A Flexible OA Publishing Agreement Framework

I started out just wanting to tighten and revise an interesting publication agreement I saw online, but since I sometimes deal with academic publishing in my day job, it got me thinking about all the various permutations and so I realized that I'm not aware of any real taxonomy for academics.  Creative Commons does great work for content, and although it started out largely in the software space, it serves as an excellent model.

Not having done extensive research on what else is out there and currently restless and sick, I wanted to jot down some ideas for a mix-and-match Academic Commons for open access publishing, modeled of course on Creative Commons multi-tiered approach. I've not checked any of these names or labels, and haven't dig deeply to see whether someone else is already doing a project like this, but I find it extremely compelling and so I wanted to flesh out my thoughts.

The Premise

The foundational principles behind developing the Academic Commons exist to promote open access and thereby enrich public use and discourse of research and scholarship. Further:

1. Publications should be free to read, share, and reuse while they are still relevant.
2. Authors should retain the right to use their publications in collaborative research, teaching, and to share individually with the community without fear of infringing on their own work.
3. Publications should not fall into a copyright "black hole" as a result of a journal going out of print or failing to stay current with technology to make its content available and easily discoverable.
4. Authors should retain some discretion on how best to promote the widest accessibility and fairest terms for their publications, but should not be encouraged to use that as leverage against authors with different preferences.
5. Publishers of academic publications should be recognized for their contributions, but should seek only the rights minimally necessary to provide their services.

The Academic Commons Model

AC0: minimal or nonexistent publication agreement (article under general availability for any purpose, functionally equivalent to raw CC-BY).  Highly open, but no value added for the journal.

AC-CR (Citation Right): AC0 plus exclusive right to claim original citation/first publication rights. No other rights/responsibilities. Similar to the OAJP model agreement and workable for "new model" journals that embrace it.

AC-PA (Publication Agreement): separate publisher deal exists, providing additional terms beyond what a CC license might cover, but hopefully striking the most pragmatic balance.  This will be the Shieber variant and the main agreement.  But like CC, there will be some optional restrictions to bridge journal policies and promote OA for those more reticent publishers.

-EM (Embargoed): this is a full OA agreement that permits a time-limited exclusivity period for the journal before the right to redistribute through other channels kicks in.

-NC (No Charge): a variation on the "non-commercial" restriction, that more clearly defines the restriction as "no reader paywall". The article may be redistributed by a non-profit journal, for-profit journal, or any other entity so long as the reader is not required to pay for access (but does not prohibit optional subscription services or the "freemium" model).  I feel like this offers the same solution of the "share-alike" requirement without imposing one article's philosophy on the work of third parties. You can integrate such articles very widely (except, of course, for CC-BY-SA [see below]).

-NJ (No Journals): here's an interesting one. The -NJ license permits free redistribution and reuse except in other citable journals. Exactly what constitutes a "journal" is a moving target and may create some interesting edge cases, but the main criterion would be whether you would cite the resource as an authority in the literature rather than simply as a quote or document source.  Basically, we're talking about a citation right on steroids.

As a further method of getting publishers to embrace these new models, I'd also propose a "halo" label for those more traditional publication agreements that dip their toes in the open access water, either through preprints or special distribution channels of the finals.

AC-L: Limited commons. contains a partial assignment of rights to the publisher, but permits OA for a preprint and ensures that the author remains free to use and distribute copies of the final for teaching and collaboration.

Academic Commons and Creative Commons Compatibility

All AC licenses are compatible with CC-BY. However, it should be noted that with a CC-BY grant of rights, the ability to enforce requirements of the -NC, -NJ, and -L variants is extremely limited.

Simply by virtue of being publication agreements, which involve editing and formatting, they are all incompatible with a CC-BY-ND license (though this could be rectified in a variant wherein the author submits a print (or e-print)-ready version and references to edits and derivations are removed)

All of the above are also compatible with the CC-BY-NC license, with the caveat being that journals may need to secure additional rights with addendum agreements depending on their business model.

When it comes to CC-BY-SA, only the -NC and -NJ variants pose a problem (the -L may or may not, depending on what is being made OA in that case).  AC-PA-NJ would simply be incompatible with CC-BY-SA's share-alike requirements. But AC-PA-NC presents an interesting case I haven't fully thought out yet:  CC-BY-SA does not permit restrictions on commercial use (which the PA-NC ban on paywalls would seem to be) but it also requires that it be made available freely.  Conceptually, AC-PA-NC could be used in a journal where all submissions were also CC-BY-SA.  But while AC-PA-NC doesn't care what content license is used by the article itself or if there are a mix of content licenses in a journal, an article with an SA content license could not be mixed into a journal with other licenses, as it would poison the well (not that SA is bad, but I can think of no metaphor for this that doesn't carry a negative connotation--"force the hand",  "assimilate",  "foreclose").