Khan: SOPA & PIPA

WA Legislature considering K-12 OER Bill

The Washington State Legislature is considering an OER bill.


Video of House testimony.





Video of Senate Testimony:

ALT's journal "Research in Learning Technology" is now Open Access (CC BY)

Congratulations to Seb Schmoller (CEO, Association for Learning Technology) and his colleagues at ALT's journal "Research in Learning Technology!"

"Research in Learning Technology" is now an Open Access journal, with all content freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 unported license.

The journal website is live at http://www.researchinlearningtechnology.net and all past issues, right back to the journal's inception in 1993, are freely available under CC BY.

Academic leaders continue to step forward and show us how knowledge can (and should) be shared openly.

Well done!

Cable

New US Publisher Anti-OA Legislation

The US Publishers are kicking off 2012 by introducing new legislation to oppose the NIH Public Access Policy and to stop its expansion to other agencies.

Note: this is a bad idea.

Publicly funded resources should be openly licensed resources.


Call to Action here: http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/action/action_access/12-0106.shtml

New York Times Op Ed: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/11/opinion/research-bought-then-paid-for.html?_r=1

From AAP:  http://www.publishers.org/press/56/

• The Research Works Act will prohibit federal agencies from unauthorized free public dissemination of journal articles that report on research which, to some degree, has been federally-funded but is produced and published by private sector publishers receiving no such funding.
• It would also prevent non-government authors from being required to agree to such free distribution of these works.
• Additionally, it would preempt federal agencies’ planned funding, development and back-office administration of their own electronic repositories for such works, which would duplicate existing copyright-protected systems and unfairly compete with established university, society and commercial publishers.

Bill: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d112:h.r.3699:

Here are the members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, where the bill has been referred. (thanks Peter Suber)

Great article by Rebecca Rosen: Why Is Open-Internet Champion Darrell Issa Supporting an Attack on Open Science?

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HR 3699 The Research Works Act

The Research Works Act (Publisher's argument)

Summary

The purpose of this Act is to support the continued investment and innovation by private-sector publishers in scientific, technical, medical and scholarly journal articles and to advance the public interest in the important peer-review publishing system that helps ensure the quality and integrity of scientific research. The legislation will prohibit federal agencies from adopting policies or engaging in activities that would result in the dissemination of private-sector journal articles that report on research funded by the government, unless the agency receives the prior consent of the publisher. It will also prevent federal agencies from requiring that a non-government author assent to the government dissemination of a private-sector journal article. The prohibition will only apply to journal articles to which a commercial or non-profit publisher has made a value-added contribution, such as peer review or editing.

This legislation will not apply to progress reports or raw data outputs routinely submitted by the researchers to the funding agencies, or to articles authored by employees of the federal government. It will only apply where a publisher of an article is not a party to a government funding agreement connected to the research but will not limit the ability of agencies to secure assent to agency dissemination from the publisher of the article under mutually agreeable terms. The legislation does not mandate or preclude any conventional, open access, or other business model the parties may choose voluntarily to employ.

Why this Legislation is Necessary

This Act will prevent the unauthorized dissemination of private-sector journal articles by the government that would harm commercial and non-profit publishers who invest significant resources in these private-sector information products. This Act will preserve the important underpinning of the scientific and scholarly process from unnecessary, burdensome and wasteful government action that would diminish the demand for private-sector information products and unfairly compete with private-sector publishers.

This legislation is necessary to prevent harmful government mandates such as the policy adopted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Under that policy, peer-reviewed manuscripts of private-sector journal articles must be submitted to NIH to be made freely available online no later than 12 months after publication. NIH specifically requires submission of the final manuscript only after the manuscript has passed through the publisher’s quality assurance peer-review processes and determination of acceptability for publication, even though the journal publisher is not a party to the funding agreement for the research.

This legislation seeks to ensure freedom from regulatory interference for private-sector research publications. For over a century, free market dynamics have provided the incentive for publishers to invest in the peer-review of research prior to publication and in the infrastructure necessary to publish and distribute scientific journal articles about the latest government-funded research. Publishers have depended on this system to invest and innovate in managing peer review, editing, publishing, disseminating and archiving these works that have aided in the advancement and integrity of science and contributed to substantial gains in scientific, technical, medical and scholarly research and knowledge. While the government may have funded the research or some portion of it, it did not fund the publication of the value-added journal articles produced by the private-sector. Therefore, the government should not be permitted to disseminate these private-sector products without the prior consent of the publisher.

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In a world where peer review is primarily done by the academy and open source journal software is free, I think this is a tenuous closing argument:

• "While the government may have funded the research or some portion of it, it did not fund the publication of the value-added journal articles produced by the private-sector."

