petermr's blog

A mail from Michelle on the OKFN open-access list:

Hey all,

The Wellcome Trust has just said thank you to the community for the work we’ve been doing on the author processing charge dataset they released: https://twitter.com/wellcometrust/status/451659293801340928:  where WT said:

That’s so awesome!

The work we’ve done led to an incredible statement from the Wellcome Trust late last week, that you should certainly read if you’ve not seen it yet (found here). It includes some awesome quotes, such as:

[WT] “We expect every publisher who levies an open access fee to provide a first class service to our researchers and their institutions.”
[WT] “The bigger issue concerns the high cost of hybrid open access publishing, which we have found to be nearly twice that of born-digital fully open access journals. We need to find ways of balancing this by working with others to encourage the development of a transparent, competitive and reasonably priced APC market.”
While debates may rage about whether journal led or repository led open access is the best way forwards, I think we can all agree that high APCs charged for papers published in hybrid journals (meaning these journals are also supported by library subscriptions) is not what we really want to see.
They couldn’t have made this statement without the effort of many people on this list – so many thanks to all of you who spent time working on it. I actually had a couple of nightmares about the spreadsheet… which probably says something about me. I’ve written a quick post thanking people  publicly, because the effort we’ve all put in is certainly worth recognising 🙂

(Let me know if I’ve missed your name off, as there were many people editing the document anonymously – I’ve already had one case flagged to me – so please don’t feel bad about reminding me).

Work is still on going with the dataset… but I still can’t believe how much we’ve done in such a short time! And still amazed that we’ve enabled the Wellcome Trust to make the statement they did…

Michelle

DO NOT FOLLOW ANY LINKS IN THIS POST – THEY ARE HIGHLY DANGEROUS

The Sydney Funnel-Web spider (Thx: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Atrax_robustus) is among the deadliest in the world. The American Chemical Society’s Spider trap is also deadly. It can cause whole universities to be cut off within milliseconds . Here I’m trying to get information and informed reaction.
The problem comes from following this link:

<a href="/doi/pdf/10.1046/9999-9999.99999">...</a>

If you prepend “http://pubs.acs.org” to it (as a browser would do) you get the deadly link. I will not print it here in case someone clicks it.
DO NOT ATTEMPT TO FOLLOW IT. IT WILL CUT OFF YOUR UNIVERSITY
I don’t know what it does. I can’t find out without shutting down the university’s access to ACS.
But it’s not just ACS – it’s other publishers. A quick search finds

href="http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1046/9999-9999.99999"

which suggests that Blackwell do it as well.
The ACS example suggests that it relies on a base URL (note the leading slash). I have no idea what Blackwell does when it’s triggered. I don’t know whether this is different for each publisher or whether there is a central publisher independent spider trapper. Maybe

10.1046/9999-9999.99999

is just a lorem ipsum which spider-trapping publishers use.
NOTE THAT YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE RUNNING A SPIDER TO TRIGGER THIS. A SINGLE HUMAN CLICK (LIKE A SINGLE BITE FROM ATRAX) CAN KILL.
Reactions on Twitter:

• CameronNeylon @CameronNeylon [PLoS] do other publishers do this? Seems both crude and dangerous? // it’s not a registered DOI with crossref but it is misleading to use that url structure
• Sue Cook @Suelibrarian ACS access rapidly dropping as random people click on that link 🙂 phew I wasn’t on work network.
• Ross Mounce @rmounce But seriously, academics trust DOI’s. This is an abuse of trust by ACS, in my opinion

I’ll note that the affected were nt trying to download the whole of ACS and sell it , but were indulging in natural and acceptable curiosity.
Questions:

• Does anyone know how this works?
• Which publishers implement it? I’ve got ACS, Blackwell, Informa Healthcare (T+F),
• Is there a better way of doing it?
• How many institutions have been unnecessarily screwed up by publisher controls. (Note that my own experience was not a spider trap but simply (humanly) reading too many papers too rapidly – publications are not meant to be read rapidly, are they?)

