The document discusses Open Access and how it relates to the story of Aaron Swartz. It provides background on Open Access, including that it allows work to be published online for free access. It also discusses different models of Open Access like gold, green, and hybrid. The document suggests Swartz's actions may have been motivated by advocating for more open access to scholarly articles. However, his methods were illegal and controversial. The incident has brought more attention to debates around public access to scholarly work.
1. Open Access
LIB 100 : Library and Information
Research Strategies
Le Moyne College
October 26, 2011
2. Open Access Week
• October 24-30, 2011 :: “A global
event, now in its 5th year,
promoting Open Access as a new
norm in scholarship and research.”
• http://www.openaccessweek.org/
3. Open Access
• Work is published online and reader is
allowed to access it without charge.
4. Publishing
• 1640s – 'a Colledge for the
Promoting of Physico-
Mathematicall Experimentall
Learning'.
• 1662 – Royal Society charter and
first books published.
• 1665 – first issue of • Scholarly Journal purposes:
Philosophical Transactions. • Registration (or Priority) – establish
• 1847 – Fellows elected solely on who , what, and when of an idea
the merit of their scientific work. • Certification – verify validity of idea
• Scholarly publishing principles: through peer review
• Peer review to ensure quality • Dissemination – publication &
of published works. recognition of idea
• Gift culture – scholarly • Preservation – ideas are preserved
information is a public good. with libraries as archives
5. Publishing
• 1960s – commercial publishers
take over from societies.
• Peer review and gift culture intact.
• Commercial publisher owns
copyright and distribution.
• 1980+ – Serials crisis – journal
prices exceed ability of libraries to • Scholarly Journal purposes:
purchase. • Registration – establish who and
what of an idea
• Certification – verify validity of idea
through peer review
• Dissemination – publication &
recognition of idea
• Preservation – ideas are preserved
with libraries as archives
8. #OCCUPYWALLSTREET
• Elsevier, with 2000
journals, made
$1.1 billion in 2010,
a profit of 36%
• Compare to Fortune 500
average profits of 4.7%
• CEO of Elsevier, Erik
Engstrom, made over
$2,931,000 in 2009
9. Publishing
• 1960s – commercial publishers
take over from societies.
• Peer review and gift culture intact.
• Commercial publisher owns
copyright and distribution.
• 1980s + Serials crisis – journal
prices exceed ability of libraries to • Scholarly Journal purposes:
purchase.
• Registration – establish who and
• Responses: what of an idea
• “Big Deal” – libraries lease • Certification – verify validity of idea
packages of journals - through peer review
question of sustainability
• Dissemination – publication &
• Open Access – authors take recognition of idea
back copyright and control of
• Preservation – ideas are preserved
distribution so all readers can
with libraries as archives
access their work.
10. Copyright
Public Domain Commercial Publishing
• Copyright abandoned by • Copyright usually
author or expired assigned to publisher
– Original author no longer – Publisher controls
owns the work distribution and profits
• Publish or remix the – Articles especially
work for profit • Copyright on books
usually retained by author
– Work may be used freely
including derivative works. • Author can negotiate to
– Penguin Classics or Dover retain copyright
– Pride and Prejudice – Extra step for author
and Zombies – Not all publishers allow
See: http://resources.library.lemoyne.edu/pubserv-copyright
11. Open Access
• Work is published online and reader is
allowed to access it without charge.
• Author has right to disseminate work and
can set the terms of use through licensing.
• Author should retain copyright!
• 40-60% of articles authored by faculty are not
available on the campuses where they teach.
• OA articles have increased readership and
greater citation advantage.
12. Kinds of Open Access
• Open Access Journal – cost of publishing shifts from
subscription fees paid by the reader to author publication fees.
– Also called “Gold” OA – all articles in journal free to reader
– $1200 - $3000 author fees are common
– BioMed Central, PLoS NIH-funding mandates OA
– DOAJ – Directory of Open Access Journals
> 7200 journals
• Self-Archiving – author retains copyright and publishes a copy
of work on personal or institutional website.
