Readership Awareness Series – Paper 11: Copyright Licensing for Scientific Publications

INTRODUCTION

Copyright and licensing of scientific data are complex and have several implications for data sharing, their reuse, and wide dissemination of scientific research to all the stakeholders. It is, hence, not unusual to expect the physicians or authors to give away or deal with their copyrights without thoroughly understanding their use, regional laws, and implications.¹ To begin with, it is essential to understand certain terminology and the difference between a licence and a waiver. A licence is a legal instrument that enables a copyright holder to enable a second party to use their contents with specific terms and restrictions. A waiver is a legal instrument whereby a copyright holder gives up his rights rather than asserting them.^2,3 Attribution requirement is where a licensor or the original source is given full credit when the work is displayed, distributed, changed, or reused. A ‘copyleft’ requirement asserts that any work reproduced or derived from a licensed work must be released only under the same licence and not others.³

Moral and property rights protect a scientific article. A moral right protects the author and is inalienable, whereas property rights or their derivatives can be transferred.¹ In the simplest form, in traditional subscription publishing, the publisher typically retains some or all the property copyrights. Open access publishing is different because here, the authors retain some or all the copyrights.

CREATIVE COMMONS AND TYPE OF LICENCES^1–8

Creative Commons (CC) is an international not-for-profit organization that enables open-access (OA) licensing, in which the authors retain the copyrights of their work. Wikipedia is an example, where millions of its articles are openly and freely available using CC licences. Based on user feedback, technical developments, and legal developments, Creative Commons updates its attribution licences every few years.

The Creative Commons licence is an OA licence recommended by OA declarations and funders. Open access licences are of several types, and each type dictates what others can do with published research, provided they credit the original source and do not show the authors as endorsing their work. The term ‘BY’ refers to the mandatory obligation of attribution (crediting the source). Authors can choose the type of licence based on whether they prefer allowing commercial use of their work and whether they are for allowing derivative works or changes in the article before reuse or distribution. The following are the types of CC licences.

1. CC BY or Creative Commons attribution: This is one of the most liberal licences advocated by several funders like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust. The licence essentially means that sharing, adoption, tweaking, and reuse of the published material can be for any purpose (commercial and non-commercial) provided the original source is attributed and acknowledged appropriately. This licence can be opted for when wide dissemination and reuse is expected or intended. The Plan S supports CC-BY OA licensing.

2. CC BY-NC or Creative Commons attribution-non-commercial: This licence restricts commercial reuse of the published work.

3. CC BY-ND or Creative Commons attribution – no derivatives: This licence restricts adaptation of the published work, which essentially means people cannot change the article in any way.

4. CC BY-NC-ND or Creative Commons attribution – non-commercial and no derivatives: This licence restricts both commercial reuse and adaptation of the published work. Essentially, it means that others can access, read, and share it as long as they credit the authors. However, they can neither change the article nor use it for any commercial purpose.

5. CC BY-SA or Creative Commons attribution – share alike: This licence is similar to a CC BY licence and can be distributed, adapted, and reused provided the new creation is licenced under identical terms. Share-alike licences are commonly considered as copyleft licences.

6. CC BY-NC-SA or Creative Commons attribution – non-commercial-share alike: This licence is like CC BY-NC which restricts commercial reuse of the published work. However, the new work or derivatives would need be licenced under identical terms.

Rarely a CC+ licence may be used to add additional permissions over and above a specific licence. For a few journals, CC BY-NC-ND is the default option if the authors fail to choose the licence during submission or later.⁹ However, BioMed Central’s public consultation in 2012 supported the idea that the default OA data publication should be by CC0 public domain waiver.⁸

FUTURE DIRECTIONS

The availability and acceptance of open-access publications are increasing and present unique challenges regarding copyright and licensing.¹⁰ The use of any scientific work without attribution or permission is a breach of copyright laws, and the guilty can be prosecuted for Plagiarism under the law. Such laws are evolving across the world for the benefit of all stakeholders. In scientific work, much of the supplementary data and those in the tables may not be properly dedicated to the public domain due to inappropriate or inadequate data licensing. Hrynaszkiewicz and Cockerill, several years ago, proposed changes to the current copyright and licensing structure and put forth a protocol of a Creative Commons zero or CC0 to deliver such data with minimum restrictions and minimal impact on the current research flow.¹ The CC0 is likely to gain more attention and acceptance in the future. Under this licence, the authors waive all their rights worldwide (CC BY may be affected by international legal differences) under copyright law and all related legal rights to the extent allowed by law. Since there is no term ‘BY’ in this licence as compared to all others, attribution is not mandatory for the user. The British Library and Cologne-based libraries, for example, have released large amounts of bibliographic data under CC0 licensing.¹ The Creative Commons website has simplified several aspects of CC licensing, including the introduction of the ‘CC licence chooser’, which, through a series of simple questions, would help anyone decide the type of licence they would need and also view the terms of licence deeds.¹¹ The ‘Open Culture Program’ and the Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) ‘openly licensed preprints’ are ambitious programs of Creative Commons with a high potential for a positive impact on scientific publications.¹²

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

Mohammad Javed Ali receives royalties from Springer for the textbook “Principles and Practice of Lacrimal Surgery’ and ‘Atlas of Lacrimal Drainage Disorders’, and the ‘Video Atlas of Lacrimal Surgery’

Additional information

Funding

Hyderabad Eye Research Foundation.