PLoS manage to publish without spider traps – maybe they can tell ACS what modern publishing should be.
 
UPDATE – see comment (Tom Demeranville) :

Well, in the olden days when servers were slower and bandwidth thinner a random crawl by a search engine could bring your service to it’s knees. The spider would visit every page, then every link on that page indexing as it went. This would result in an inadvertent denial of service attack.
The old way of stopping this was to put invisible links on a few pages. People wouldn’t see them, but the spiders would. The spider would visit the link and BAM, you block the spiders IP address. I imagine it’s still fairly common, but the reasons are different. It’s to stop scraping rather than indexing.
Is there a better way of doing it?
It works because many publishers are so technologically backwards they still use IP authentication to manage access to their resources. The better way would be to use proper authentication – federated or otherwise. SAML, OpenID and OAuth have been around for years. Most Eurozone universities have an academic SAML federation and manage access using that but the publishers are reluctant to make the full switch because it relies on the subscriber changing the way they work as well as the publisher.

I’m talking tomorrow at the University of Leicester in the heart of England. Leicester is where Richard III was recently dug up in car park. But more importantly it’s an excellent University and I have worked with the Biomedical groups in the past. It’s where DNA fingerprinting was discovered by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alec_Jeffreys.
Here’s our session http://www2.le.ac.uk/library/about/news/open-access-forum:

The international Open Access movement has been embraced by UK government and funding councils (including new HEFCE requirements) for both publications and now the data behind them. Come and meet some OA enthusiasts from within the University and influential expert visitors and find out how Open Access might benefit you personally. OA is a great way of increasing the visibility of your research which can lead to new collaborations and impacts.

You’ll be able to follow remotely and also tweet – if you have a good question, tweet it.
I don’t know what I shall talk about.
What? PMR doesn’t prepare his talks?
I don’t even know how much I shall talk and how much the others there will talk about. I’ve got things at the top of my mind and so have they. If there is a small group (say less than 20) I like to rearrange the seats into a circle. But if it’s a tiered theatre then it becomes more of a lecture or Q and A.
I do prepare my talks. I have slides, blogposts, code, repositories. And I will flip between them as needed. I give demos. Most demos work; some don’t. I’m happy now with eduroam – the academic network – so I don’t have to go through tedious registration. (One US university – Penn State – made us install keyboard logging software to track everything we did).
I’ve asked whether this can be recorded- and it will be!. When sessions aren’t based on linear slides (which I don’t normally like) then it’s useful to know what I and others said and be able to present it to others.
Michelle Brook won’t be physically there but we’re hoping to get a Skype connection so she can talk us through some of the WellcomeTrust APC data. (below).
It’s always tremendous to have a hashtag, and also to storify it. I’ll tweet it when we know.
So.. What’s at the top of my mind?

• What is Open? Open is a state of mind, not a process. Is Open Access Open? Why are we spending billions of dollars on Open Access – the answer is not trivial.
• The Wellcome Trust APC data set . This is massively important. WT and Michelle and community have made something wonderful. It’s something that libraries should start broadening asap. It could be the start of Open Bibliography – the “map of scholarship”. Probably the main focus
• The Hargreaves review of copyright. Again massively important. Every library in UK should be actively preparing to take action NOW. And do not sign any agreements with any publisher till you understand this.
• Aaron Swarz. Are you fighting for what he believed in?
• Content Mining and The hidden wealth in University repositories. I’m hoping to have time to show machines That was my initial title for this session, but events have overtaken us.
• The rise of the anti-publisher. Elsevier and NPG have recently made it clear they are gearing up to restrict access to knowledge. The ACS cuts off whole Universities. Many publishers market CC-NC-ND as “what authors want”.  Publishers – with their restrictions and “Universal Access” are now between Bradbury’s firemen and Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. Where do Universities and Libraries stand? Are they working for the readers of the world or – implicitly – for publishers?
• The Future of Science reference is not in libraries or publishers but in the new generation of Wikipedia – where I’m speaking, Mozilla – and hopefully – our own Content Mine.  Now is the time to jump on the bus or you will miss the Digital Century.

