[JoPP-Public] Fw: Your journal application to DOAJ: Journal of Peer Production

Thu Sep 7 08:35:51 CEST 2017

Mathieu ONeil <mathieu.oneil at anu.edu.au> writes:

> Ping from DOAJ. With a deadline this time.

Interesting.

> So, having just gone through the list archive, seems a majority wanted
> CC0, but could live with CC-BY-SA.

I am glad to be part of this particular majority.

> As should be abundantly clear by now, I don't particularly mind either way.

Sorry if this causes too many headaches. It is a classic "religious
debate". All sides have been sharpening their arguments since a long
time.

> My only concern is that (a) we don't cause problems down the track and
> (b) we comply with their guidelines re legal transfer. Specifically,
> how does CC0 work with:
>
> Your application also stated that the author does not hold the
> copyright without restrictions, and does not retain publishing rights
> without restrictions. However, I could not find any information about
> the copyright transfer requirement, or an indication of the rights
> holder for a published paper. This signals a lack of transparency in
> the authoring and publishing process. If you send me a link where this
> information can be found, I can update your DOAJ application.

My interpretation of CC0 is that:

a. under a CC0 licence the author does not hold ANY copyright -- e.g. it
is effectively a waiver of copyright -- where copyright is understood as
the right of the author to distribute the material under consideration
under a licence of her choice.

b. technically, the consequence is that the author retains ALL
publishing rights -- or to be more precise, is free from any publishing
restrictions -- just like all other members of the general public.

> Questions
>
> 1. So, what about author rights? Does anything else need to be
> specified? Or is CC0 a problem in this regard?

Was it a requirement that authors should retain their copyright? I think
not (but maybe I remember badly). The requirement was that we are clear
about author rights. I think CC0 is sufficiently clear (there is even a
FAQ we can link to), it is just a matter of putting it on out website.

> 2. If its OK, how exactly do we phrase it?
> "All the contents of JoPP are in the Public Domain (CC0) that is to say free of copyright restrictions around the world.
> See https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/ for more information on this license."

I am happy with the phrasing above. The CC0 page recommends "No Right
Reserved", and a link to that page. I guess we should have a special
page too, accessible from the main menu system, where we explain our
stance. For that page I would just copy/paste the CC0 info page, without
the examples:

    https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0

> 3. If its OK, Creative Commons have a mechanism to embed CC0 info in
> our site (I think). Do/can we do this? See: "CC0 Waiver

Yes, it is just a snippet of HTML. Should go in the footer/theme.

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