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=Open Source and Open Access - a New Revolution in Publishing=

Open Source
Open source software is software that includes source code and is usually available at no charge. There are additional requirements besides the availability of source code that a program must meet before it is considered open source including: the software must be free to redistribute; derivative works must be allowed; the license can not discriminate against any persons; and the license cannot discriminate against any fields of endeavor. Software that is licensed under an open source license allows for a community of developers from around the world to improve the software by providing enhancements and bug fixes. The recent success of free software projects such as GNU/Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and the Apache web server has demonstrated that quality works can be created even in the absence of a copyright-enforced monopoly rent [2.1]. Instead, these products use copyright to enforce their license terms, which are designed to ensure the free nature of the work, rather than securing exclusive rights for the holder for monetary gain; such a license is called a copyleft, free software license, or open source license. Mozilla is an example of an open source license.

Libraries can realize many advantages by using open source software. One of the most obvious advantages is cost. Open source software is generally available for free (or at a minimal cost) and it is not necessary to purchase additional licenses for every computer that the program is to be installed on or for every person who is going to use the software. Open source software not only has a lower acquisition cost than proprietary software, it often has lower implementation and support costs as well.

Another advantage is evaluating usability. It is easier to evaluate open source software then proprietary software. Since open source software is typically freely available to download, librarians and systems administrators can install complete production-ready versions of software and evaluate competing packages. This can be done not only without any license fees, but also without having to stick to a vendor's trial period, evaluate a limited version of the software, or deal with the vendor's sales personnel. If the library likes an overall open source package but would like a few added features they can add these features themselves. This is possible because the source code is available. Even if a library does not have in-house expertise they can benefit from source code availability because another library may be able to provide them the fix or they can hire a consultant to make the changes that they desire. Fuchs (2004) points out that if a proprietary program "is deficient in some way [the user] must wait until the vendor decides it is financially viable to develop the enhancement -- an event that may never occur." With open source software the user can develop the enhancement themselves.

Open source software allows for more support options. Proprietary software vendors often package service with the product. This is particularly true of proprietary library-specific software. When support from a vendor is inadequate it is an additional expense to purchase another tier of support, assuming that it is even available. Open source software allows for different vendors to compete for support contracts based on quality of service and on price. Access to the source code also allows for self-support when practical and desired. There are also usually several support forums for developers and users to troubleshoot and brainstorm off each other.

Open Access
Open access to scholarly information has been a hot topic for debate among librarians, scholars, and publishers over the last few years. Recent proposals by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States (requiring for scholarly works that come out of NIH funded research to be made available via NIH's PubMedCentral open access database), by the government in the United Kingdom (requiring that all UK government-funded research to be available via open access), and by others has expanded this debate. Various definitions of open access exist with the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition being the most widely used (Goodman 2004). Other definitions include the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, the Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, and the Washington DC Principles for Free Access to Science. While there are multiple definitions of open access, open access basically calls for scholarly publications to be made freely available to libraries and end users.

There are eight versions of open access that are most popular. They are: 1) e-print archive (authors self-archive prints), 2) unqualified (immediate and full open access publication of a journal, 3) dual mode (both print subscription and open access versions of a journal are offered), 4) delayed open access (open access is available after a certain period of time), 5) author fee (authors pay a fee to support open access), 6) partial open access (some articles from a journal are available via open access), 7) abstract (open access available to table of contents/abstracts, and 8) co-op (institutional members support open access journals).

The growth of the open access movement is partially in response to the enormous costs of many scholarly journals. With traditional journal publication methods it is not uncommon for an institution to have to pay for an article twice. First they pay scholars to produce the work and then the institution's library pays to purchase the work back from the journal publisher. Anderson (2004) is correct that there is no such thing as free information and that there are costs involved in producing scholarly information. However, with the advent of new technologies and software programs, it is becoming increasingly less expensive to compile and distribute scholarly information. By using different funding methods and electronic delivery of journals, the costs can be absorbed by alternative means to subscription fees. One of the great benefits to open access is that libraries in smaller institutions or in economically disadvantaged areas around the world can have greater access to these scholarly resources.