And what’s at the top of yours? I’m guessing…

• How are we going to force our authors to make their publications Open Access so we can put them in the next REF?

No. It should be:

• What is the role of the University Library in the Digital Century?

Let’s go back to Ranganathan….
Who?
I hope you are kidding. Every librarian should recite the laws till they know them by heart:

1. Books are for use.
2. Every reader his [or her] book.
3. Every book its reader.
4. Save the time of the reader.
5. The library is a growing organism.

For “Book” read “Knowledge”. In the digital read-write age we should add some more:

• save the time of the author
• the whole world are authors and readers

However with the rise of the AntiPublisher we have new laws. Four years ago I wrote  Nahtanagran’s laws of modern library science:

1. Books are for selling.
2. Every purchaser his [or her] books.
3. Every book its purchasers.
4. Make money for the seller.
5. The seller is a growing organism.

Has it got better in the last four years?

• No. It’s got worse.

Is Open Access as currently envisaged going to make it better or worse? Think before you answer. And we’ll discuss tomorrow.
 
 
 

This is an example of web democracy in action. I mailed my MEPs yesterday about Net Neutrality and here’s a detailed useful reply. It’s clear my representatives understand my concerns. This is what an Open Neutral Web allows.

Dear Mr Murray-Rust,
Thank you for emailing Andrew regarding the legislative proposal on the Telecoms Single Market and its net neutrality provisions in particular.
It is important to stress that the new legislative proposal covers a wide range of issues. It seeks to abolish roaming charges and improve rights for both users and service providers, as well as strengthening net neutrality in order to achieve a truly open internet for all.
Andrew has been in close contact with his colleagues Fiona Hall MEP and Jens Rohde MEP, who is leading on this issue for the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats in Europe (ALDE), the political group that Lib Dem MEPs belong to in the European Parliament.  Mr. Rohde is aware of concerns about a two-tiered internet and discriminatory agreements between access providers and content providers. Mr Rohde and Andrew are strong supporters of an open internet and are determined to make sure this openness is maintained.
Andrew also met recently with a net neutrality campaigner and tech professional in Cambridge to discuss some of the subtler aspects of the package and agrees with their view that the draft report to the ITRE committee must be strengthened.
Work is ongoing on a number of points but it is already clear that the final text will include a robust definition of net neutrality and will have strong language on disallowing any blocking or throttling by internet services providers, as well as ruling out any discrimination against online content or applications. The Parliament’s text will also stipulate that “specialised services” can only be provided when there is network capacity to do so and when such services are not to the detriment of general internet access. These safeguards are essential to ensure an open internet across Europe.
The ALDE group has been working on compromise amendments to strengthen these passages in the legislation and these efforts will continue into the final plenary session in Strasbourg later this year.
For your information you may wish to consult the following links:
The procedure file: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/oeil/popups/ficheprocedure.do?lang=en&reference=2013/0309(COD)
The main criticisms: http://www.edri.org/files/11092013-FAQ-NN-regulation.pdf
A response from the Commission: http://ecspokesryan.tumblr.com/post/61028697639/edris-faqs-on-net-neutrality-a-rebuttal
I should emphasise that we are not taking all of the Commission’s points at face value but investigating and challenging them. When the Commission has got it wrong in the past, which is not unprecedented – particularly with regard to legislation that pertains to the internet – the Liberal group has not hesitated to vote to reject the report in its entirety. For example, we saw to it that the ACTA package was junked.
In conclusion, Andrew will be strongly supporting the principles of an open internet and net neutrality and will seek to ensure that specific amendments to the final report are passed that achieve these aims.
Thank you again for contacting Andrew about this matter. I hope this reply is of some help.
Yours sincerely,
Kilian Bourke
Caseworker to
Andrew Duff
Liberal Democrat MEP for the East of England