– Also called “Green” OA – articles in journal still cost !
– Author negotiates with publisher for rights to distribute
– Institutional Repository – Kansas U, JSC [NASA] Digital Images
– Subject Repository – arXiv.org, SSRN, COBRA
– SHERPA/ROMEO – list journal’s self-archiving policies
– OpenDOAR – Directory of Open Access Repositories
> 2000 repositories
13. Quasi-Open Access
• Hybrid Journals – commercial publishers that allow
for some articles to be published as OA.
– author fees to ensure OA treatment.
– SpringerOpen, Elsevier
– Libraries must still must subscribe to journal to access
everything (small fraction of articles are OA)
• Embargoed Journals – commercial journals that
release all articles as OA after a specified embargo
period.
– Highwire Press – 6 - 24 months wait, 12 months typical
– For cutting edge, reader must pay for access
14. Degrees of Freedom in OA
“Gratis” vs “Libre”
Gratis Libre
• Gratis OA simply grants • Libre OA gives the
the reader free access to reader additional rights.
the work for reading. • The copyright holder
• By default, the reader of a determines what rights
copyrighted work has no the reader has, usually
rights to use it. through a license
– (Except “fair use” in the US) statement.
• “Free as in beer” • “Free as in speech”
15. Copyright
Public Domain Commercial Publishing
Licensing in addition to Copyright
• BY – must attribute the author
• NC – non-commercial use only
• ND – no derivative works
• SA – derivatives works must “share alike”
http://creativecommons.org/choose/
16. The Story
• Aaron Swartz, an open access
advocate and open politics
activist, over the course of
several months, and for unknown
reasons, gained unauthorized
guest access to the MIT campus
• JSTOR has filed no charges and
network, and downloaded several
confirm that Swartz returned the
million articles from JSTOR.
files he had downloaded.
• As a result of his actions, JSTOR
• MIT may press charges but hasn’t.
alerted MIT of a violation of their
terms of service and, for a time, • Federal indictment charges included
JSTOR cut off access to MIT. wire fraud, computer fraud,
unlawfully obtaining information
• Swartz was identified and arrested
from a protected computer, and
removing his laptop from a wiring
recklessly damaging a protected
closet on the MIT campus.
computer.
Photo credit: Fred Benenson / www.fredbenenson.com (Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license).
17. Motives?
• The indictment alleges Swartz
intended to publically release the
documents using bittorent.
• Swartz’s "Guerrilla Open Access
Manifesto“ (2008) says “We need
to take information, wherever it is
• PACER document precedent (2008).
stored, make our copies and share
them with the world. We need to • JSTOR has been criticized for not
out of copyright
take stuff that's out of copyright making their public domain material
and add it to the archive. We need freely available.
to buy secret databases and put • On 9/6/11, JSTOR made this
them on the Web. We need to material freely available.
download scientific journals and • Swartz professionally analyzes huge
upload them to file sharing datasets and (according to some)
networks.” JSTOR articles fit this profile.
Photo credit: flickr.com/photos/clonedmilkmen/4391670988 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0)
18. How Does This Story Relate to OA?
• Do you think this is an OA-related incident and
how has it affected the movement?
• Should public domain articles always be free?
• Should all journal backfiles be OA?