Open access helps to ensure long-term access to scholarly articles. Unlike articles that are licensed in traditional article databases, libraries and others can create local copies and repositories of these resources. Libraries, by working together to make repositories of open access literature, can ensure continued access to these scholarly publications into the distant future.

The Budapest Initiative
The Budapest Intiativeis an organization striving for open access publishing of scholarlly materials using the Internet as the primary form of dissemenation.

Manner of Access
The typical manner of access is electronic access over the Web to HTML or PDF versions, with publication in other formats considered as optional and subsidiary. The entire OA concept depends upon the very low incremental cost for additional users of electronic material delivered over the Internet, whereas printed material must have an incremental cost for each copy printed. (This can be a small cost if we are talking about millions of copies, but we are not.) The financing of OA is always computed on the basis of electronic-only publication. To this calculation can be added the cost of the production of a small number of printed copies, either from specialized PDF or as short-run printing of the electronic version. These versions can be sold conventionally by subscription to those who wish the print for intensive reading of key journals, those requiring print for taxation or regulatory purposes, and those maintaining print archival backup as a supplement to electronic archiving. Before the development of electronic distribution, there were proposals for the distribution of materials in other manners. These generally involved the distribution of individual articles in paper or microform, or the distribution of a totally comprehensive periodical in large numbers. (4) A decreasing number of locations remain without suitable access to the Internet, but these areas almost always have even worse access to printed publications. Facilities for electronic access are likely to improve long before those for print.

Type of Material
"Scholarly publications" cover a very wide range and can be taken to mean all scientific material, or only journal articles, or only those journal articles that are primary research reports. The concept is often extended to include material that is technically "unpublished," such as preprints or working drafts or primary data. It excludes material from which authors expect direct monetary profit, such as textbooks or popularizations. It recognizes that authors eventually expect some form of psychological or monetary compensation, such as the increased prestige among their colleagues, the satisfaction at the diffusion of their ideas, and the possibility of hiring, promotion, or tenure. The basic material covered is primary journal articles, defined as those in which original experiments, discoveries, or calculations are presented. Their publication is described in detail elsewhere, (5) but what follows is an outline of steps at which some of the controversies of OA occur. Typically, such articles are peer-reviewed before publication by two or three other scholars in the field. The reviewers generally recommend either rejection, or acceptance with alterations; the process of making the alterations is brokered by the editor. There are variations, and for some journals, the editor or editorial board alone decides. The end result of peer review is the author's accepted final draft.

The journal editor is generally compensated, at least for expenses. The peer reviewers are generally not directly compensated. (6) The peer-reviewed author's accepted final draft is checked before printing by copyeditors, who are usually paid staff or outside service providers. The author does not usually see the revisions at this stage. The costs associated with these inherently human and non-automated processes are always present, even if not paid in money. However, these costs are dependent only on the size of the journal, the production quality, and the number of articles reviewed (both those accepted and the usually greater number not accepted)--not upon the number of users. A difference exists between the facilities needed for large and small systems, but the effect is small compared to the production for print.

When only electronic versions are produced, the material is usually converted into the publisher's PDF, and added to the journal's Article Database. The cost of operating such a database depends primarily upon the size of the journal, and only to a slight extent upon the number of readers. When both print and electronic versions are produced, usually a common XML version is prepared. From this version comes the HTML and PDF versions for online distribution, and PDF for printing. Producing print adds the cost both of the preparation of the final version for printing, (which is independent of the size of the edition) and the cost for printing and distribution of each copy (which does depend on the size of the edition).

Secondary material, such as editorials and review articles in academic journals, are sometimes OA and sometimes not. News items, explanations or summaries of current work, and announcements are usually written by paid writers, at least for major publications. Paid writers expect to be actually paid in money, and most earn their primary income from this source. Major review articles are usually arranged in advance, and some relatively small monetary compensation is often provided--probably nobody makes a living writing review articles alone. Book reviewers are generally compensated by getting to keep the book they review. Although they could sell these books, probably nobody makes a full living in this way either. Some of the ethical arguments that call for the public to have access to publicly supported research do not necessarily apply to review articles, and neither do some of the economic reasons. A research article (and thus the single journal in which it is published) is inherently a monopoly--no other article can be substituted. That is not usually the case with reviews, where there may be a number of equivalents covering the same material. The users, however, often do not make this distinction and expect them all to be OA.

