I found that post pretty confusing. It turns out that it’s about control of databases, and i think copyright is a red herring. He wants to run his program over all published papers and find problems with them. He needs permission of the publisher to do this. He claims that his interpretation of the boiler-plate license doesn’t allow that. I think he’s mistaken and that in any event he could get permission if he asked. What he really wants to do (from other posts on the blog), that he definitely couldn’t get permission for, is to synthesize the literature into a database of chemicals; which the publishers won’t allow because they do that by hand.
Also, the title (which you didn’t quote) is nonsense. There is no legal obstacle to the editor or referee using computers on new papers, which is the usual meaning of “referee.” The problem there is getting the editor to try something new and to put in the necessary effort. Maybe it’s easier for this guy to run his software on all papers ever written than to convince lots of editors to run it ahead of time, but difficulty is not a legal difficulty. Everyone would love it if these mistakes were caught in the refereeing process, rather than after the fact.
He claims that his interpretation of the boiler-plate license doesn’t allow that. I think he’s mistaken and that in any event he could get permission if he asked.
I think his post is effectively asking in a guess culture way. He wants that the publishers respond and say that their broad license doesn’t limit what he’s doing.
What he really wants to do (from other posts on the blog), that he definitely couldn’t get permission for, is to synthesize the literature into a database of chemicals; which the publishers won’t allow because they do that by hand.
Only the American Chemical Society (ACS) does that. The are also registered as a non-profit. The fact that they fight the advancement of science is a huge tragedy.
Only the American Chemical Society (ACS) does that.
He explicitly mentions an Elsevier database as the reason that he’s worried about mining Elsevier data.
I think his post is effectively asking in a guess culture way. He wants that the publishers respond and say that their broad license doesn’t limit what he’s doing.
There is some of that in other posts on the blog. But that particular post is about images. He can’t just click “agree” and do what he wants, but he has to explicitly ask them about every image project.
If he gets the data through Elsevier’s system, he isn’t really anonymous. And if he wants to do the particular project of this post, he has to get images, which he can’t do just by clicking “agree,” but he would have to tell them what he was going to do with the images. What’s going to happen is that people are going to pirate all journal articles, largely for other reasons. At that point, he can do his project; I don’t know whether anonymously. But this is a delay and a lot of wasted effort duplicating existing databases and query infrastructure.
Ordinarily, publishing things grants you rewards on the order of the global significance of your work, as measured by its impact on the world of scientific papers. Should he be able to reap greater rewards by targeting the measure instead? (As the GM of a real world science game, I’d allow it, cause it’s a neat idea. But if we actually try to refer to the global significance of your work...) This copyright stuff, evil as it may be in the general case, does seem to avert this kind of going meta.
Of course, the real solution in this case is for him to anonymously publish that list of errors along with a hash value whose input he keeps to himself until legislation would have allowed him to non-anonymously publish the list. Optimal number of future citations (even better than if he simply waited for the legislation!) and optimal actual betterment of the world.
Computer-checking of chemical diagrams works, but is almost certainly unusable for scientific papers because of copyright problems.
I found that post pretty confusing. It turns out that it’s about control of databases, and i think copyright is a red herring. He wants to run his program over all published papers and find problems with them. He needs permission of the publisher to do this. He claims that his interpretation of the boiler-plate license doesn’t allow that. I think he’s mistaken and that in any event he could get permission if he asked. What he really wants to do (from other posts on the blog), that he definitely couldn’t get permission for, is to synthesize the literature into a database of chemicals; which the publishers won’t allow because they do that by hand.
Also, the title (which you didn’t quote) is nonsense. There is no legal obstacle to the editor or referee using computers on new papers, which is the usual meaning of “referee.” The problem there is getting the editor to try something new and to put in the necessary effort. Maybe it’s easier for this guy to run his software on all papers ever written than to convince lots of editors to run it ahead of time, but difficulty is not a legal difficulty. Everyone would love it if these mistakes were caught in the refereeing process, rather than after the fact.
I think his post is effectively asking in a guess culture way. He wants that the publishers respond and say that their broad license doesn’t limit what he’s doing.
Only the American Chemical Society (ACS) does that. The are also registered as a non-profit. The fact that they fight the advancement of science is a huge tragedy.
He explicitly mentions an Elsevier database as the reason that he’s worried about mining Elsevier data.
There is some of that in other posts on the blog. But that particular post is about images. He can’t just click “agree” and do what he wants, but he has to explicitly ask them about every image project.
Couldn’t he just publish the lists of errors anonymously?
If he gets the data through Elsevier’s system, he isn’t really anonymous. And if he wants to do the particular project of this post, he has to get images, which he can’t do just by clicking “agree,” but he would have to tell them what he was going to do with the images. What’s going to happen is that people are going to pirate all journal articles, largely for other reasons. At that point, he can do his project; I don’t know whether anonymously. But this is a delay and a lot of wasted effort duplicating existing databases and query infrastructure.
Probably yes. But that would be throwing away thousands of future citations—the currency which these days determines how good a scientist is. :(
Ordinarily, publishing things grants you rewards on the order of the global significance of your work, as measured by its impact on the world of scientific papers. Should he be able to reap greater rewards by targeting the measure instead? (As the GM of a real world science game, I’d allow it, cause it’s a neat idea. But if we actually try to refer to the global significance of your work...) This copyright stuff, evil as it may be in the general case, does seem to avert this kind of going meta.
Of course, the real solution in this case is for him to anonymously publish that list of errors along with a hash value whose input he keeps to himself until legislation would have allowed him to non-anonymously publish the list. Optimal number of future citations (even better than if he simply waited for the legislation!) and optimal actual betterment of the world.