ago

Vinnl 7y ago

While not 100% what you mentioned, in the Netherlands authors are allowed to freely share (semi-)government-funded however they please, after (I believe) six months. The universities now take care of that for you, if you're an author: https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care

mkl 7y ago

I doubt you could come up with a workable definition of "scientific paper" to decide what is or isn't copyrightable.

rsa4046 7y ago

"they barely make any money from their work." Researchers make zero direct money from publications. Yes, they are paid a stipend or salary to publish results, but by their University or Institute, not by Elsevier. I've published dozens of papers over my career. I have no direct access to any of them, save Sci-Hub or "authors' copies" I've saved. Of course, I could always pay the fee, ranging from $40-$110 on up , for a copy I would still be unable to legally distribute. Elsevier, Springer, et al., are the true pirates here. Its way past time this business model died the death it deserves.