Some journals contain advertisements, and their treatment under OA varies. Some textbooks and similar items are available as OA, with or without a paid equivalent. Also common is OA availability for older editions, often developed and maintained on a voluntary basis. Some electronic publications carry material that is not in the printed versions. The continuing Nature Web Focus on OA is one example, and supplementary data is another. It is customary to have OA to this material even when the base journal is non-OA. The spread of OA has reached beyond the sciences. Scholarly book publishing in the humanities has similar problems, and the distribution of primary data in the humanities is now often organized at least partially as OA. (7)

What All This Openness Means
Open access and open source software each offer a number of significant benefits to libraries. When they are combined the results can be even greater. Open source can help libraries provide patrons with easier access to open access materials and other resources. There are literally thousands of open access titles available and without open source or standards it would be very difficult to find what one is looking for or to view various articles. Imagine the difficulty, and costs involved, in maintaining a library's information technology infrastructure if each electronic journal required a separate, proprietary piece of software to read or search the journal. Open standards together with open source make it possible to create interoperable systems to access the literature in various open access journals seamlessly.

Open source can help preserve long-term access to open access and other types of electronic journals. Without the assistance of the software manufacturer (who may or may not even still be in business, let alone willing to help) proprietary software and file formats may make migration practically impossible. By utilizing open source software and open standards from the beginning, libraries can assure that this type of systems migration will be possible years down the road.

Not only has the growing cost of serials caused libraries to drop journal subscriptions, it has also factored into a 26% decrease of monograph acquisitions by the typical research library between 1986 and 1999 (Create Change 2002). Library budgets can be reallocated to monographs and other areas because of the lower costs typically involved with open access, open source, and open standards.

Implications of Open Access
Both of the facts that information is inherently costly, and that information is not usually a public good, pose challenges for the idea of open access. For information to be made freely and permanently available to the public, the costs of creation, publication, and distribution must be absorbed by someone other than those who wish to use it. The Internet eliminates most distribution costs, but not all of them, and does not affect creative costs or publication costs to any appreciable degree.

Do these inconvenient facts mean that open access is not desirable or that it cannot work? No. But they do define some limits to the options, and a recognition of those limits should lead to patience with publishers that are moving more slowly towards that model than most might like. Any proposal that is built on the premise that information is inherently free, or that online publication can be undertaken without significant cost, will not work in the real world because both of those premises are demonstrably incorrect. If the intrinsic costliness of information is not taken into account, it will be hard to discuss intelligently the intractable economic realities that govern its creation and distribution, let alone formulating pricing and distribution strategies that will provide maximum public benefit.

Nevertheless, the problems that have led to the current controversy over journal pricing and open access are real and need to be solved in some way. Clearly the status quo is insupportable; if the price of scholarly journals continues to rise at the present rate, research libraries will quickly lose the ability to meet the needs of their patrons. At the same time, it is not reasonable to expect all journal publishers to move immediately into an open-access model simply because the Internet has lowered the cost of distribution.

= Copyright Concerns in Open-Source =

What is Copyright?
Copyright is a set of exclusive rights regulating the use of a particular expression of an idea or information. At its most general, it is literally "the right to copy" an original creation. In most cases, these rights are of limited duration. The symbol for copyright is ©, and in some jurisdictions may alternately be written (c).

An author's exclusive right to his creation is mandated in the US Constitution in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, which also gives Congress the power to enact statutes: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.(See Copyright, Wikipedia, for a more detailed explanation of copyright basics).

