"How I Learned to Love Larry," So Why Can't We?
Here's another news flash just as amazing as Matt's note about the DMCA and Lexmark ruling. Put Hilary Rosen together with Larry Lessig and what do you get? Rosen advocating Creative Commons licensing in this month's Wired.
What's next? Bill Gates open sourcing Windows? A composition journal publishing under a CC license?
Maybe that last comment was a cheap shot. But today I was talking about Taylor and Riley's Open Source and Academia with the OSDDP instructors. It's a great text which outlines a lot of what we are doing with OSDDP. And had Dave B. and I known last spring when we first began thinking about how to create an open source community web-based project that Taylor and Riley were writing their piece, we could have collaborated. Their ideas would certainly have helped us.
But in sending the link to their text to the other instructors, I realized that I couldn't just send them a copy of the text if I had wanted to. Ironically, while the authors, reviewers, and editors of CC Online worked with that article, apparently none of them bought into its open source principles enough to release it under a Creative Commons license.
Why the gap here between theory and practice? Taylor and Riley have gone a long way toward making it clear. Open source principles are very much in sync with composition theory. Peer review, collaboration, sharing, process, revision, access, community: those are the keywords which describe open source so well and resonate so strongly within our field.
Is sharing so oblivously obvious that people don't get it? What is it about "All Rights Reserved" which has such a strong appeal now that there is an alternative?
If Hilary Rosen can get it, why can't we?
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Comments
C&C and CC
I hear you, Charlie. On the one hand, I can certainly respect C&C's reluctance to embrace a CC license; in no time, those articles would be available on at least five or six different websites. Since C&C is the only publication venue that counts (to the ancien regime) in our field, the argument is that it's really in our best interest to try to keep people subscribing to it and for C&C Online protected under copyright.
I politely disagree with this argument. For one thing, I don't think that releasing both C&C print and C&C online is going to make a dramatic difference; it's just going to make the articles more accessible, and that's a good thing for most scholars desperately trying to make their ideas have an impact. I think there are enough wise-heads in our field to consider that, even if they could get the stuff for free online, and even provide their own mirror, that they should still probably subscribe to the print version just to keep that publication option open. Even if they don't want to receive a paper copy, at least they're smart enough to know that some people need to feel paper to feel a publication is legitimate. Let's face it--none of us buy into that mentality that "print matters; online doesn't." However, I don't want to be up before a hiring or tenure committee and hear someone say, "Yeah, this is great and all, but where are your real publications?"
So, what I'd like to see happen is a bit far-fetched. Basically, I'd like to see both C&C Online and C&C Print go CC, but still ask for supporting subscriptions and require folks who want to submit articles to join the organization and pay their dues. PMLA requires authors to pay up before submitting; why not C&C? Folks should choose whether they want to receive the print journal or not; that's a convenience, but it shouldn't be a restriction on our freedom.
Of course, with C&C under Elsevier....? I'm not sure anyone really has a say in the matter now.
not C&C, but any journal
I was actually thinking of any journal. Even Kairos. And it wouldn't even have to be a dedication to releasing all articles with CC licenses; merely a progressive IP policy which suggested that submissions consider CC licenses.
By mentioning Taylor and Riley's article, I was just trying to make a point. What is so obtuse about open source that, even when working with an article about it, a journal wouldn't see the light as Hilary Rosen eventually did? Creative Commons licensing is for composition as it is with the music industry for Rosen. There's an obvious way in which it can play a part in our reconceptions of publishing for the digital age. With Rosen, I can see how her previous role as chair and CEO of the RIAA would have put here in a naturally antagonistic position to CC; it's not likely she would have ever reached this conlusion before now. So what is the thing that would keep the authors, editors, and reviewers of this article from also seeing the logic of open source and the obvious parallels between its values and those of compostion? I think if we knew that thing, we'd be one big step closer to understanding how to make the argument to the whole field.
CC and online scholarship
Certainly Kairos has nothing whatsoever to lose by following Charlie's suggestion. I'd even take issue with the argument (as Matt has) that people would stop subscribing to C&C if it went CC. Publishing with a CC license hasn't financially hurt Cory Doctorow, who writes:
Nor has it affected the sales of Free Culture or Cluetrain, which admittedly doesn't have a CC license, instead this:
I know these texts aren't exactly the same as C&C, but they are precedents to some extent. It might be worthwhile, in order to establish a more sensible precedent, to see if scholarly journals in other disciplines (especially the sciences) use CC licenses. Oh, and about the mirroring question, I'd argue that just because people have permission to mirror doesn't mean they will. As far as I know, no one has mirrored Into the Blogosphere.
But in response to the question of why "All Rights Reserved" has such a strong appeal: I wonder if it's because CC is so closely associated with online content that CC is implicated in the stigma and lack of academic cachet surrounding online scholarship? I'm not necessarily saying this is so, just raising the question. My opinion on it is that authors and subscribers aren't angry about the status quo, and because of the current hiring/tenure/promotion institutional milieu, authors are so grateful for a publication that they're loath to negotiate for a CC license.
