In late 2006 or early 2007, I was looking for ways to get students interested in open access. I had started to become versed in the topic myself a few months earlier, after my library announced it planned to cut subscriptions around the same time the Federal Research Public Access Act was introduced for the first time. At the time, there were no resources for students and no student organizations meaningfully engaged with the issue. I helped the Alliance for Taxpayer Access scrape together some basic information for and about students, but no one paid much attention.

At some point, I had the idea of picking a day to try to focus student attention on open access. We’d choose a date and ask our few student allies to organize some activities to speak out on the issue. This became the National Day of Action for Open Access.

We didn’t have much lead time to plan, and few resources. Not a lot of people participated — but a few did. There wasn’t much attention, but we did get an article in the Washington Post, where I went completely off-message. (Coincidentally, the reporter was Rick Weiss, who later edited Science Next, which included an essay by me about open access.) It was a start.

By the next year, I was consulting for SPARC. We decided to revive the concept, but shifted the schedule and the focus: not just students, we wanted everybody to make noise about open access. For Open Access Day 2008, we had more time and more resources. In organizing it, I dropped the ball too many times, but thankfully someone was always there to pick it up. The response was much bigger; we made a splash.

After 2008, the organizers made two strategic decisions which I disagreed with at the time but were absolutely right. One was to expand the day to a week to make scheduling easier. The other was not to organize a central event, but instead to rely more on the partners and hosts to take more initiative. I was afraid we’d have insufficient focus and momentum. Instead, we let a hundred flowers blossom. The more flexible schedule, along with an increased role for partnerships — and our experience and increased visibility from the first time around — combined to make Open Access Week the most vibrant outing yet. The breath and depth of activities worldwide, along with a number of high-profile announcements timed for the week, are truly remarkable. I haven’t been very involved since the early strategic planning, so I can’t claim much credit. But I am thrilled and impressed with the outcome.

Most personally touching for me are the events in Cuba. Growing up in Florida, Cuba was only 90 miles across the strait but impossibly far culturally. There is no direct fiber optic link, nor even direct postal service, between Cuba and the U.S.; as an American, I need special permission from my government to travel there. Reportedly, only 2% of Cubans have Internet access. So it was a revelation to realize that our message of open access to scholarship had resonated in Cuba. For me, it’s a symbol of what open access is all about: the free exchange of knowledge and ideas worldwide.

Happy Open Access Week. May it be the first of many.

So what’s the point of AcaWiki when almost all articles have abstracts, which are summaries and usually available gratis? Well, AcaWiki summaries are also libre (CC Attribution license), so they invite reuse: mashup, translation, and so on. They’re also editable, so they can evolve and be improved.

Abstracts vary widely, usually shaped by the journal’s format: sometimes they’re several paragraphs, something just a few sentences. They might outline the methodology or they might not. They are usually written at the level of specialists in that field, so they may or may not be much use to other readers.

There’s room for improvement and innovation in the world of summary, in other words. For instance, Emerald launched a program asking authors to provide a summary highlighting potential applications. RNA Biology requires its authors to write up their findings on Wikipedia. BMJ publishes only one-page abridgments in its print edition, with the full article available online.

For a more direct comparison, see WikiSummary, which predates AcaWiki but covers only political science.

Two other points of comparison: journalism / press releases and Wikipedia.

Press releases are gratis; science journalism may or may not be gratis; both are rarely libre. They only cover new studies: good luck finding coverage of an article from 1989. They rarely provide a full citation to the original article. They often discuss only the findings, with little consideration of methodology. They frequently focus on studies with controversies or practical applications, rather than new theories or research methodologies. In reporting the most interesting (a.k.a. most titillating) of the findings, journalism sometimes distorts the impression of the overall study. Meanwhile, press releases try to paint the most positive picture. Since they’re written for a general audience, and often not written by someone with a background in the field, they may be too general.

If we consider research blogging in this category, conversely, the writing may be too technical. It may be more commentary or critique than summary.

Wikipedia is gratis and libre. It’s written for non-specialists (in theory), but can also go into more detail. The main difference from AcaWiki is that most academic papers will not be “notable” enough to merit their own Wikipedia page; even if someone wrote them, they would probably get deleted. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia provides a higher-level overview. There could be some other conflicts with Wikipedia policies, such as those against publishing original research or authors writing about themselves or their work.

All of the aforementioned resources have their uses, but as we can see, AcaWiki has its niche. I hope it thrives there.