We are all aware (or we should be) of the dire effects of human-made climate change.
Two days ago the IPCC issued the starkest warning yet.
Climate change is not going to happen.
CLIMATE CHANGE HAS HAPPENED AND IS CONTINUING.
James Lovelock , Nobel Laureate for gas chromatography, and known for the Gaia metaphor told the world that humans will have to live in mega-city hives.
So how do we find out about this in a responsible way?
We read the IPCC report.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the leading international body for the assessment of climate change. It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1988 to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of knowledge in climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic impacts. In the same year, the UN General Assembly endorsed the action by WMO and UNEP in jointly establishing the IPCC.

and tell others about it?
NO. You can’t tell others about it without the permission of IPCC. (The restrictions are at best CC-NC-ND).

Unless otherwise stated, the information available on this website, including text, logos, graphics, maps, images, audio clips or electronic downloads is the property of the IPCC and is protected by intellectual and industrial property laws.
You may freely download and copy the material contained on this website for your personal, non-commercial use, without any right to resell or redistribute it or to compile or create derivative works there from, subject to more specific restrictions that may apply to specific materials.
Reproduction of limited number of figures or short excerpts of IPCC material is authorized free of charge and without formal written permission provided that the original source is properly acknowledged, with mention of the complete name of the report, the publisher and the numbering of the page(s) or the figure(s). Permission can only be granted to use the material exactly as it is in the report. Please be aware that figures cannot be altered in any way, including the full legend. For media use it is sufficient to cite the source while using the original graphic or figure. In line with established Internet usage, any external website may provide a hyperlink to the IPCC website or to any of its pages without requesting permission.
For any other use, permission is required. To obtain permission, please address your request to the Secretary of the IPCC in a signed letter with all relevant details using official letterhead and fax it to: +41 22 730 8025.

THE PLANET IS DYING. And we have to write (with pen and ink) on official letterhead (this rules out most of the citizens on the planet) to try to stop it. This is Laputa in the Digital Century.
It gets worse. There are thousands of references in the report. Many are in scholarly articles that are behind paywalls. 40 USD for one read for one day. It would probably cost the average citizen (citizens are the people that will die) 50, 000 USD to read all the referenced papers.
I wrote about this six months ago:
/pmr/2013/10/02/our-planets-climate-is-broken-but-copyright-stops-us-reading-about-it-unless-you-have-50000-usd/
I came up with suggestion then – that any citizen could help with. Almost complete silence. I’m going to try again. And again.
I have said this before:
CLOSED ACCESS MEANS PEOPLE DIE.
And now we can see that they are actually dying.
Inaction is nearly as dangerous as publisher greed.
 
 

Net Neutrality is a battle we must win or face Digital darkness for decades or ever. Europe votes this week – YOU must tell your MEPs to vote. Here’s what I wrote using writetothem.org. It took me 10 minutes. (I didn’t have to look up the names of the MEPs or type them in – the site does all of that)

Dear Andrew Duff, David Campbell Bannerman, Geoffrey Van Orden, Vicky Ford, Richard Howitt, Stuart Agnew and Robert Sturdy,
Dear MEPs,
I’m writing to ask you to vote for “Net Neutrality” in the forthcoming Commission’s Telecoms Package proposal. I am a member of OpenForum Europe – a body who for many years has campaigned for clarity and Openness in IT issues in Europe. Recently we wrote to you with our arguments (copied on my blog).
/pmr/2014/03/31/write-to-your-meps-to-vote-to-safeguard-open-internet-in-europe/
I am an academic, and proud to be in Cambridge and the Eastern region which is one of the top innovation areas of the world. A free and open internet allows UK ideas and people to thrive. It was Tim Berners-Lee who created the idea of the World Wide Web on which so much has happened. It creates new businesses, new ideas, new science, challenges orthodoxy and even lets me write to you!
From our letter:
Brazil is successfully pushing its own ‘net neutrality’ law through the legislative process and it is a question of time when other countries will follow.
“The moment you let neutrality go, you lose the web as it is. You lose something essential – the fact that any innovator can dream up an idea and set up a website at some place and let it just take off from word of mouth”, said Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web.
Please take the time and interest to consider what is at stake. There is still a possibility to correct this shortcoming and introduce a text that truly safeguards the net neutrality in the EU.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Murray-Rust

Now go lout and do it. Tomorrow is too late.

