France: Open Access Law Adopted

https://www.openaire.eu/france-final-text-of-the-law-for-oa-has-been-adopted

by okket • 10 years ago

266 57 10 years ago

julien_c• 10 years ago

I worked on this law!

So, if I'm reading this correctly, the law gives any government/EU funded author the right to publish a preprint for any scientific article they produce, even when a journal has a license forbidding such publication? But it does not require an author to do so, right?

pikzen• 10 years ago

If a scientific article has been funded by at least 50% by the state, public establishments, local collectivities or the european union and is published in a review coming out at least once a year, the author (or authors, provided they all agree) have a right to put up, for free and in an open format, the final version of this article on the Internet.

So, not just a preprint, and yes, journal licenses forbidding such publication have now no legal value. It does not require the author to do so.

EDIT: see answer below for a few more precisions.

ced• 10 years ago

What did you do?

nmc• 10 years ago

He is an advisor to Axelle Lemaire, French Deputy Minister of Digital Affairs.

scoot• 10 years ago

Where's the downvote button when you need it?

grive• 10 years ago

why?

hk__2• 10 years ago

and it still needs to be voted on by the Sénat on September 27

So technically it hasn’t been adopted yet.

pygy_• 10 years ago

The French Senate can at most delay the adoption of a new law. The Assemblée Nationale has the final say and can overrule any modification made by the Senate.

While the lower chamber could have a change of mind, it is very unlikely to happen.

readams2• 10 years ago

What would stop journals from blacklisting scientists who publish their articles under open access laws? Would anyone publish their article if they knew it meant never being able to publish in Nature again?

dragonwriter• 10 years ago

What would stop journals from blacklisting scientists who publish their articles under open access laws?

Nothing; of course, that just hastens the death of the journal system.

ZenoArrow2• 10 years ago

What difference would that make? Getting into journals like Nature is about getting research shared amongst fellow researchers. The value that journals add is in curating interesting research so a busy scientist can still keep up to date with the key developments in the field. With open access it'll be easier than ever for new curators to emerge.

hackuser• 10 years ago

The value that journals provide is identifying high-value research for other scientists to read, and also for the researchers' employers and funders who use it as a basis to decide whether to hire the researchers, give them tenure, or fund them.

jomamaxx• 10 years ago

"What would stop journals from blacklisting scientists who publish their articles under open access laws?"

I think there would just be far too many of them.

Moreover, the Scientists could feign that they were not possibly involved in the alternative distribution of it.

I think 'blacklisting' would be an aggressive posture, and likely viewed as unethical, it's not something they could likely get away with.

I think the 'prestige' of being published in Nature etc. will outweigh most concerns.

readams2• 10 years ago

It would be similarly aggressive if a journal were to sue a scientist for copyright infringement for posting their own work.

PeterisP• 10 years ago

This law removes legal restrictions that might have made it impossible for researchers to openly redistribute those articles.

But this will generally be combined with grant funding rules that require to provide the research results under open access conditions. So yes, people will publish their articles because they are willing to jump through almost any hoops to fulfill the funding requirements; and blacklisting is unlikely since in that case they'd have to blacklist all France now and generally all EU, which is slowly but strongly moving to a requirement to have all EU-funded research published with free access.

pmontra• 10 years ago

Exactly. That's the problem with giving the authors only the right to make articles publicly available and not forcing them to do so. That would have removed any pressure from the editors. Actually, they could be pressured not to accept public funding >= 50%, but then the editors should find somebody else to pay that money.

ramblenode2• 10 years ago

This is excellent news. The people of a country should absolutely have access to the research they have funded. France has taken an important step in standing up to the anachronistic publishing cartels who siphon public money in order to lock down rather than disseminate knowledge. Here's to hoping the rest of the world follows this example.

mighty_atomic_c• 10 years ago

Agreed! Although it may take a long time to get there...

paul_f• 10 years ago

Without taking a side in the discussion, we should make a distinction between the research and the subsequent paper. The government funding is for the research. Scholarly papers are created for publication, not to meet the requirements of the research funding.

lago• 10 years ago

i think the purpose of government funding is both for research and a public communication of its effects. is it not the effects (a carefully designed text / 'publication') we should share with the stakeholders? a public mandate is a reasonable strategy for sustaining quality research, in contrast to a money wall filter system.

aargh_aargh2• 10 years ago

That would be unpractical. You already cannot copyright the ideas (the research). You can patent it, but the issue addressed here is specifically copyright.

