Most scientific research is publicly funded, and yet we have to pay to access it. This absurd situation should not be allowed to continue.
I still remember the first time I read “Free Culture”. It was in 2008 and my IP Law Professor back then recommended me the book as if it were some kind of Bible of the Free Culture, the Open Knowledge and the Copyleft movements. As if its author, Larry Lessig, were the guru of the subject, being founder of the Creative Commons and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, among others. And that’s why I spent the last days reflecting again on some passages from the book "Free Culture" as well as on part of the lecture he gave at Harvard Law School dedicated to Aaron Swartz and titled “Aaron’s Laws: Law and Justice in a Digital Age”.
In connection with all this knowledge, I allowed myself to make some considerations about the current situation of researchers, publishers, and universities. And in doing so I quickly came to the conclusion that something is not working correctly with the current established system. There are corrupted money flows going from the research, up to government itself and its regulation. At least, this is the case in Spain and some other European countries.
Knowledge: Open by default
When we talk about universities and their publications, we usually talk about science. But today, I want to speak out for Open Science, because, when it comes to researchers at the University in Spain, we are talking about teachers, professors or employees of any nature, the authors that are already paid, funded or somehow supported by the government.
It can be via their payroll if they are public servants, scholarships or any other means of funding. In any case, all that money usually comes from taxes or public funded organizations. Taxes and money that, in one way or another we, the people, have already paid.
Therefore, any piece of work originating from those taxes must go back to the people in a by all means available way. It should be in the public domain from the very beginning: because it was originally conceived to be part of open knowledge.
The Science Conundrum
To be more specific about the current situation in Spain, here some insights what this process currently looks like:
- In order for anybody to be a university teacher/professor, your research needs to be published.
- Your career development is based on points given to you by the government thanks to those publications.
- To be published in those reviews, first you need to get peer-reviewed, which is one of the main reasons why the publishers and the government defend the existence of these recognized reviews: to give credibility to scientific publications.
- To receive points based on those publications, they must be published by certain recognized publishers or in relevant reviews.
- Once these authors or creators get peer-reviewed, and in order to publish the research, those publishers ask the creators to give up any economic copyrights they have, not allowing them to share their publications, amend them or republish them in any possible way.
- Once the authors have given up all their economic rights, publishers make available the content to the public only in exchange for a fee, it being of any nature: monthly fees for universities, expensive paper books or paper reviews, etc.
The system is currently corrupted, not allowing either of the interested parties to get anything out of it: authors or creators cannot see their works openly shared within the scientific community as it should be; and society is not seeing itself rewarded for the investment it made in scientific resarch through taxes.
We are sanctioning a situation that is always avoided in other fields, like financial and tax law, a situation called double taxation
If we allow the current system to continue, we are sanctioning a situation that is always avoided in other fields, like financial and tax law, a situation called double taxation. The works, publications, results or any other piece of research originating from our researchers from universities or university personnel of any kind, are first funded via taxes and then paid for again when trying to access the content itself. We have a double copyrighted system.
And why do we have this double copyright? Because the regulations have failed to stop both the publishers and the royalty collection agencies in taking control of something that doesn't belong to them: they cannot have the monopoly that they currently have over copyright only to get control and revenue out of the published works.
A system of legalized extorsion
They are abusing and bullying authors with all the regulative support from the government. It is clear that publishers should have recognized economic rights to exploit their business model or investment, it being reviews or jurisprudence databases for example, like it could be the case of JSTOR or Westlaw, but not basing their revenues on the monopoly of copyright.
The system is corrupt from the start because researchers and professors cannot advance in their careers and cannot get proper recognition for their work if they are not published, and then recieve the points they need from the selected publishers to get a “promotion” from assistant professor to professor. And the regulation itself is corrupt. Authors are currently forced to give up theirs copyrights to get published.
This vicious circle closes when the researchers who get points are also the ones who peer-review other colleagues’ works and decide whether they will be published or not. What if they could publish using open licences like Creative Commons and let the scientific communtiy itself decide whether that piece of research is good or not?
The point is not to end copyright. This is about ending dumb copyright
As Lessig brilliantly said in his lecture on Aaron’s Law, the point is not to end copyright. This is about ending dumb copyright: we need to get the copyrights back to the authors and give the knowledge back to the people.Recommended readings: The Public Domain Manifesto: http://publicdomainmanifesto.org/manifestoGuerilla Open Access Manifesto:https://archive.org/stream/GuerillaOpenAccessManifesto/Goamjuly2008#page/n0/mode/2upGuest post written by Sara Rodríguez Marín
Lawyer, LLM in Private Law & PhD candidate in Business Law, Sara has been engaged in Intellectual Property since 2008, gaining experience in this field both in private practice and multinational company. She stands for a smart and fair use of the Intellectual Property and co-founded FreeDeLibre to pursue her goals: to build a free culture & free access society, eradicating any purposeless Intellectual Property, Copyright or any other barrier that doesn't bring any benefit to the people. Website: http://about.me/saramarin Featured image: Nikola Tesla in his laboratory, 1899