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Discussion on Open Access and "derivative works"

In the mailing list INETBIB there was today a little discussion (in German) on the German Open Access-like “Digital Peer Publishing License” (DPPL) provided by the Nordrhein-Westfalen Wissenschaftsministerium:
http://www.dipp.nrw.de/lizenzen/document_view

It allows commercial use but no derivative works. This is IMHO an important difference to the Berlin Declaration:

The author(s) and right holder(s) of such contributions
grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right
of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute,
transmit and display the work publicly and to make and
DISTRIBUTE DERIVATIVE WORKS, in any digital medium for any
responsible purpose
(my emphasis)

For the definition of derivative works in Creative Commons licenses it is worth noting that this definition is inspired by The Copyright Act, at 17 U.S.C. §101 (US).

The DPPL allows commercial use of the scholar’s work without his consent (e.g. in licensed databases) but not that another scholar (e.g. in India) translates his article.

Frank Halisch argued that he doesn’t want that other can make “Bearbeitungen” of his works.

There are good reasons to think so but the Berlin Declaration (supported by thousands of scholars) explicitely allows derivative works. Large OA publishers – Biomedcentral and PLoS – are using Creative Commons Licenses allowing derivative works (and commercial use).

If a scholar doesn’t want a) derivative works and b) commercial use he cannot choose a DPPL E-journal (the reason is that DPPL allows commercial use). He is free to use a Creative Commons License (attribution, no-derivs, no commercial use). That would be Open Access too but – and that is the point for me – no OA according to the Berlin Declaration.

My contributions (quoting the others):
http://www.ub.uni-dortmund.de/listen/inetbib/msg24940.html
http://www.ub.uni-dortmund.de/listen/inetbib/msg24936.html


OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Klaus Graf (9. Juli 2004). Discussion on Open Access and "derivative works" Archivalia. Abgerufen am 19. Januar 2026 von https://doi.org/10.58079/c20z


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