19. To Learn More
• Open Access Week – Oct. 24-30 –
http://www.openaccessweek.org/
• Right to Research Coalition –
http://www.righttoresearch.org/
• SPARC – Scholarly Publishing and
Academic Resources Coalition –
http://www.arl.org/sparc/
• Open Access Directory –
http://oad.simmons.edu/
20. Sources
• Bustillos, M. (2011) "Was Swartz Stealing?" The Awl. Retrieved from
http://www.theawl.com/2011/08/was-aaron-swartz-stealing
• Glenn, David. (2011) "Rogue Downloader's Arrest Could Mark Crossroads
for Open-Access Movement." The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved
from http://chronicle.com/article/Rogue-Downloaders-Arrest/128439/
• Rapp, D. (2011) "JSTOR Announces Free Access to 500K Public Domain
Journal Articles." Library Journal. Retrieved from
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/newsletters/newsletterbucketacademic
newswire/891947-440/jstor_announces_free_access_to.html.csp
• Schwartz, M. (2009) "An Effort to Upgrade a Court Archive System to Free
and Easy." New York Times. Retrieved from
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13records.html
Began meeting in the mid-1640s to discuss the new philosophy of promoting knowledge of the natural world through observation and experiment, which we now call science.Its official foundation date is 28 November 1660, when a group of 12 met at Gresham College after a lecture by Christopher Wren, then the Gresham Professor of Astronomy, and decided to found 'a Colledge for the Promoting of Physico-MathematicallExperimentall Learning'. This group included Wren himself, Robert Boyle, John Wilkins, Sir Robert Moray, and William, Viscount Brouncker. First Royal Charter, which was granted by King Charles II in 1662.John Evelyn's Sylva and Micrographia by Robert Hooke in 1662.Philosophical Transactions is now the oldest scientific journal in continuous publication.1,450 Fellows and Foreign Members, including more than 80 Nobel Laureates.Each year 44 Fellows, 8 Foreign Members and up to 1 Honorary Fellow are elected from a group of over 700 candidates who are proposed by the existing Fellowship. Fellowship from 1660 to 2007 is available for download (PDF).The word "scientist," meant to refer to a systematically working natural philosopher, (as opposed to an intuitive or empirically minded one) was coined in 1833 by William Whewell.
Sputnik : 4 October 1957
Honda Accord LX = $22,950Brain Research = $23,446
Nuclear Physics A & B = $25,888Jeep Wrangler Sport = $25,875Brain Research 23446Physica A, B, C, D, & E 28963Physics Letters 17529Tetrahedron 19341Tetrahedron Letters 15463
Pride and Prejudice 1813 by Jane Austen… and Zombies 2009 by Seth Graham-Smith
Right to Research statement:http://www.righttoresearch.org/learn/whyOA/index.shtmlOpen Access seeks to return scholarly publishing to its original purpose: to spread knowledge and allow that knowledge to be built upon. Price barriers should not prevent students (or anyone) from getting access to research they need. Open Access, and the open availability and searchability of scholarly research that it entails, will have a significant positive impact on everything from education to the practice of medicine to the ability of entrepreneurs to innovate.
~ 250 active journals in BMC7 PLoSjrnlsJSC = Johnson Space Center (NASA)COBRA = Collection of Biostatistics Research Archive
Accessed network on multiple occasions between September 24, 2010, and January 6, 2011; arrested removing laptop from wiring closet. “Aaron Swartz is the founder of Demand Progress. He previously co-founded the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, watchdog.net, Open Library, Jottit, and Reddit.com. He is co-author of the RSS 1.0 specification and helped launch Creative Commons.”Charges are hacker crimes, not copyright infringement crimes.
Greg Maxwell, who recently uploaded a 33GB file of JSTOR articles onto The Pirate Bay in protest of the Swartz indictment. (Maxwell says the file contains the whole pre-1923 public domain archive of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.Making a profit off of public domain works is allowed; indeed, it's half the point. E.G., Penguin Classics. Lessig on record saying Swartz’s actions were unethical, but probably not illegal. Max Kennerly, Philly lawyer says this appears to be “a civil claim that some overly aggressive prosecutor is trying to dress up as a federal crime.”In 2008, Swartz, taking advantage of a free trial of PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records), a government database of court records, cleverly automated a download of nearly 20 million pages. This was in response to the call of information activist Carl Malamud for donations of downloaded PACER documents, which ordinarily cost eight cents per page. Malamud's position is that since the public owns these documents, access to them should be easy and free of charge online. In the event, Swartz hadn't broken any laws, so the Feds were forced to drop their investigation. Perhaps a certain resentment lingered.