Today marks an historic step forward for public access to publicly funded research in the United States. The Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (FASTR) was introduced in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. FASTR requires federal agencies with annual extramural research budgets of $100 million or more to provide the public with online access to the research articles stemming from that funded research no later than six months after publication in a peer-reviewed journal.

If passed, the legislation would extend the current NIH Public Access Policy (with a shorter embargo) to other US federal agencies, such as the Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, NASA, the National Science Foundation, and others.

The bill text is available here. The legislation was introduced with bi-partisan support in both the House and Senate. Sponsors include Sens. Cornyn (R-TX) and Wyden (D-OR), and Reps. Doyle (D-PA), Yoder (R-KS), and Lofgren (D-CA).

Creative Commons has supported policies aligned with the practice of making taxpayer funded research available free online and ideally under an open license that communicates broad downstream use rights, such as CC BY. While FASTR – like the NIH Public Access Policy before it – does not directly require the application of open licenses to the scientific research outputs funded with federal tax dollars, it represents a key next step toward increasing the usefulness of public access to research.

Specifically, FASTR includes provisions that move the ball down the field toward better communicating reuse rights. Peter Suber notes,

• FASTR includes a new “finding” in its preamble (2.3): “the United States has a substantial interest in maximizing the impact and utility of the research it funds by enabling a wide range of reuses of the peer-reviewed literature that reports the results of such research, including by enabling computational analysis by state-of-the-art technologies.”
• FASTR includes a formatting and licensing provision (4.b.5): the versions deposited in repositories and made OA shall be distributed “in formats and under terms that enable productive reuse, including computational analysis by state-of-the-art technologies.”
• FASTR requires that the annual report from each covered agency include a statement from the agency on “whether the terms of use applicable to such research papers are effective in enabling productive reuse and computational analysis by state-of-the-art technologies” (4.f.2.B.i) and the results of the agency’s “examination of whether such research papers should include a royalty-free copyright license that is available to the public and that permits the reuse of those research papers, on the condition that attribution is given to the author or authors of the research and any others designated by the copyright owner” (4.f.2.B.ii).

In addition to making articles free to access and read after a six-month publishing embargo, these new provisions make a significant impact in pushing federal agencies to ensure that the research they fund is available and useful for new research techniques like text/data mining.

SPARC has issued an action alert, and there are several specific things you can do to support of FASTR. Today marks the 11th anniversary of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, and you can voice your support that the public needs and deserves access to the research it paid for and upon which scientific advancement and education depends.

Faiza Souici / CC BY-SA

In keeping with the tradition inaugurated by the third Creative Commons Arab regional meeting (30th June-2nd July, Tunis, 2011), the 2012 fourth annual gathering of the CC Arab communities was marked by a great deal of creative energy and a strong push towards strengthening a sharing culture in the Arab region.

Organized in cooperation with Arab Digital Expression Foundation (ADEF), an Egyptian NGO extremely active in the domain of free culture and sharing, the fourth Creative Commons Arab regional meeting was held in Cairo from 10 to 14 December 2012, with participants coming from Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Qatar, Sudan, Oman, and Egypt.

Three days of intensive hands-on workshops, held at ADEF headquarters in the beautiful area of Moqattam overlooking Cairo, were self-organized and led by members of the CC Arab community. Workshops tackled issues such as licensing artworks under CC licenses, or using open-source tools to design and produce creative work. A team of musicians, together with a filmmaker and a graphic designer, worked on a multimedia project aimed at producing a creative journey into science fiction literature in the Arab world (see sample below).

A group of visual artists worked on caricatures of the participants, which were remixed and turned into beautifully colored cartoons. Another team worked on the concept of Creative Commons as bringing creative people to life; or lampooning the traditional copyright as a “locked up” culture.

Egyptian guest speakers were also featured during the three days meeting, such as filmmaker Ahmed Abdallah who directed the popular movie Microphone and who raised the controversial issue of using CC-licensed music in movies that the producers then decide to distribute under a traditional, all-rights reserved copyright. Blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah and technologist Ahmed Gharbeia also shared their thoughts about openness.

The works produced during the meeting were showcased on 14 December at Zamalek Public Library, in a closing ceremony which also celebrated the 10th anniversary of Creative Commons.

The 10th anniversary celebrations were held across the four corners of the Arab region. Creative Commons communities in Algeria, Jordan, Iraq, Qatar, and Oman all hosted live events animated by local artists and communities, featuring light talks, discussions about sharing culture, and homemade birthday cakes.

CC CEO Cathy Casserly, in her first official trip to the Middle East, joined the CC Qatar celebrations in Doha, before heading to Cairo where she participated in the CC Arab community’s call to free Bassel Khartabil aka Safadi, the public lead of CC Syria who has been detained in Damascus since March 2012. During the closing ceremony of the 4th Arab regional meeting in Cairo, the CC Arab community recorded a video message for Bassel and emphasized that in the Arab region, advocating for free culture and sharing might put one’s life at risk of imprisonment or death.

Two months later, the open community is still urging for Bassel’s release. The good news is that Bassel has been granted visitation rights, and even wrote a letter to #freebassel supporters. Visit FreeBassel.org to find out how to get involved.