In disclosure, I did some paid work for AcaWiki some months ago, but am not actively involved in the project.

But political groups are widely getting it wrong when it comes to a minor, but valuable, use of email addresses as identifiers.

The issue is that there’s more than one way to represent the same piece of information. For instance, you might write a phone number any of these ways:

• (555) 555-1234
• 555-555-1234
• 555 555 1234
• 555.555.1234
• 5555551234

Similarly, the same street address might be written in different ways:

• 123 Any Street, Apt. 4
• 123 Any St., #4

And so on. Any database is certainly going to recognize those phone numbers and street addresses as the same thing, so the same person doesn’t get 5 different phone calls and 2 different mailings. But the same thing doesn’t happen with email when people use sub-addresses.

I’ve written about plus-addressing before. I’m under no illusion that sub-addressing is used by a massive portion of the population, but I figure it’s probably used by at least a few percent of people — and for those people, it’s important. They use it for a reason: to better filter their mail (so they can find your message more easily!), to track how their address is shared, etc. These people will notice whether you respect their wishes and habits, and it will influence their impression of you. So it behooves you to play nicely with their addresses, especially since it’s so easy to do.

All it takes is two easy steps:

1. Your Web forms (and any other methods you use of collecting and managing email addresses) should respect sub-addressing. Subscription forms frequently reject + as an “invalid character” — but according to RFC, it’s not. Even more annoying is when a subscription form accepts + but the unsubscribe option doesn’t (and even worse when there’s no other apparent way to get an address off the list). For people who use sub-addressing, this is an unnecessary hassle — not to mention a potential violation of CAN-SPAM.
2. Your database should collate sub-addresses. In other words, if I’ve asked you to contact me at jdoe+x@example.com, you should contact me there. But if you also have jdoe+y@example.com and jdoe@example.com in your database, you should know that they’re the same user. The benefits of this will depend on exactly how you use those data, but I think it’s a good principle to start from. Importantly, whatever you do should be transparent and modifiable to the user. I can imagine, for instance, logging in as jdoe+x@example.com and seeing a message that says “We also have jdoe+y@example.com in our database. Would you like us to merge those identities?”

Bonus transparency best-practice: Don’t mask the TO: field — otherwise, recipients can’t tell where you’re contacting them.

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years …

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years …

No person [...] shall be eligible to the Office of President [...] who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years …

—Articles Ones and Two of the United States Constitution

The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age. …

—Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution

I’ve thought before about the conflict between these two sections of the same document. About how a 23-year-old who is afforded the right to vote, to work (and the responsibility to pay taxes), to enter into contracts, to fight and die for his country, is barred from serving in Congress. About how a citizen who believes a 28-year-old is the best candidate for Senate is prevented from voting for her.

I was reminded today when browsing the Swedish Pirate Party’s list of candidates for European Parliament. The second candidate on their list is younger than I am. A few candidates were born in the 1990s.

Any time the law sets an age-based restriction for an activity, the number will be controversial: Why not a year earlier or a year later? Thus we have controversies in the U.S. about the voting age, the drinking age, and the age of consent. But I’ve never seen any public dialogue about the minimum age to serve in federal elected office.

So let me say it: To set an age of eligibility for public office other than the voting age is hypocritical, discriminatory, and anti-democratic.

FYI:

• The current youngest member of the House of Representatives is Aaron Schock of Illinois, elected last year at age 28 — the first member of Congress born in the 1980s.
• The current youngest member of the Senate is Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, appointed this year at age 42.
• The current youngest member of the European Parliament appears to be Dimitar Stoyanov of Bulgaria, elected in 2007 at age 24.
• A handful of past Representatives and Senators entered office before the eligible age: Jed Johnson, Jr. of Oklahoma (House, 24); William Charles Cole Claiborne of Tennessee (House, 22); John Eaton of Tennessee (Senate, 28); Armistead Thomson Mason of Virginia (Senate, 29); and Henry Clay of Kentucky (Senate, 29). Rush D. Holt, Sr. of West Virginia was elected at age 29 but waited until his 30th birthday to take the oath of office.

[I]ntellectual property policy is being managed as a legal issue, whereas although this area like any other must operate through the legal system, intellectual property policy is most fundamentally an aspect of economic policy. … [T]he consideration of policy with regard to both [copyrights and patents] is dominated by IP practitioners and by the beneficiaries of the IP system. We need the expertise of lawyers in this as in many other areas of policy but it is imperative that IP policy make the transition that competition policy made over a decade ago now, from a specialist policy area dominated by lawyers, to an important front of micro-economic reform. (emphasis added)

I can’t help but nitpick: While I would welcome a shift from viewing copyright, etc. as primarily legal matters to significant matters of economic policy, it would be a failure to (continue to) not consider them as significant matters of cultural policy, as well.

