petermr's blog

Continuing the theme of my last post on copyright absurdities here is the gist of a mail I got today – I have rewritten it in my own words and changed identities.
My correspondent is writing a scholarly account of the work of a famous Hungarian scientist (Prof. Z) and needs 3 articles in Hungarian published 85 years ago. Her (highly prestigious) institution does not have paper copies either locally or in the stores. So the only option was to request interlibrary loans from the British Library. These are photocopies, not the actual volumes of course. When the photocopies came, she was called to SIGN for them. SIGN?? (I remember ILL as something that came through the post – I never had to sign for them). The signature indicated – in her words – “what I could NOT do. Thus

1. I could not copy it, or covert it to any digital form

2. I could not pass the original paper on to anyone else (including students).

3 I could not quote from it without permission.”

PMR: What on earth is happening here??? If a alien visitor came here tomorrow it would be told:

• Scientists do science which they wish to communicate to other people, especially scientists.
• The do this by writing papers. They do not expect to get paid by the people who read the papers.
• They are delighted when people read their papers. They never refuse permissions for people to re-use their material.
• They only wish to be recognised as the authors of the work.
• Eventually they die. Dead scientists are unable to respond to requests for permissions. Prof. Z has been dead for 40 years. That’s a long time.
• The national library of Britain has a policy which is – presumably – based on some idea of copyright which effectively restricts the readership of these articles to near zero.

PMR: I think the whole library world is now infected with copyright paralysis. I have come across this several times in the case of theses. “Oh we cannot let you actually datamine any useful information from this thesis because we are not the copyright holder. Oh and s/he is dead.”
So what is actually the problem? My feeble understanding of copyright is that (at least in the UK and much of Europe) this is a civil matter between me and the copyright holder. The worst that can happen is that the copyright holder can sue me. And that the damages will reflect the material loss that they have suffered. I remind you, Prof Z. is dead. He is unlikely to sue anyone. If he were alive he would give my correspondent permission. Perhaps his estate (were we able to locate it) would sue her? And what would be the damage? letting a student read his work?
So here is a risk assessment so she can decide whether to take the risk of giving the photocopy to a student. These are probabilities

• Chance Prof Z rises from grave: 6 * 10^-233 (a conservative estimate)
• Chance his estate is notified of apparent copyright violation 10^-12
• Chance his estate regards this as a material breach 10^-10
• Chance court awards judgement in favour of Prof. Z’s estate 10^-10
• amount of damages: 1 forint

So her likely loss is 10^-32. I could live with this
On the other hand she is very likely to be taken to task by the British Library for violating something I do not understand and which is totally irrelevant.
^{Some simple facts (not FACT)}

• ^{scientific papers are different from Harry Potter novels}
• ^{scientific papers are different from Mickey Mouse cartoons}
• ^{scientific papers are different from Beatles records}
• ^{scientific papers are different from videos}

^{So why don’t we decide as a community that copyright of scientific papers written by dead scientists is an irrelevancy in the modern age. Yes, we recognise that copyright on recent publications is different because the publishers will sue us or cut off our supply and that’s a different argument for a different day.
Please, librarians, help us take some positive steps for once.}
[NOTE ADDED LATER.
Professor Z is not, in fact, dead – see comments – and I apologize profusely for this slur. I will revise the probability downwards to ca 10^-6. Even at these odds, however, I will take the risk. ]

Today I have come across two accounts of copyright problems which highlight the complete absurdity of our current practices in the twenty-first century. We are crippling our scientific process. Here’s the first from my colleague Nico Adams’ blog. It’s a full, racy account and I’ve only omitted the images.

Requesting Permissions for Re-use of Copyrighted Material. – August 15th, 2007

---

Now I am not normally one to rant, at least not on a blog, but today I encountered something that makes me just mad…..and I mean hopping mad.
I have just finished writing a review paper […] I have included some figures, which were taken from the original research papers forming part of the review. Given that these were not my figures and that I respect and honour the copyright of other authors who have worked hard to produce high-quality and illustrative figures for their publications and the copyright of publishers who have been assigned those rights by an author, I went off to request permissions for re-use of copyrighted material from the relevant publishers. The review was based on about 150 papers, and I had taken figures from a few of them…ACS, RSC…no problem. Their procedures are all more or less automated and relatively pain free, although time consuming. And then, well then I came to Elsevier……
Elsevier has outsourced their copyright clearance procedure to a company called the Copyright Clearance Centre (I have included the link for your edification), which, on its website claims to “help to advance education, innovation and the free flow of information.” So far so good. Following Elsevier’s instruction, the first thing I have to do to obtain permission, is to go and find the resource I took the figure from on ScienceDirect. So off I go and locate the relevant journal (Talanta) and citation on Science Direct. Next, the website instructs me to find the abstract of the paper and to press the “Request Permissions” button.
[… image omitted …]