Copyright, a historical perspective
Historically, U.S. copyright law has sought to balance private incentives to engage in creative activity with the social benefits that arise from the widespread use of creative works. In the past, the emergence of new technologies has threatened to tilt the scales of the copyright control by loosening the control that copyright owners enjoy over subsequent uses of their works. Such a development could reduce the revenues that creators of copyrighted material obtain from their efforts and thereby restrict the future supply of creative works. Over the years, however, three important factors have helped to preserve some balance in the U.S. copyright regime: the judicial interpretation of existing copyright law; the enactment of new legislation; and the ability of copyright holders and the industries that market and distribute creative products to find ways of applying those new technologies to generate sufficient returns to maintain the flow of new creative works.

An economically efficient outcome in markets for creative works is elusive. Efficiency in markets for goods and services generally requires that the cost of producing the last (or marginal) unit must equal society's valuation of it. However, once a copyrighted work has been created, relatively few costs are incurred in its reproduction and distribution--especially if the work is in digital form. Offering a creative work at the relatively low marginal cost of reproduction and distribution, therefore, would not generate the returns needed to recoup the overall expense of supplying it. To encourage creative works, copyright law has traditionally allowed for licensing rights that enable pricing above marginal cost, while placing a limit on the scope and duration of copyright protection to ensure that creative works eventually become widely available. Copyright law therefore accepts some static inefficiency (copyrighted works are typically not distributed as widely as is economically feasible) in the interests of beneficial dynamic effects (getting those works created in the first place).

It is difficult to determine how close the current copyright regime is to being efficient--that is, whether the optimal balance between private incentives and social benefits has been reached. Given society's desire for creative works, as well as its endowments of talent, technology, and other resources needed to generate and distribute those works, the question is whether current law and practice provide incentives for the greatest quantity and highest quality of original works to be created and consumed over time. Although the answer to that question is not straightforward, the magnitude of illicit consumption of copyrighted works in digital form today--music files shared over the Internet, for example, or movies and software illegally reproduced and distributed on CD-ROM--suggests that potential efficiency gains can be realized by applying advances in digital technology to legal markets for creative works.

The Digital Challenge to Copyright Law
The digitization of creative content poses a more serious challenge to copyright law than did earlier episodes of technological advance. A particularly significant aspect of that challenge is that digital technologies continue to increase the ways in which individuals can consume and enjoy creative works--for example, by "ripping" music files from a CD to store on a computer or portable music device--despite the fact that copyright law does not explicitly permit those uses without the authorization of the copyright owner. At the same time, advances in digital technologies provide copyright owners with growing capacity to either restrict or charge for subsequent uses of their creative works.

Furthermore, copyrighted works in digital form can be flawlessly and inexpensively reproduced and instantaneously distributed worldwide. Copyright holders consequently fear that unauthorized copying and redistribution of their works will cause their economic returns to decline. At the same time, copyright law today applies to a growing number of products. Although the most prominent disputes over digital copyright concern music and movies, copyright law also applies directly to other products, such as computer software. Some manufacturers of software and other products have responded to technological advances by proposing new types of product licenses to protect and extend their commercial interests. Those new licensing practices could, however, potentially run counter to consumers' interests.

Changes to copyright law, moreover, can have ramifications that extend beyond the concerns of producers and consumers of copyrighted material to the well-being of related sectors of the economy. The availability of creative content in digital form contributes to the growth of industries such as computer hardware and peripherals, as well as telecommunications goods and services. Measures to protect copyrighted works--for example, a government mandate that a particular access- or copy-control technology be used to prevent infringement of copyrighted materials in digital form--therefore require careful deliberation. When and how the digital copyright debate is resolved could influence the nature and pace of future technological progress--and hence the growth of the economy.

Economics and Copyright
Because of the growing number and diversity of interests with a stake in the digital copyright debate, many observers believe that the Congress may need to legislate a balance in copyright law between private incentives and societal gains. Economic analysis can illuminate the Congress's search for that balance, but it cannot provide unambiguous conclusions about the best weighting of the interests of copyright holders and consumers. The "best" policy implies a distribution of returns based as much on what is fair as on what is efficient. Economics does not provide answers to questions of fairness.