(Thanks to Eve Gray for calling my attention to the quote.)

Update. I want to reiterate a few points for clarity.

• This post, and everything on this blog, represents my opinion alone, not that of my clients. I did not write this post at their behest nor am I adding this update for that reason.
• The NIH policy is wonderful (the only way it could be better is to make it even stronger) and it is a triumph of policy. It is working. The advocates who worked for it should be proud.
• There is nothing inappropriate about the way the policy was adopted. It was not an “in the dead of night” kind of thing. The policy has been argued extensively (by both sides) in the public arena and the press, at NIH (and in the Federal Register), and at private meetings in Congress and the agencies. It has also been discussed to some extent in public meetings in Congress, both before and after the policy was signed into law. If Congress had more time to explain publicly the details of the decisions it makes, that would be preferable. We don’t yet live in that world. Few people would argue, in the current circumstances, that a one-word change in a multi-billion dollar appropriations bill should warrant much public explanation from Congress. Is that perfect? I’d say it isn’t (what is?); that’s my whole point.
• Does that mean that advocates shouldn’t have asked Congress to make this change? That’s not at all what it means. Advocates have a right to employ every ethical means at their disposal to advance their objectives — in fact, they have a duty to. That’s the ethic of democracy. The advocates of public access have a well-deserved reputation as people who work hard and fight fair, who relentlessly stick to the merits of their policy arguments. Indeed, the momentum for public access (in the face of such well-funded opposition) is a testament to the tenacity of its advocates and the worthiness of their cause.

A few days ago I wrote about the messy process through which the NIH Public Access Policy became law. A new development since then: a new appropriations bill amended the policy, adding the words “and thereafter” to make the law permanent. (Previously, the Congressional mandate only applied “in the current fiscal year”; the language had to be repeated in each appropriations bill.)

This is a great development. But again, it’s messy. Since the policy became law, the Appropriations Committee hasn’t held hearings to review the performance of the policy. Other than the hearing held in a Judiciary subcommittee on Rep. Conyers’ anti-open access bill, I doubt you’ll find a word in the Congressional Record on the policy, pro or con. In other words, the debate about whether or not this policy should be made permanent isn’t taking place in public: not that the advocates on each side aren’t making their cases public, but that Congress isn’t being very transparent in its reasoning.

That’s less than ideal for democracy. The citizen (or, as I intimately know, political scientist) who endeavors to understand why Congress made this change will find few clues in the official records of Congress itself.

There’s nothing invalid about the decision, though. The Appropriations Committee thought it important to maximize the value of taxpayer dollars by adopting this policy, and the rest of Congress (and President Obama) agreed. At least, they didn’t disagree enough to derail the whole bill.

This is how the sausage gets made. In this case, the result is good sausage (at least this link of it). And bravo, at least, for that.

[Conyers:] My bill would restore longstanding federal copyright policy in this area. It reverses a provision slipped into an appropriations bill in the middle of the night, with no consultation with the Committee which is actually supposed to write the law in this area, the Judiciary Committee, which I chair. …

My bill lays down a marker indicating that issues this complex, with important values and convincing arguments on both sides, should not be decided by a few lawmakers without relevant jurisdictional expertise in the dark of night with no meaningful public scrutiny or input. …

I do have some sympathy for Conyers’ process concerns. I have minor misgivings about the process in which the NIH policy was written into law, via the appropriations process. By my count, neither open access generally nor the NIH policy specifically were the subject of a hearing before the policy was signed into law. I think that’s unfortunate; public access is a significant public policy issue and it should have had a public hearing. That’s not to say there was no public discussion in Congress: it was raised at least as far back as 2005, in the Senate confirmation hearings for Health and Human Services nominee Michael Levitt, and again in 2006 at a House Appropriations Subcommittee hearing. But the NIH has now had a public hearing, courtesy of last year’s incarnation of Conyers’ own bill. Even if we would have preferred a hearing ex ante, you can’t change the past.

