
France: Open Access Law Adopted - okket
https://www.openaire.eu/france-final-text-of-the-law-for-oa-has-been-adopted
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ramblenode
This is excellent news. The people of a country should absolutely have access
to the research they have funded. France has taken an important step in
standing up to the anachronistic publishing cartels who siphon public money in
order to lock down rather than disseminate knowledge. Here's to hoping the
rest of the world follows this example.

~~~
paul_f
Without taking a side in the discussion, we should make a distinction between
the research and the subsequent paper. The government funding is for the
research. Scholarly papers are created for publication, not to meet the
requirements of the research funding.

~~~
aargh_aargh
That would be unpractical. You already cannot copyright the ideas (the
research). You can patent it, but the issue addressed here is specifically
copyright.

The thing is, for the last hundred years or so, publications have been _the_
communication channel about research, so the two are often conflated (for the
most part) - most importantly in science evaluation, which is where the money
comes from, so research without publishing is not incentivized at all.

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hk__2
> and it still needs to be voted on by the Sénat on September 27

So technically it hasn’t been adopted yet.

~~~
pygy_
The French Senate can at most delay the adoption of a new law. The _Assemblée
Nationale_ has the final say and can overrule any modification made by the
Senate.

While the lower chamber could have a change of mind, it is very unlikely to
happen.

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julien_c
I worked on this law!

~~~
semi-extrinsic
So, if I'm reading this correctly, the law gives any government/EU funded
author the right to publish a preprint for any scientific article they
produce, even when a journal has a license forbidding such publication? But it
does not require an author to do so, right?

~~~
pikzen
If a scientific article has been funded by at least 50% by the state, public
establishments, local collectivities or the european union and is published in
a review coming out at least once a year, the author (or authors, provided
they all agree) have a right to put up, for free and in an open format, the
final version of this article on the Internet.

So, not just a preprint, and yes, journal licenses forbidding such publication
have now no legal value. It does not require the author to do so.

EDIT: see answer below for a few more precisions.

~~~
p4bl0
Well, that's not exactly right. It's a bit less cool.

The author's right to put their articles in open access is not immediate, it
happens at the soonest of:

— when the publisher make the article freely available itself, or

— 6 months after initial publication in sciences, or 12 months in humanities.

~~~
mlinksva
Oh, the humanities

~~~
igravious
Why, the difference? I'd like that legally challenged.

~~~
p4bl0
The difference exists because in the humanities the situation is very
different from science. Publishers are a lot smaller and more locals, they
often have a real added value (the vast majority of humanities academics do
not produce camera ready PDFs themselves), and are thus a lot less predatory.

~~~
jnicholasp
Turning an article into a clean PDF is a sufficient value addition to deserve
an extra six months of exclusive license?

As a humanities type who nevertheless despises the academic uselessness of the
realm, let me suggest that the extra six months is given to humanities papers
because nothing that happens in them matters, and any value that anyone can
contrive to get from them, they deserve to keep.

But maybe that's a little too harsh. Is anything valuable coming out of the
humanities these days?

~~~
igravious
No, it's because of _the narrative_ that nothing that happens in the
humanities matters.

> Is anything valuable coming out of the humanities these days?

You know, back in the late 19th century things were the other way around. The
sciences had to argue for their value while the humanities held sway over the
mind-share in academia. Google the debates of Huxley and Arnold -- many people
think the culture clash only goes back to the C.P.Snow era, _as if_.

A part of the problem with the humanities is its amnesia. The humanities
sprang from humanism. The humanities is academic humanism. Secular humanism is
what has given us the idea of the separation of Church and State, among many
other society-altering changes. Academic humanism has been a great moderating
influence on the world, and continues to be. The smartest people I meet in
academia are in the humanities, not the sciences. It is only relatively
recently the the notion that the sciences are pre-eminent came to be. Since
the time of their birth in the Renaissance the humanities grew in the shadow
of the theological scholastics, and then brought about the Enlightenment.
Which was nice.

You've bought into a narrative. The humanities teaches us about how narratives
and ideologies shape our minds, so your comment dismays me.

edit: I don't blame you though. I was in the humanities for nearly 10 years
before I bothered to look into the history and philosophy of humanism and the
humanities.

~~~
jnicholasp
I made my comment because I wholly agree with you about the importance and the
past contributions of the humanities, and because I'm so disappointed in how
deeply they've lost their way.

The biggest problems in the world today are humanities problems (although tech
and science may be able to indirectly end-run around them if we survive long
enough), and the humanities are completely failing to make any useful
progress. I'm bitter about it, because there are so many smart people wasting
themselves in trivial cleverness-competitions rather than solving meaningful
problems, and because they're my tribe and they're betraying their potential.
(And, bias disclosure: at least partly because I can't find anyone to date
who's interested in the things I'm interested in, whose work I don't think is
ultimately useless and unimportant.)

~~~
igravious
Despair not my friend.

To criticize something as useless and unimportant is a value judgement. How
you arrive at those values is what the humanities is all about. Tech and
science can't do an end-run around the humanities because whilst their domains
overlap (somewhat) their methods and materials differ.

> I'm so disappointed in how deeply they've lost their way.

No. No they haven't. See my reply to you above. The more you repeat phrases
like this the more I'm going to believe that part of your identity is invested
in this world-view. It's a brutally pessimistic one, and it rests on the
prongs of a false dichotomy.

> they're my tribe

I'm in the humanities and I'm not your tribe.