Pressing this button launches a pop-up window which asks me what I want to do and I make my
selections:
[… image omitted …]

I am somewhat curious as to why it asks me which currency area I am currently in, but decide to ignore it for the moment. Having made my choices, I hit the “continue” button. I am then asked to set up an account as I have never used rights link before. Ok, getting tedious, but I hit the button to set up an account (note: none of this is necessary with the other publishers). I am now taken to a page where the anger really sets in: they are asking me how I want to pay.
[… image omitted …]


How I want to pay?? All I want is to request permission for reuse of one small figure. I do not want to pay anything – my institution is subscribing to the journal for me. Why on earth would you want to lump requests for re-use of copyrighted material together with a business process that may be appropriate for the purchase of pay-per-view access? If I do not want to have pay-per-view access, why do I need to hand over payment details? However, the dropdown menu only gives me the opportunity to choose between a credit card payment and an invoice.
Hmmm…..on I go and fill in my details hoping that the “payment” thing is just going to go away down the line. But no such luck and sure enough, on the next screen I am being asked for my credit card details IN ORDER TO BE ABLE TO SET UP AN ACCOUNT to request re-use permissions.

[… image omitted …]

At this stage, I broke off the procedure. I understand that it might be convenient for the “Copyright Clearance Centre” to set up an account for me in such a way, that if I ever wanted to purchase a journal article from one of their customers, they have all the necessary information. IT IS NOT CONVENIENT FOR ME. All I want is permission to re-use a figure in a paper. I do not think that I should have to hand over my credit card details for this and I refuse to do so.
So what is the consequence of this? I am not prepared to set up a Rightslink account with the Copyright Clearance Centre under these circumstances. Therefore I cannot obtain permission to reproduce the figure I wanted and therefore I cannot use the figure in my paper. Furthermore, there is the personal inconvenience: I now have to throw the figure out of the manuscript and to renumber all of my figures in the text. This will cost me at least half an hour.
More significantly though, this has a negative impact on scientific dissemination. On the grand scale of things, it is only a tiny thing, but in effect this has stopped me from re-using a figure created by other scientists, which, I am sure, have a vested interest in their research being talked about, evaluated and disseminated. That is part of a scientist’s core business. The Copyright Clearance Centre has neither helped to advance education and innovation, nor indeed the flow of information, but rather has impeded it. And Elsevier is indirectly guilty: they have not done their best for their authors by helping to disseminate their science, but are collaborating with an organisation which actually puts people off reusing science. They have allowed requests for re-use of material to be lumped into the same procedure used for the purchase of pay-per-view articles. At best that is thoughtless and very poor customer service.
Now as I say, I don’t like to rant, but this kind of thoughtlessness makes me mad.

PMR: I feel the same emotions. I would not have paid to include and image from someone else’s paper. It could even have been in another Elsevier article – I don’t know the details. I would also have omitted the image, as it’s too much effort. So all that this has achieved is:

• to impoverish science. The article is worse that it should have been because a publisher made it not worth the author’s while. The publisher has made no money from the non-deal. It has also antagonised a scientist. So little wonder that the scientific community feels that many publishers are part of the problem.
• to waste time. This sort of stuff takes ages. If, by contrast, the works are licensed under Creative Commons, all the author has to do is acknowledge the source of the image(s) which takes a minute or two. So all this negative stuff is also wasting time. More impoverishment.

PMR: Nico has been very balanced and posted an article from a helpful publisher, PNAS (see Copyright Permissions – How they can also be done! ). Again worth reading in detail, including a clear account of why PNAS (fairly recently) requested copyright transfer. Partly because:

“Unfortunately, PNAS cannot provide permission for others to use all or part of articles published from 1915 to 1992 because we do not hold copyright. Only the original authors or their designees can grant permission. Researchers are frustrated when they contact us for permission to use seminal works and we are unable to grant their requests. “

PMR: Possibly true. But a paper in 1915 would require most authors to be about 112 years old or more. I have not been able to contact many spirits for permissions so it’s rather difficult. But more in the next post…