Since the outbreak of the uprisings in late 2010, the Arab world has witnessed the rise of popular movements for political and social change. This has been matched by violent reactions by authoritarian regimes, repression and political unrest. Yet, a genuine push towards peer-produced and collaborative work has responded to violence and repression with creativity and innovation. The fourth Creative Commons Arab regional meeting has been a celebration of this courageous stance of the Arab youth and of their defiance in responding to authoritarian power with the weapons of creativity.

Related Links

CC Cairo meeting

• CC Arab World Facebook group
• Flickr pools: CC10, CC Arab World
• Works from the Cairo workshops
• Video project
• Report about the closing party (Arabic)

Creative Commons 10th anniversary in the Arab world

• Jordan
• Algeria
• Qatar
• Iraq

An Education Sprint

The future of Open is a dynamic landscape, ripe with opportunities to increase civic engagement, literacy, and innovation. Towards this goal, the Science Program at Creative Commons is teaming up with the Open Knowledge Foundation and members of the Open Science Community to facilitate the building of an open online course, an Introduction to Open Science. The actual build will take place during a hackathon-style “sprint” event on Open Data Day on Saturday, February 23rd and will serve as a launch course for the School of Open during Open Education Week (Mar 11-15).

Want to help us build this?

The course will be open in it’s entirety, the building process and content all available to be worked on, all to help people learn about Open Science. Do you know a thing or two about Open Access? Are you a researcher who’s practicing Open Research? Do you have experience in instructional or visual design? This is an all-hands event and will be facilitated by representatives at CC, OKFN, and others in the Community. Open Science enthusiasts in the Bay Area are invited to the CC Headquarters in Mountain View for the live event. Remote participants will also be able to join and contribute online via Google Hangout.

The day will begin with coffee, refreshments and a check-in call with other Open Data Day Hackathons happening around the globe. The Open Science Community is strengthened by shared interests and connections between people, which we hope will grow stronger through networked events on Open Data Day. The Open Science course sprint at CC HQ will build upon open educational content, facilitate the design of challenges for exploration, and provide easy entry for learners into concepts of Open Access, Open Research, and Open Data. It will be done in a similar fashion to other “sprint-style” content-creation events, with lunch and refreshments provided for in-person participants. We’re literally going to be hacking on education. Sound like something you’d be interested in?

Join us.

For details about the ways you can participate, see the Eventbrite page here.
To see the draft (lightly framed) course site on Peer to Peer University, go here.
For information about other Open Data Day events, see the events wiki here.

Developers

We need you, too! Basic skills for working with open datasets is important, and can be difficult to grasp. Who better to develop great lessons about working with data than you? Similarly, for those interested in building upon apps and projects from other Open Data Events, updated source code and repository information will be posted to a public feed (for now, follow hashtags #ODHD13 and #opendataday on Twitter).

For other information, contact billy dot meinke at creative commons dot org or @billymeinke.

This event is being organized by the Science Program at Creative Commons with support from the Open Knowledge Foundation, PLOS, and members of the Open Science Community.

In the UK, the House of Commons has asked for feedback on their Open Access Policy. One provision of that policy requires that articles funded through the Research Councils UK (RCUK) must be released under a CC BY license. Last year, CC submitted a short comment in support.

And just last month, the House of Lords completed a consultation period which has generated some misinformation about how the CC BY license operates. So, in order to clarify some of these misconceptions, Creative Commons and Creative Commons UK submitted a joint response to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee to set the record straight.

We’ve pulled together some clarifications to some of the uncertainty lobbed at the CC BY license provision in the Open Access Policy. Some of the reasons given that CC BY should not be retained include:

• it would promote “misuse of research or would cause authors to “lose control of their work”
• third party rights negotiations for content that authors wish to include within an openly licensed article would prove too difficult
• open licensing provides less protection against plagiarism
• CC BY is not widely used in OA publishing
• authors should choose licensing conditions, not funders

These claims are confusing, misguided, or not backed up by evidence. We offer our responses and support here.

After nearly two years working with to support our community and forward Creative Commons in Europe, our European Regional Coordinator, Jonas Öberg, will be leaving us at the end of the month. Jonas has been awarded a prestigious fellowship from the Shuttleworth Foundation to further his research into metadata standards for open materials. We will be very sad to lose Jonas, who has done a wonderful job of promoting CC and open in general over the last few years, and has worked tirelessly to support our European affiliates in their work. Europe is CC’s biggest region, with 37 affiliates stretching from Ireland and the UK all the way through Kazakhstan and Russia – so the job isn’t easy.

The good news is that Jonas won’t be going far, with his Shuttleworth work likely to keep him a constant face in our community.

The other good news is that this opens up a new position for someone to work with Creative Commons in Europe. You can find the full position description here.

In summary, our European Regional Coordinator works to “Assist Creative Commons and the CC Global Network team with organizational planning, strategic communications, community building, and fundraising in Europe in support of the organization’s mission, goals and objectives.” This means running events, coordinating collaborative projects, and generally assisting our European affiliates to build and grow their community. We also expect that 2013 in Europe will see a lot of work with local organisations advocating for the adoption and implementation of open policies in the region, particularly in the fields of government and educational materials.

If you have an interest in community management, open access, and Creative Commons, and live in or have ties to Europe, we’d love to hear from you.