~~~
jnicholasp
I'd be happy to hear about the important things that the humanities have
produced recently. In your comment above, the only claims about their current
value that I see is the statement that they continue to be a moderating
influence on the world, and that they teach us how narratives shape our ideas.

I'm dubious that their moderating influence is significantly more than the
residual influence of old moral ideas, albeit with newly enforced reach (i.e.,
hey guys, "do unto others" should maybe _also_ apply to women/black
people/gays). You couldn't get a patent for that kind of obvious development
of an old idea. And the notion that narratives shape perceptions doesn't
strike me as a particularly profound insight, although I suppose it could be
argued that's a post hoc bias.

Secular humanism and democracy are more than two hundred years old. What have
the humanities given to the world since then that compares to those, or that
compares to the changes to the world that science has made in that period?

If you care about these kinds of questions, that's what I mean by "my tribe",
regardless of the answers we each give. I'm not invested in my perception that
the humanities are under-performing their potential, but I don't currently see
a strong argument on the other side. Maybe I'm failing to consider something.

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junipergreen
I'm curious. Does this apply to just French journals? Or just French
scientists? How would that work with journals based in other countries? Or
multi-national research collaborations?

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Grazester
Phew! With just reading the title of this I thought the article would have
been something stating France just made encryption illegal without a way for
law enforcement to circumvent it

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jernfrost
Congratulations France!!! I hope we follow you in Norway, although I don't
quite know what our current law on the matter is :-D

It is of big importance that large rich countries like France does this. It
should have a strong influence on other countries. The ultimate goal is of
course for the US to implement such a law as the US is the worlds most
influential and important country, especially within research.

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imadfy
What do they mean by "...cannot be commercially exploited?" Would a for-profit
corporation be violating copyright just by viewing it? What are the
punishments for "commercial exploit[ation]"?

~~~
Loic
The translation is not good, so a "shorter" version:

1\. If you publish your research work in a journal and the research work has
been financed for at least 50% by public institutions, you can provide on the
web for free your paper too (if the coauthors agree). You are allowed to put
it online directly if the journal is a free/open access journal or after 6 to
12 months.

2\. A publisher cannot prevent you to do that.

3\. You cannot use these available papers to make money out of them with a
service similar to a publisher "une activité d'édition à caractère
commercial". Basically, to prevent competition with the original publisher.
So, you cannot create a big website with both the papers and advertising.

If you are a company getting access to the paper through the university
website or the website of the author, this is fine. Wikipedia could start
collecting and make the papers available too.

Punishments will be set by a judge according to the French civil law on
copyrights I suppose.

~~~
wowtip
> 2\. A publisher cannot prevent you to do that.

Not directly, but wouldn't it open up a box of issues where publishers make it
harder for authors who distribute their papers for free to get published the
next time around?

~~~
Loic
Not in the way the current system works because the publishers are doing
nothing, they are just taking the papers as reviewed by the committee as-is.

In fact, with this law, we are most likely going to see is that the
universities will automatically hook into something like:
[https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/](https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/)

When you submit a paper to a journal, your university normally request that
you submit your paper to the internal university _store_. This store will then
automatically _push_ your paper to this open access library after X months.

If this moves this way, publishers would have to say: French researchers
cannot publish with us any more....

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d3ckard
That's great news. Hopefully it will set an example. Everything that is state
founded should be available to everybody (sans few exceptions like defense
systems etc.). Hopefully more countries will follow and policy will be adopted
in more areas than just scientific writing.

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readams
What would stop journals from blacklisting scientists who publish their
articles under open access laws? Would anyone publish their article if they
knew it meant never being able to publish in _Nature_ again?

~~~
jomamaxx
"What would stop journals from blacklisting scientists who publish their
articles under open access laws?"

I think there would just be far too many of them.

Moreover, the Scientists could feign that they were not possibly involved in
the alternative distribution of it.

I think 'blacklisting' would be an aggressive posture, and likely viewed as
unethical, it's not something they could likely get away with.

I think the 'prestige' of being published in Nature etc. will outweigh most
concerns.

~~~
readams
It would be similarly aggressive if a journal were to sue a scientist for
copyright infringement for posting their own work.

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igravious
Is it too corny to say, "vive la liberté!" ? Well done France. It's little
moments like these that give one faith in humanity. I think I'm going to start
calling them Snowden moments. :)

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brador
The right but not the obligation?

~~~
johncolanduoni
I don't think the primary barrier to open access is the willingness of the
researchers to self-publish, as long as they can still publish in any journal
that they want. Seems like a very sensible trade-off to make the law easier to
pass. I'm somewhat worried about what publishers might try to do to dissuade
them, but everything I can think of would involve messing heavily with the
peer review process which is fairly dangerous.

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tzakrajs
How about the right to free speech? It may be a useful step in making
information accessible.

~~~
igravious
The legal right or the human right? If you're referring to the legal right, to
which jurisdiction are you referring? If to the human right, that's a social
justice issue not a legal one.

~~~
analognoise
Human rights have become "social justice" issues and not legal ones? Are you
trying to draw a distinction between the implementation and the theory of the
thing, because I'm failing to see law not being both, with the unfortunate
secondary label of "social justice" being entirely useless.

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husamia
great news!