CultureCat
Paper or RDF?
I certainly love the convenience of print--it's why I buy those overpriced computer books insteading of using online resources. So I'd probably pay for the print version of a journal, and refer to the online version occasionally. But there's a (potential) situation in which the electronic version of a journal would be professionally superior to the paper version. If an electronic version were coded with RDF so that it participated in a semantic web with other articles, the reader could search meaningfully for ideas and interconnections, without having to resort to the ham-fisted keyword searches that yield such unimpressive results.
There'd be some new problems, such as who'd code the article, who'd get credit and / or remuneration (hah!) for the coding, etc. A generous CC license could help smooth over such issues.
Or could it be...
that most scholars in composition theory honestly don't know what CC is? Or maybe they've heard of it in passing, but don't know the particulars (and the implications) and therefore don't understand it? It would be interesting to take a poll. As far as I know, the only article in R&C journals that has mentioned CC is Sarah Robbins' "Distributed Authorship: A Feminist Case-Study Framework for Studying Intellectual Property." It's in College English; I don't know anything about College English's readership, so I don't know how many people might have read it.
CultureCat
unheard of
I would agree. However, it still doesn't make sense to me that those working with open source concepts--those working with the Taylor and Riley piece--wouldn't have managed collectively to arrive at the conclusion that the text should be published as open source. Now maybe they did, and for some reason we are unaware of, it didn't happen.
I suspect it's probably related to fear as you have suggested above, or that there is some difference in principle embedded within compositon theory. So whether there was a concrete reason, or merely something about open source that just doesn't connect, I'd like to know to understand better what we are dealing with as open source/open content advocates. It would be really nice if one of the authors or editors of that text would chime in here.
Speaking to your concerns
Briley did agree with you and say that he'd talk to his co-author about getting the CC license. Maybe she or the editor(s) wouldn't agree to it.
CultureCat
Sorry I didn't say it before, but
Brendan and Laurie, thank you very much for this article. I appreciate the time and thought you have invested in making these connections between open source and academia.
CultureCat
Open Source Academia
Hi Clancy, Charlie, Matt, et al. I'm speaking with my Computers and Composition Online Senior Editor hat on here.
The very fact that we chose to publish Open Source and Academia in a timely manner rather than wait for spring '05, after the current guest-edited special issue, speaks to not only the importance of the piece, but how we feel as editors about it. CCO is also the companion web journal for Computers and Composition, so C&C's afilliation with Elsevier is a factor for us as well. Taylor and Riley did not discuss or request any changes in how copyright would be handled for this piece. However, if they had, we certainly would have discussed it and certanly not dismissed the idea. The fair thing, to my way of thinking and Kris Blair will most likely add her 2 cents in this weekend with her own post on the subject, would be to extend the in-house discussion to Cindy Selfe and Gail Hawisher, and see what policy would work best for all concerned.
Lanette Cadle
Thanks for the consideration
We certainly appreciate your consideration and thoughts.
But as an open source/open content advocate, I'm wondering if you see a disconnect between the discourse you hear about open source, such as the views represented in their article, and what you would have needed to hear such that it would have come to mind without the discussion here?
See, I feel as if those of us in composition who are advocates are not making the right arguments, that there is flaw in both the logic and the rhetorical strategies that we are using. The open source reactionary position would be, "hey, why didn't C&C Online do this?" But as a rhetorician, I realize that's not correct. As I understand open source, and I believe as Clancy does, we see infinite value in it to the field, and indeed, to an online journal. So where are those of us advocating openness failing as rhetoricians?
Thanks for any ideas on this :)
CC & C&C
It's pretty fun to see this conversation bubbling, and I've been see-sawing about whether I should post or not--mostly because I didn't want to make the discussion with CCO public until we'd had a chance to resolve it. cel4145--I remember you and others bringing up the CC license when the article first appeared and, as someone else here noted, I said I'd look into it. Well, my first semester as a full-time, 4-course-load prof started and my head exploded. No excuse, though.
So, when cel4145 started this discussion, I remembered my earlier plans and I got in contact with Laurie. We agreed that we'd see what we could do about adding a CC license to the piece. Just yesterday (probably within hours of when Lanette said we did not discuss any changes in copyright) I sent an email to our section editor doing just that. Below is our email:
-------------
Hello,
Shortly after our piece was posted in C&C Online, Laurie and I realized (thanks to some people more astute than we) that there was a bizarre blind spot in our article about Open Source methods and pedagogy. Despite calling for Open publishing models, we failed to institute such a model on our own article.
I've examined the C&C Online website and can find no documentation regarding copyright, other than the tiny "copyright Bowling Green State U" at the bottom of the homepage.
We would like very much to apply a Creative Commons license to our article that appeared in the Spring 2004 issue. The link for the license is below. The license we'd like to use is the "Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0" license, which allows others to reproduce the work, provided that they attribute it to us and C&C Online. You can read the license here:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/
How does C&C Online feel about such issues? Given the nature of our article, is it possible to apply such a license to our piece?