The thing is, for the last hundred years or so, publications have been the communication channel about research, so the two are often conflated (for the most part) - most importantly in science evaluation, which is where the money comes from, so research without publishing is not incentivized at all.

ramblenode2• 10 years ago

This isn't an important distinction to the research process up until a paper is accepted for publication, so perhaps asserting ownership of any eventual publications in the grant's terms is a minimally disruptive way to bring publications into the public domain. Already it's the case that researchers conduct research and agencies award grants with the intent that any useful or interesting results will be published, so I don't see any material changes happening in research itself if this "loophole" were closed.

biehl• 10 years ago

That doesn't seem like a practical distinction. If eg. a grant is to "promote the progress of science" on some topic, then accepting that the research is communicated only on posters, in narrow circles, or orally would not seem to fulfill the purpose of the grant (compared to full, written publication, available for everyone to read).

VeejayRampay• 10 years ago

Yes it's good news. Now we just have to actually fund research.

Grazester• 10 years ago

Phew! With just reading the title of this I thought the article would have been something stating France just made encryption illegal without a way for law enforcement to circumvent it

tzakrajs• 10 years ago

How about the right to free speech? It may be a useful step in making information accessible.

igravious6• 10 years ago

The legal right or the human right? If you're referring to the legal right, to which jurisdiction are you referring? If to the human right, that's a social justice issue not a legal one.

analognoise• 10 years ago

Human rights have become "social justice" issues and not legal ones? Are you trying to draw a distinction between the implementation and the theory of the thing, because I'm failing to see law not being both, with the unfortunate secondary label of "social justice" being entirely useless.

igravious6• 10 years ago

Is it too corny to say, "vive la liberté!" ? Well done France. It's little moments like these that give one faith in humanity. I think I'm going to start calling them Snowden moments. :)

imadfy• 10 years ago

What do they mean by "...cannot be commercially exploited?" Would a for-profit corporation be violating copyright just by viewing it? What are the punishments for "commercial exploit[ation]"?

aargh_aargh2• 10 years ago

Despite the unclear wording, the intention here is clearly to protect the commercial publisher who is otherwise being harmed by this law (the author usually gives some exclusive distribution rights to the publisher and this law changes that by declaring this exclusivity void and mandating open access, perhaps via a parallel publishing channel).

Loic3• 10 years ago

The translation is not good, so a "shorter" version:

1. If you publish your research work in a journal and the research work has been financed for at least 50% by public institutions, you can provide on the web for free your paper too (if the coauthors agree). You are allowed to put it online directly if the journal is a free/open access journal or after 6 to 12 months.

2. A publisher cannot prevent you to do that.

3. You cannot use these available papers to make money out of them with a service similar to a publisher "une activité d'édition à caractère commercial". Basically, to prevent competition with the original publisher. So, you cannot create a big website with both the papers and advertising.

If you are a company getting access to the paper through the university website or the website of the author, this is fine. Wikipedia could start collecting and make the papers available too.

Punishments will be set by a judge according to the French civil law on copyrights I suppose.

wowtip• 10 years ago

2. A publisher cannot prevent you to do that.

Not directly, but wouldn't it open up a box of issues where publishers make it harder for authors who distribute their papers for free to get published the next time around?

d3ckard• 10 years ago

That's great news. Hopefully it will set an example. Everything that is state founded should be available to everybody (sans few exceptions like defense systems etc.). Hopefully more countries will follow and policy will be adopted in more areas than just scientific writing.

brador• 10 years ago

The right but not the obligation?

johncolanduoni2• 10 years ago

I don't think the primary barrier to open access is the willingness of the researchers to self-publish, as long as they can still publish in any journal that they want. Seems like a very sensible trade-off to make the law easier to pass. I'm somewhat worried about what publishers might try to do to dissuade them, but everything I can think of would involve messing heavily with the peer review process which is fairly dangerous.

jernfrost• 10 years ago

Congratulations France!!! I hope we follow you in Norway, although I don't quite know what our current law on the matter is :-D

It is of big importance that large rich countries like France does this. It should have a strong influence on other countries. The ultimate goal is of course for the US to implement such a law as the US is the worlds most influential and important country, especially within research.

husamia• 10 years ago

great news!

junipergreen• 10 years ago

I'm curious. Does this apply to just French journals? Or just French scientists? How would that work with journals based in other countries? Or multi-national research collaborations?

France: Open Access Law Adopted

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