Although economic analysis may not be able to determine the best copyright regime in terms of fairness or other norms of society--it cannot, for example, identify which group(s) should gain and which should lose as a result of any revision in copyright law--it can provide insights into how private incentives and social benefits in markets for creative works might be structured. To make outcomes in markets for copyrighted goods as efficient as possible--that is, to enable society to obtain the most from the creative efforts of its members--economic reasoning can offer several general principles for legislative deliberations about revisions to copyright law in response to technological change:

Property rights and other elements of a regulatory regime for creative works should be regarded as instruments for allocating creative resources. Hence, existing copyright law should not be viewed as an absolute, inviolable set of rights to which either creators or consumers are entitled.

Revisions to copyright law should be made without regard to the vested interests of particular business and consumer groups. Instead, they should be assessed with regard to their consequences for efficiency in markets for creative works and other products.

Property rights are not free. For a system of property rights to be accepted and upheld, the costs of establishing and enforcing that regime must not exceed the eventual benefits from it. The usefulness of those general principles is not diminished by several additional factors that may constrain the specific contributions that economic analysis eventually makes to the digital copyright debate. The economically efficient level of copyright protection is difficult to determine, for example, because copyright applies to diverse creative works that incorporate varying degrees of creative and artistic expression--from journalism to literature, music, and movies--and to works of a more technical nature, such as software. A single property rights regime, therefore, may not produce efficiency in markets for all of those products.

Furthermore, not all aspects of markets for creative works lend themselves to economic analysis. In particular, while economists may confidently expect that abolishing copyright protection altogether will reduce the level and quality of creative output, they cannot easily predict how a less dramatic change in compensating copyright owners will affect the number or quality of creative works being produced.

Because the advances in digital technology that currently challenge copyright law are part of a broader trend in the development of information technologies, moreover, actions motivated by other concerns may have an effect on the feasibility and desirability of revisions to copyright law. For example, regulation of the peer-to-peer networks that enable file-sharing among personal computer users--the primary source of copyright infringement worries today--may eventually be justified not to protect intellectual property but rather to address concerns about other activities carried out on those networks, such as the dissemination of computer viruses and software packages that surreptitiously monitor an individual's computer use.

Creative Commons
See Creative Commons

The Creative Commons License refers to the name of several copyright licenses released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S. non-profit corporation founded in 2001.

These licenses all grant certain baseline rights, such as the right to distribute the copyrighted work on file sharing networks. The rest of the license depends on the version, and is comprised of a selection of four conditions:

Attribution (by): Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and derivative works based upon it only if they give you credit.

Noncommercial or NonCommercial (nc): Permit others to copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and derivative works based upon it only for noncommercial purposes.

No Derivative Works or NoDerivs (nd): Permit others to copy, distribute, display and perform only verbatim copies of the work, not derivative works based upon it.

ShareAlike (sa): Permit others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work. (See also copyleft.)

Mixing and matching these conditions produces sixteen possible combinations, of which eleven are valid Creative Commons licenses. Of the five invalid combinations, four include both the "nd" and "sa" clauses, which are mutually exclusive; and one includes none of the clauses, which is equivalent to releasing one's work into the public domain. The five of the eleven valid licenses thats that lack the Attribution element have been phased out because 98% of licensors requested Attribution, but are still available for viewing on the website [1]. There are thus six regularly used licenses:

1. Attribution alone (by) 2. Attribution + Noncommercial (by-nc) 3. Attribution + NoDerivs (by-nd) 4. Attribution + ShareAlike (by-sa) 5. Attribution + Noncommercial + NoDerivs (by-nc-nd) 6. Attribution + Noncommercial + ShareAlike (by-nc-sa)

None of the Creative Commons licenses have been certified by the Open Source Initiative. The Debian GNU/Linux distribution does not believe that any of the licenses adheres to the Debian Free Software Guidelines. The Free Software Foundation recommends the licenses for creative works other than software and software documentation, provided the "nc" and "nd" options are not used. [2]

Creative Commons licenses are currently available under 31 different jurisdictions worldwide, with nine others under development. [3]