Creative Commons -- Now With More Science

The Importance of writes "Yesterday, Creative Commons announced the launch of 'the Science Commons exploratory phase.' This may eventually become a sister organization of Creative Commons that 'will delve into both legal areas (patents, data) and subject matter (biomedicine) outside the scope of [the] current organization.' In related news, the open access science publisher, BioMed Central, has adopted CC's 'attribution license' for their over 100 peer-reviewed journals."

Comments

Science doesn't need this so much

[booch]

Hmm. Not sure why nobody is commenting on this one.

Science has a rich history of "standing on the shoulders of giants". (Mathematics probably has the strongest history of that.) I don't think there's a huge need for a sea change in Science; at least it's not as severe a problem as in the software and creative industries. I suppose there's some need to stem the patent problems and such.

But I don't think it needs an organization as strong as the Creative Commons or Free Software Foundation. As a "lesser evil" I think it may be harmful taking away our attention from the more important goals we need to accomplish.

Then again, I could be (and hope I am) wrong. Perhaps the various organizations will strengthen each other by bringing the problems to the attention of a wider audience.

Re:Science doesn't need this so much

[bcrowell]

I don't think there's a huge need for a sea change in Science; at least it's not as severe a problem as in the software and creative industries.
The issue is the outrageous cost of scientific journals, which has resulted from the increasing consolidation of the industry. Basically Elsevier (which was Galileo's publisher back when I was a young lad) has been eating up smaller presses, and jacking up their prices.

Price is a big issue. It locks poor countries out of the research world, and even in rich countries, universities are having to cut way back on their journal subscriptions.

The people who publish cookbooks and self-help manuals at least have an excuse for their prices: they have to provide extensive editorial services. Science journals, OTOH, get their editorial work done for them for free, by referees and (typically) unpaid associate editors. In my field (physics), authors normally supply their papers as LaTeX source, so the journal doesn't even have to worry about typesetting.