I’m thrilled by the following news which appeared early today. For those who don’t know the publishing industry well The Scholarly Soup Kitchen is seen as one of the key commenters on all things scholarly and is widely read for its perspective on innovation and independence from conventional power blocks.  Its CEO Ant Kenderson  commented on the recent HEFCE proposals for Open Access repositories

Yesterday the UK’s HEFCE made a tremendous stride forward when it mandated that all evaluation of its academics should take place through Open Access papers in a repository. At SSK we have consistently argued that all publication should be open and available to the whole world.  We feel that the vast fees demanded by so-called “Glamour mags” are outrageous and we should strive for zero-cost of access. The main point of the new repository is to promote the outcome of UK scholarship to the whole world for free – we hope that other countries follow suit. arXiv can publish for as little as 7 USD, and HEFCE is following suit.
We have a few minor quibbles. HEFCE still allows infinitely long embargoes and we are working with them to remove this clause. No modern publisher likes embargoes as it means people can’t read papers, and that’s the whole point of publishing, isn’t it. Also HEFCE seems to allow authors to ignore the mandate. Effectively they say “if you want to publish in journal X and it doesn’t allow for deposition in the repo then find a more suitable journal. But if you can’t find one, don’t worry we shan’t enforce the mandate”. That’s wrong and we at SSK believe that all authors should be forcibly persuaded to comply.
The other exciting news of the week is that the UK will reform copyright by 2014-06-01.   This will allow text and data mining without permission, format shifting and much more. We at SSK have always felt that copyright stifles innovation and so we welcome Hargreaves. We’re sad that it doesn’t go far enough and we at SSK have always pressed for the removal of the “non-commercial” clause. We support “the right to read is the right to mine” and want it to become universal. We’re working to persuade publishers to change their ideas and welcome open content mining.
We are delighted by the lifting of copyright on parody. Everyone should have the right to poke fun at pompous or out of date people and institutions. Parody, like Swift or Orwell, can change our values and liberate basic human values. Swift parodied the publishing industry which, in his time, did not publish but left all the work to others and simply added a “factor d’impact”  designed by Queen Anne. Orwell lambasted the Departments of Openness and Truth which all major publishers  implemented and whose role was to create barrier for readers (“murs de payment”) ,  and browbeat authors and reviewers into slavery for the industry.
Thank goodness those days are gone.

The full text of  Kenderson’s post can be read here.
 

I am proud to be a Fellow of the OpenForumAcademy – which promotes openness in IT standards and procurement. We are very concerned about the pressures to lead to two/many-tier Internet access and we urge “Net Neutrality”. Read this and then write to your MEP.
Don’t know who s/he is? Or how to write?
Simple  in UK. Go to writetothem.org – it will tell you everything. Don’t just copy the letter below – make it a bit personal.

• About how a free Internet generates wealth for your region.
• About how it encourages your constituents to keep in touch with MEPs
• About the ability to share culture across Europe

You get the idea? Now tell them how to vote.

I have been so busy over the last few days and the world has changed so much that I haven’t managed to blog one of the most significant news – the UK government has tables its final draft on the review of copyright. See http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copyright-exceptions.htm .
This is fantastic. It is set to reform scientific knowledge. It means that scientific Facts can be extracted and published without explicit permission. The new law will give us that. I’m going to comment on detail on the content-mining legislation, but a few important general comments:

• UK is among the world leaders here. I understand Ireland is following, and the EU process will certainly be informed by UK. Let’s make it work so well and so valuably that it will transform the whole world.
• This draft still has to be ratified before it becomes law on June 1st. It’s very likely to happen but could be derailed by (a) Cameron deciding to go to war (b) the LibDems split from the government (c) freak storms destroy Parliament (d) content-holder lobbyists kill the bill in underhand ways.
• It’s not just about content-mining. It’s about copying for private re-use (e.g. CD to memory stick), and parody. Reading the list of new exceptions make you realise how restrictive the law has become. Queen Anne in 1710 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne) didn’t even  consider format shifting between technologies.  And e-books for disabled people??

