CottageLabs/OpenArticleGauge

Cold Spring Harbour

Opened this issue · 3 comments

Noting this as something to fix further down the track.

CSHL is a relative small publisher but an important one. They have a particularly irritating license statement on some articles. For examples in http://genome.cshlp.org/content/22/10/1845 there is the statement:

This article is distributed exclusively by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the
first six months after the full-issue publication date (see 
http://genome.cshlp.org/site/misc/terms.xhtml). After six months, it is available under 
a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License), as
described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/.

I am inclined to say this is a "can't tell" by any reasonable means. A plugin could in principle check the publication date I guess but that seems unreasonable at this point. However there are also articles like http://learnmem.cshlp.org/content/20/7/388 which contain the statement:

This article, published in Learning & Memory, is available under a Creative Commons
License (Attribution 3.0 Unported), as described at 
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

Because the journal name is included in the unique string we can't see the ones without the date piece. If you don't want to include the journal name the string "is available under a Creative Commons License" is in both. I don't really want to rely on the comma...

I'm not sure if having this bit...

This article,

makes it so much more reliable than just having this bit...

is available under a Creative Commons
License (Attribution 3.0 Unported), as described at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

So I'd be inclined to accept the 3-line quote above this as valid and specific enough license text. I.e. I'd just register the publisher on the site, with that statement.

The problem with that is that their time limited license statements contains
exactly that same text fragment, so articles that are not (yet) available
under a CC license will return that CC license.

From: Emanuil Tolev notifications@github.com
Reply-To: CottageLabs/OpenArticleGauge
<reply+i-31402053-a6bd16fc472a735eda1c32dd92430b628ee73a34-33832@reply.githu
b.com>
Date: Sunday, 13 April 2014 13:17
To: CottageLabs/OpenArticleGauge OpenArticleGauge@noreply.github.com
Cc: Cameron Neylon cn@cameronneylon.net
Subject: Re: [OpenArticleGauge] Cold Spring Harbour (#72)

I'm not sure if having this bit...

This article,

makes it so much more reliable than just having this bit...

is available under a Creative Commons
License (Attribution 3.0 Unported), as described at
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.

So I'd be inclined to accept the 3-line quote above this as valid and specific
enough license text. I.e. I'd just register the publisher on the site, with
that statement.


Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
<#72 (comment)
38> .

Ah, shucks, I see the problem now.

You could have a plugin which looked for "distributed exclusively by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the first six months after the full-issue publication date" and added an appropriate license . In this case Other (Non-open) or similar.

If the text is not found, attempt a list of statements - for now just the CC-BY v.3.0 one.

The issue isn't just calculating dates of publication - this information is not easily available. It says "full issue publication date". I don't care when the issue was published (I mean, as a human, not as an OAG dev) if I've followed a DOI or a link, or a Google Scholar search there. I don't know how to find that out or exactly what it is, is it just where it might say "Date" on the issue on their website? Time of sending print edition (if any) to press? 24h after the last member of the journal's editorial board has had tea after approving the last article in the issue?

Similar to other cases, I don't see how one could complain about potential mistakes OAG would make with the algorithm I've described above. If you want it accurate, calculate the license from the date yourself in your system, then output the appropriate statement which applies at the time of viewing the page, then everybody will know unambiguously and you will have straightforward licenses to protect your IP or whatever it is you want to do with this embargo. There are many obvious advantages traded for, of course, the cost of adding this to their system.