Cable

Washington State and California: Open Policy

Washington State and California (video) are moving forward with multiple open policies.

Very good.

Now we need more public policy makers to step forward and launch similar initiatives in their countries, provinces, states and cities.

Cable

Creative Commons: Version 4.0 Public Discussion is Now Open

Dear Open Colleagues:

Creative Commons has officially opened the public discussion process for version 4.0 of the CC license suite. Please see the announcement below, and join the discussion by subscribing to the CC license discussion list (link in blog post, below).

As we all know, the core part of any OER definition is the educational resource is either openly licensed or is in the public domain... so anyone can: reuse, revise, remix and redistribute. This is your chance to affect the licenses we all use to share OER.

• One of the many reasons CC is considering versioning the licenses at this time is to address how can we improve the attribution requirements to ease citation in open educational resources (OER).
  
• What would you like to see changed?
  

Starting now through February we are holding a requirements gathering period, an important (if not the most important) time to contribute ideas for improving the license suite.  We hope you'll join the discussion and share your ideas for how we can improve the licenses for use with public sector information and data.  And please do help us spread the word.

Most gratefully,

Cable


Cable Green, PhD
Director of Global Learning
Creative Commons

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http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/30676

Version 4.0 – Public Discussion Launches

Diane Peters, December 9th, 2011

We are pleased to announce the beginning of the public discussion process that we expect to result in version 4.0 of the Creative Commons license suite.

Timeliness and Opportunity

The 4.0 discussions held at the 2011 Global Summit confirmed for CC the need to commence the 4.0 discussion process now if we wish to consider issues relevant to important would-be adopters in a timely manner. As explained following legal sessions at the Summit, version 3.0 is working (and will continue to work) really well for many adopters, but the reality is different for others. The treatment of sui generis database rights in the 3.0 licenses continues to be a show-stopper for many, including governments in Europe. This fosters an environment in which custom licenses proliferate, inevitably resulting in silos of incompatibly-licensed content that cannot be maximally shared and remixed. But there exist still other reasons for pursuing 4.0 at this time, including the desire to adjust the licenses to more fully support adoption by intergovernmental organizations and those looking for a more internationally-oriented license suite.

The consequence of not addressing these challenges now is one of opportunity — bridging these differences sooner rather than later (where possible) is always advisable, especially if a more inclusive commons may result. For those fond of version 3.0, rest assured that CC will continue to support existing and future implementations and adopters that rely on those licenses. We will take pains not to create a 4.0 suite that undermines or otherwise presents challenges for those communities.

Process – Discussion Forum – 4.0 Wiki

Importantly, for the first time in CC’s history we begin the versioning process without publishing a draft of the new licenses for review. This is intentional, and it is designed to ensure we hear from the community first. During this 2-3 month requirements gathering period, we urge everyone with a proposal, concern or other input to please put it forth, as our goal is to make the first draft as comprehensive as possible. We will alert the community when the requirements period draws to a close, expected to be mid-February 2012. As in the past, we will publish at least two drafts of the licenses before finalizing, which we anticipate will occur late 2012.

As with past versioning efforts, the central discussion forum will be CC’s license discuss list (subscribe now). New to the 4.0 process, however, is a dedicated group of wiki pages (accessible through the main 4.0 wiki page) where topics and proposals under discussion on that email list will be documented, annotated, and evaluated. We have pre-populated the wiki pages with several of the issues we expect to address during this process, framing key topics to help shape the discussion and including known and anticipated proposals related to each. Among others, we expect healthy debates regarding the treatment of moral rights, the definition of NonCommercial, scope of ShareAlike, treatment of sui generis database rights, and much more. The issues are organized by topic with cross-references to related issues throughout the wiki, but there is also an open forum (the Sandbox page) where you should be encouraged to suggest other topics you feel are important to discuss for version 4.0 (a few placeholders already exist).

For a fuller description of CC’s objectives, the process and expected schedule, visit the 4.0 wiki homepage.

We encourage everyone who is interested in the future of Creative Commons, and open licensing generally, to participate in this process. The more voices that chime in to raise issues and debate the merits of various proposals, the stronger version 4.0 will be, helping us achieve our goal of creating a set of robust licenses that will endure long into the future. If you have an opinion about how to simplify CC’s attribution requirements, for example, or any of the other important issues we plan to examine during the process, please post your suggestion to the CC license discuss list(subscribe today) and add it to our 4.0 wiki. We look forward to hearing from you.

Support CC

The Version 4.0 process and many other activities are supported by contributions from our community. As a global nonprofit organization that enables sharing and reuse of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools, Creative Commons has always relied on the generosity of both individuals and organizations to fund its ongoing operations. Please consider donating to our Annual Campaign, going on now. Thank you.