So here’s guidance for the main issues in simple language:

• Guidance – Consumers (253Kb)
• Guidance – Creators and copyright owners (346Kb)
• Guidance – Accessible formats for disabled people (255Kb)
• Guidance – Education and Teaching (277Kb)
• Guidance – Research (287Kb)
• Guidance – Copyright material held by public bodies (276Kb)
• Guidance – Libraries, museums and archives (297Kb)

and here are the details (I’ll be analysing the “data analytics” in detail in a later post):

• IA No: BIS0306 (220Kb) – Copyright Exception for archiving and preservation
• IA No: BIS0312 (220Kb) – Exception for copying of works for use by text and data analytics
• IA No: BIS0308 (310Kb) – Copyright Exceptions for disabled people
• IA No: BIS1055 (501Kb) – Copyright Exception for Private Copying
• IA No: BIS0311 (236Kb) – Extend Exception for copying for research and private study
• IA No: BIS1057 (315Kb) – Copyright Exception For Parody
• IA No: BIS0309 (163Kb) – Use of works for public administration and reporting
• IA No: BIS0312 (359Kb) – Extending Copyright Exceptions for Educational Use
• IA No. BIS0310 (176Kb) – Exception for use of quotations or extracts of copyright works

And here’s the initial announcement – includes URLs to the IPO and government pages.

From: CopyrightConsultation
Sent: 27 March 2014 15:06
To: CopyrightConsultation
Subject: Exceptions to copyright law – Update following Technical Review
The Government has today laid before Parliament the final draft of the Exceptions to Copyright regulations. This is an important step forward in the Government’s plan to modernise copyright for the digital age. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for your response to the technical review and to tell you about the outcome of this process and documents that have been published.
As you will recall, the technical review ran from June to September 2013 and you were invited to review the draft legislation at an early stage and to provide comments on whether it achieved the policy objectives, as set out in Modernising Copyright in December 2012.
We found the technical review to be a particularly valuable process. Over 140 organisations and individuals made submissions and we engaged with a wide range of stakeholders before and after the formal consultation period. The team at the IPO have also worked closely with Government and Parliamentary lawyers to finalise the regulations.
No policy changes have been made, but as a result of this process we have made several alterations to the format and drafting of the legislation. To explain these changes, and the thinking behind them, the Government has published its response to the technical review alongside the regulations. This document sets out the issues that were raised by you and others, the response and highlights where amendments have been made.
It is common practice for related regulations such as these to be brought forward as a single statutory instrument. However, the Government is committed to enabling the greatest possible scrutiny of these changes and the nine regulations have been laid before parliament in five groups.  In deciding how to group the regulations, we have taken account of several factors, including any relevant legal interconnections and common themes. The rationale behind these groupings is set out in the Explanatory Memorandum.
The Government has also produced a set of eight ‘plain English’ guides that explain what the changes mean for different sectors. The guides explain the nature of these changes to copyright law and answer key questions, including many raised during the Government’s consultation process.  The guides cover areas including disability groups, teachers, researchers, librarians, creators, rights-holders and consumers. They also explain what users can and cannot do with copyright material.
The response to the Technical Review and the guidance can be accessed through the IPO’s website:  www.ipo.gov.uk/copyright-exceptions.htm <http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copyright-exceptions.htm>.  This also provides links to the final draft regulations, explanatory memorandum and associated documents that appear on www.legislation.gov.uk<http://www.legislation.gov.uk>.
It is now for Parliament to consider the regulations, which will be subject to affirmative resolution in both Houses. If Parliament approves the regulations they will come into force on 1 June 2014.
Thank you again for your contribution.
Yours sincerely,
John Alty