The text below is an adaptation of a Correspondence submitted to PLoS Biology on October 22 and published October 31 as a "Reader Response" linked to the Editorial “When Is Open Access Not Open Access?”, (MacCallum, 2007)
I am pleased to announce that Molecular Systems Biology has changed its license to publish for all articles accepted after October 1st, 2007 (see updated instruction to authors). The new license allows our authors to choose between two Creative Commons licenses: one that allows the work to be adapted by users (by-nc-sa), the other that does not allow the work to be modified (by-nc-nd). The first articles to be published under the new license are expected to appear online beginning of next month.
Our content is therefore not only freely available to all but our authors can now also decide to make their research fully open for reuse and adaptations.
The current explosive development of data and text mining, semantic-web and information aggregation technologies is profoundly changing the publishing landscape (eg Tim O'Reilly visits Nature). When we were contacted a few months ago by the OpenWetWare community who envisaged the "wikification" of one of our Reviews (see post), we decided that Molecular Systems Biology should strongly support such initiatives by providing our content in an as open form as possible. Our Senior Editors fully supported this transition to a more open license but also encouraged us to allow authors to have some influence on the decision.
Providing authors the possibility to choose their license has some decisive advantages: first, by enforcing a conscious choice by authors it will inevitably raise awareness on the implications of the various publication licenses; second we would like to see the question of "what should be open access" being addressed in a more democratic way by the community itself rather than through incantations of what the ideal solution should be. My guess – and my personal hope – is that most of the authors will indeed choose the most open version of the license, but I think that it is important to respect the opinions of those who think differently and who would feel uncomfortable with the idea that their article can be remixed or adapted without them being aware of it.
Our attitude is motivated by the fact that, at Molecular Systems Biology, we see the role of a scientific journal more as a catalyst facilitating and accelerating scientific discovery rather than a policy-making instrument. What is Systems Biology? Rather than providing a rigid definition of a rapidly evolving field, we prefer to let the community define the scope of this field and we adapt to it. What is open access? Rather than relying on a dogmatic position in a still fluid situation, we prefer to let scientists define their priorities.
Note: To avoid confusion, I initially wanted to make this announcement only after the first paper published under the new license (that is, accepted after Oct 1st) had appeared online, but a recent Editorial from PLoS Biology (“When Is Open Access Not Open Access?” MacCallum, 2007) forced me to anticipate a little on this. In this Editorial, Catriona MacCallum reviews in details the subtleties of publishing licenses and clarifies their implications for the concept of “open access”. Unfortunately, this Editorial, at the time of its publication (Oct 16), included also erroneous information on Molecular Systems Biology, given that we had updated our policy already on Ocober 1st. In any case, it is somewhat ironic that MacCallum chose to stigmatize Molecular Systems Biology as an example of a journal that “promulgates” confusion about open access. As it turns out, Molecular Systems Biology is dedicated to the concept of making research freely available and to engage authors themselves in decisions that would achieve this goal with their own research. It is in this spirit of openness and respect for authors that we have recently adapted our license to publish.
Comments (5)
Posted by Jason Kelly | November 1, 2007 2:59 PM
great news!
Posted by Jonathan Eisen | November 2, 2007 7:15 AM
I think it is great that MSB is making use of Creative Commons licenses for their publications. And this is a truly positive thing, given that many other journals have not gone this far. However, I think there are some subtleties here that are worth discussing further:
First, given that MSB had changed its policy just before the article was published I think it is perfectly reasonable for MacCallum to have used the prior MSB policy for her article.
Second, I think MSB's move towards openness is great and should be encouraged. But MSB still, even after Oct 1, still uses somewhat restrictive CC licenses. Note - I am happy they have moved towards more open licenses. But the limitation on commercial use is still there. And if a lot of authors choose the "no derivatives" option, then MSB will be effectively less open than it could be if it simply adopted a completely open CC license.
Third, I think it is nice in some senses to offer the authors the option of what license to use. But by doing that, there are some potential side effects you may not have thought of. For example, when someone is asked to review papers, are they told what license would be used if it were published? If I was asked to review and was not told which license was to be used, I might not review the paper. This is because I am committed to the idea that scientists should not review for non OA journals. As the by-nc-nd license is too restrictive from my point of view, I would not want to say yes to a review and then find out the article was published in a restrictive manner.
Fourth, if MSB is really committed to engaging the authors in the decision making process, why not offer a CC license that does not have the no commercial use restriction? I think it would be more accurate to say MSB supports some aspects of the concept of openness but not all of them. And MSB is only allowing authors options within this constraint.
Note again, I am pleased the MSB is getting more open. But there is still a cage for this bird. It is a pretty cage. The bars are pretty far apart. But there is still a lock on the gate. Though I would much rather be this bird than a bird in a tiny little box with a cover over it. It would be even better to be a bird outside of any cage.
Posted by Thomas | November 2, 2007 12:20 PM
Thanks so much for your encouraging words, Jonathan.
Some updates from the blogosphere: Pedro: The right to equivalent response; Peter Suber: Whether or not to allow derivative works
"if a lot of authors choose the "no derivatives" option": I think it is unlikely. But if it would turn out to be the case, what would you conclude?
"potential side effects": you are right, we did not and cannot think of all potential effects, and this is why we choose a rather empirical approach. As for reviewers declining because authors can eventually decide on the licence for their own paper, this seems pretty extreme to me. In any case, since MSB launch, it happened only once that a potential reviewer asked for our policy (p<0.0005) suggesting that the vast majority of our community does not see our publication policy as a major conflict with them serving as reviewers.
"MSB is only allowing authors options within this constraint": OK, fair enough! At least we offer options when other don't! I am not sure about the bird-in-a-cage analogy. I prefer to think of a scientific work as a beautiful painting or anything that is the fruit of human creativity, unlike the bird...
Posted by Jonathan Eisen | November 2, 2007 4:41 PM
Again, I think it is good to give authors options. However, the OA movement is not only about authors goals and concerns. To me, the OA movement is more about government funding of science and how to get the most global benefit from scientific research. Sure, we scientists/authors are a key part of this, but except in very rare cases, we are not paying for our research out of our own pockets. Most of the time, our research is funded by public or private entities and in most cases, the goals of these entities relate to making discoveries and spreading scientific knowledge. Just as funding agencies have policies regarding open access to data and to research materials (e.g., clones) I think they should have policies regarding OA publishing. So - your experiment with authors choices is interesting, but in the end, to provide fully for the common good, funding agencies may have to require certain types of OA.
Posted by Drew Endy | December 13, 2007 11:44 PM
Extending Jonathan's argument to its logical end, publishing of publicly funded scientific and engineering research should start with the ideas behind the research at the time of their conception, and next include all progress along the way, and eventually, finally (!) the peer reviewed manuscript. Documentation of the entire research process should be reversible. Our current accepted practice of only publishing a peer reviewed manuscript (even under the most permissive license or scheme possible) leaves almost all of the most important thinking and results hidden from view. We need public access to the entire research process.