Open content licensing for educators workshop (#OCL4Ed)

Creative Commons, the OER Foundation and Ako Aotearoa  announce an international professional development opportunity for all educators. 

What: Open content licensing for educators workshop (#OCL4Ed)

Where: Online

When: 23 -27 January 2012

Cost: Free 

Registration: Open  (register today)

Facilitators: 

• Cable Green, Director Global Learning, Creative Commons
• Jane Hornibrook , Public Lead, Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand
• Wayne Mackintosh, Director, OER Foundation.  

Open content licensing for educators (#OCL4Ed) is a free online workshop designed for educators who want to learn more about open education resources, copyright, and creative commons licenses.

The course materials were developed as a collaborative project by volunteers from the OER Foundation, WikiEducator, the OpenCourseWare Consortium and Creative Commons with funding support from UNESCO. The course will provide prerequisite knowledge required by educators to legally remix open education materials and help institutions to take informed decisions about open content licenses.

Visit:  http://wikieducator.org/Open_content_licensing_for_educators/About

Please spread the word through your networks.  Give the gift of knowledge and invite a friend to join you.   

Download and share this poster with your colleagues .  

We look forward to meeting you during the workshop and extend our thanks to Ako Aotearoa, New Zealand's National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence for sponsoring this professional development opportunity.  

Using Creative Commons Resources for Teaching!

A great post and video from our friends in Cape Town!


Cable


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The OpenContent UCT project at the University of Cape Town tries to encourage academics to create resources which can be shared and reused by their colleagues as well as other educators or self-learners.  These resources, shared openly on the internet, can then be discovered, used and remixed by teachers around the world.



In order to make resources openly available we must adhere to issues of copyright.  We encourage academics to source and use works licensed under Creative Commons whenever possible so that we can legally share the resulting materials more widely.  Creative Commons provides an alternative legal framework for specifying conditions for reuse of creative materials.  Creative Commons provides the vehicle for content creators to specify a licence for reuse of their content with “some rights reserved”, thus providing an alternative to the “all rights reserved” model of traditional copyright. 


This video attempts to bring awareness to some of the implications in sourcing materials online without considering the copyright on the material.  If we can transform teachers practice so that they use Creative Commons materials exclusively, we can legally share much more of our teaching and learning content!  

Call to Action: White House RFI on Public Access (deadline Jan. 2)

http://taxpayeraccess.org/action/action_access/11-1117.shtml


The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has issued a new Request for Information (RFI) inviting individuals and organizations to provide recommendations on approaches for ensuring broad public access to the result of federally funded scientific research. The public input will inform the deliberations of the National Science and Technology Council's Task Force on Public Access to Scholarly Publications. The full text of the RFI can be found at: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-11-04/html/2011-28623.htm. The deadline to respond is January 2, 2012.

The Obviousness of Open Policy (SLOAN)

Full screen video option @ http://sloanconsortium.org/conferences/2011/aln/obviousness-open-policy Start video @ time index: 10:25 Slides on Slideshare Video & Slides: CC BY

Education groups rallying against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

A grassroots effort has been sparked in the OER and educational technology community to express concern about the implications of the Stop Online Piracy Act and PROTECT IP act for OER and online educational services. You can see the draft letter here.

More information on the bill below, but if you already agree, the process to sign on is simple:

• Visit this form and simply add your name, email, organization, and (if you want) approximately how many learners you or your organization reach.
• Reply to this email with the above information and we will add you to our list.

Why does SOPA matter to online education?

There is now a whole class of sites that encourage lawful distribution, remixing and redistribution of educational content (e.g. Curriki, Connexions, P2PU, YouTube, CK12). Should someone accidentally or purposefully upload copyrighted material, that service would generally be protected from liability by the DMCA. A content owner would issue a DMCA takedown to start that process for removal.

If these bills are enacted, sites that host or use user-generated content could be required to monitor their site for infringing material, and could potentially have their domain name disabled by the government if content owners thought that infringement was occurring on that site. This represents an entirely new legal power given to content owners to control the flow of content online and to shape the very foundation of the Internet.

This battle is not just about a material threat to existing sites, but fighting for future innovations and future services that have yet to be created.  Here are some groups that have already expressed concern:

• Librarians
• Tech investors
• Legal academics
• Entrepreneurs
• Tech companies
• Sports fans

Again, please join us in becoming a signatory to this Concerned Educator letter to Congress. The process is simple. You can either:

• Visit this form and simply add your name, email, organization, and (if you want) approximately how many learners you or your organization reach.

Thank you! We need your voice in this fight.