[Osdc-edu-authors] Potential post on copyright assignment

[Matthew Jadud]

On Sat, Aug 20, 2011 at 02:02, Mel Chua <mel at redhat.com> wrote:
> So, I started grad school. And boy, is life different here on the academic
> side of things. Copyright, for instance. When you publish in an academic
> forum, you sign over everything to the journal. Everything.

Yep. And if you don't publish, you don't advance. Blogs don't count,
mailing list traffic doesn't count, meetings in IRC don't count --
that's all just blather. If FOSS says "show me the code," then
academia says "show me the background, related work, method, analysis,
discussion, conclusions, and future work before I even begin to
consider your ideas."

> As far as I can tell, this means I've screwed up. My first couple
> co-submissions of work on teaching open source are, ironically, *unable* to
> be open-licensed.

Correct, unless you (or some other entity) buy back the rights from
the rights holder.

I would say the article would be more valuable if you were to take it
the next step (or steps):

1. Contact (say) ACM Legal
2. Investigate their view of CC-BY-SA as a precursor to publication/
3. Report.
4. Repeat for other bodies. (optional)

And, or: highlight open venues where you *could* publish. But, yes,
the reality is that the communities you're interacting with are closed
communities. The ACM and IEEE aren't about to give up their digital
libraries -- which require them to hold the copyright so as to have a
monopoly and make cash -- just because you want CC licensing.

As a post, it doesn't tell me anything new about the state of affairs
-- what you've said is that "the sky is falling."  And I agree, it is
sad/ironic that we do work (sometimes using public funds), we peer
review (for free), and then give away all the rights to the work.
Other disciplines have taken steps to correct the fact that the work
disappears (by founding open access journals), but founding a new
journal is very hard work. That would be another post/thought stream,
and one I've considered pursuing---but it isn't an easy thing.

I guess my question is: can you take the article another step?

Cheers,
M