Thanks,
Brendan Riley (and Laurie Taylor)
----------------
I'll keep y'all posted on how things work out.
CC and your article
Hi Brendan:
At C&C, we feel that all authors maintain "rights" to their work and are free to host and redistribute as they please, so we can of course, entertain a CC license, though as you suggest, we would like some indication that the archived piece appears on our site (as we do embed our navigation bar in most pieces). Lanette Cadle has already attested to the beauty of online publishing in that we can add pieces, fix dead links, correct minor oversights, something we did with your piece. I see no difference here.
As you know, we were pleased to publish the piece as a result of the peer review by two members of the ed. board that improved the quality of an already strong piece, along with in-house review and dialogue, between Laurie and me. Thus from my perspective, that spirit of collaboration and community was not violated by not choosing to go CC, and I don't get the sense that you or Laurie feel this way.
While some might want to attribute an ideological and epistemological rigidity to C&C Online relating to authorship and ownership, perhaps in comparison to other online journals--any in particular, Charlie? :) -- I think those of us who worked so hard to make the piece live because of its significant content know it was just the oversight of workload, summer schedules, and the like.
We have been so pleased to see the traffic that some of our pieces get, including yours, Brendan, and we are thrilled with comments about its quality here on kairosnews. I thank Charlie for creating an opportunity for C&C Online to be a case study (notice I didn't say "scapegoat" :) ), and we sincerely hope that some of the kudos for publishing such fine work can rub off on the online journal itself (despite ties to Elsevier), which in its two years at Bowling Green has flourished. We are extremely grateful to the Kairos community for being so supportive of the different forums in our discipline for online publication and hope that as editors and authors we can engage in collegial dialogue about the field's position on open source and CC.
Kris Blair, Editor, C&C Online
Great news!
Thanks for your comments, Kris. I agree absolutely with your statement that the "spirit of collaboration and community was not violated by not choosing to go CC." In fact, we (I'm pretty sure Laurie agrees) found the review process to work very well. Our post-review version is far superior to our original work (so Kudos to y'all at CCO).
When I said that there was a blind spot in the piece, I really meant that as a reflection on we the authors; when Charlie asked about the CC license, I bonked my head on my desk for not thinking of it myself. I'll contact you via backchannel about the specifics of setting this up.
YAY!
Announcement: Kairos Offers CC Option for Authors
Announcement
Based on recommendations from Charlie and Clancy, Kairos is pleased soon to offer publishing with a CC license as an option for all authors who so choose.
This decision reflects an extending of Kairos' mission to include making scholarly knowledge accessible and portable and an explicit acknowledgement by Kairos of the important shifts ongoing on the intellectual property landscape. We believe that this decision reflects an important trend in scholarly publishing in the humanities, and we are eager to provide our authors with the best options for publishing their work with us.
We thank everyone here at Kairosnews for your many excellent discussions about intellectual property, and we look forward to continuing to talk and work with all of you as everything continues to evolve.
Douglas Eyman, Co-Editor
James Inman, Co-Editor
kairosed@technorhetoric.net
Every content creator / journal ed needs license awareness help.
Unfortunately, it isn't just compositionists who lack awareness of what the licensing possibilities are. Most creators allow their work to be taken away from them - de facto 'stolen' - because they don't have the contextual knowledge that it takes to think about IP concerns.
Let's face it, IP discussions are exceptionally complex. People don't realize that journal editors are often willing to negotiate - because asking for such a thing is almost unheard of. I'm not sure where to find fault, here - the problem is multifaceted.
Some of the responsibility here doesn't lie with content creators (compositionists, artists, musicians, whoever), but with journal editors. Though journal editors are often the most talented or well-known figures in their subfields, they are often woefully unprepared for the business of running a journal. Woefully, I say, because I've observed that a number of the ones that I know don't care about issues that are critical to the success or failure of their publications. That doesn't come about by accident, but by simple lack of knowledge.
Responsible stewardship for an intellectual community must include consideration of the ways in which knowledge is reproduced within and without, for and in conjunction with the community's standard practices. To do otherwise is suicide, and yet we see repeatedly that certain key figures are not doing "the right thing" - not progressive enough, not knowledgeable enough, not willing enough to ask for help because they don't think there's anything that needs to be done.
The task of a journal ought to be the spread of new, interesting, innovative ideas as quickly and effectively as possible. Currently, licensing and copyright issues keep that from happening. This is a black mark against journals who are clinging to 'old paradigm' publication patterns.
I admit that transforming the institutional culture that springs up around a journal is not a simple thing. Not simple at all. But it needs to happen, and is worth the cost.
A word of warning to R/C journal editors who think CC and similar licensing schemes are irrelevant: *YOU* are irrelevant. And quickly becoming more so. Please do the right thing, and help your academic community. You're hurting us, and that's not a sustainable state of affairs.
Creative Commons license up
We've finally posted the piece with a CC license on it. The delay was entirely my fault—I blame my new full-time job. :) The CCO editors were very helpful about getting it set up.
Thanks to everybody here for your gentle prodding!
\m/
That rawks! :-)
CultureCat