But here’s the problem with Conyers’ claim: open access is not copyright policy. At least, the NIH Public Access Policy is not copyright policy: it doesn’t amend copyright one whit, and even specifies explicitly that the law be implemented “in a manner consistent with copyright law”.¹

Since the NIH policy is a matter of the disposition of federal money, it’s appropriate for the Appropriations Committee to make policy in this area. It’s also a matter of science and education (and, in the case of the NIH, health): it’d be appropriate to hear from committees in those areas, too. If Conyers wants to ensure the issue is seen by committees with “relevant jurisdictional expertise”, he ought to ask those committees to hold hearings.

Instead, Conyers sees it as a copyright issue, because some publishers rely on a certain method of acquiring and managing copyright for their business model². In other words: according to Rep. Conyers, tangential copyright concerns should come before the efficient and equitable spending of taxpayer dollars, and before health, science, and education!

That’s a crazy approach to public policy. It’s a shame, it’s misguided, and Congress should reject it.

¹ Contrast, for instance, then-Rep. Martin Sabo’s 2003 Public Access to Science Act, which proposed an actual amendment to copyright law, and was in fact referred to the Judiciary Committee.

² Increasingly, even subscription publishers rely on this model less and less, between allowing self-archiving, providing delayed and selected OA, and offering hybrid and even full OA options. Moreover, these publishers also have always published papers by government employees, which are free of any copyright whatsoever.

TACD is, as the name suggests, a forum for consumer-oriented groups from Europe and the U.S. TACD has a working group on intellectual property rights, which is hosting today’s event at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, DC. It’s a star-studded cast both of speakers and of attendees.

First speaker is Arti Rai of Duke University, offering 4 recommendations.

• Good governance policies for knowledge governance. Need more evidence, and more neutral evidence, for policy making. Need neutral frames.
• Should use U.S. policy as cautionary tale, not only as positive model for other countries. U.S. has to improve patent policy and administration of patent office to be a good model for others. Need to look at empirical data — e.g., not all patentable subjects need exclusive rights.
• Green innovation. “Greatest economic and moral challenge of our time.” Patents are one way to stimulate innovation, but not enough. Carbon emissions not priced properly — market failure — patents alone won’t work.
• Focus on ends, not means. Ends: jobs, access, sustainable economic growth. Means: innovation (Romer, Solow). But innovation not high on government’s agenda — because it’s not high on lobby group’s agendas. Innovation is disruptive — the past has lobbyists, the future doesn’t. Thought: create a high-placed position in the White House to focus on innovation.

Q&A:

• Rai: USPTO claims to be voice of innovation, but it’s really the voice of patents — may be one means to innovation, but not the only means.
• Jamie Love wants to know what policies Obama will pursue (Rai has worked with the Obama team — but not speaking for Obama). Answer: Since Richardson dropped out of consideration for Commerce head, it’s thrown things for a loop [PTO is under Commerce]. Transition team has a group on innovation, separate from agency review groups. Innovation is high on the agenda — desire to fill related positions as quickly as possible, and have a higher WH presence on innovation. Love: Has Obama taken a position on the WBU treaty on exceptions for readers with visual impairment: Rai: No.
• Can we get empirical figures on patents, copyrights?

Next, Guilherme de Aguiar Patriota of the Brazilian government. Delegate to UN.

• WIPO Development Agenda: UN body that didn’t consider questions like other UN bodies. Also not considered in producing TRIPS at WTO — result of economic power focused on Uruguay Round of negotiations — wishlist of industry (esp. pharma), not from objective assessment. “One of the most Draconian” treaties from the Uruguay Round — some people think it shouldn’t even be part of WTO. TRIPS should promote impact studies to produce empirical data, broader than just considering impact on established industries — should consider scientific and social consequences. [Thought: Less-developed countries' interests are aligned with young industries of developed countries, because they're less part of the establishment. Encouraged by specialization resulting from lower trade barriers?] Suggests different technologies should be treated differently in terms of IP rights. Enforcement is a significant government action — costs of enforcement should be considered in policymaking. Sector differentiation prohibited by treaty, but there’s a lot of pressure to do it, and it’s happening informally already. Established industries will naturally advocate for extension of their monopoly. Patent reform in U.S.: pharma, IT sectors have different interests. Suggests creating legal definition of innovation. Developing countries may not have capacity to investigate patentability, so likely to follow lead of developed countries’ patent offices uncritically — potentially leading to more patents in developing countries, where local inventors will have fewer resources to challenge them. Need better international exceptions & limitations, limit encroachment on public domain.

Q&A:

• Question about WIPO copyright committee [or patents? lost track].
• Good focus on global social benefit, rather than on one company or industry.
• Question about Brazil’s Petrobras’ patents and green innovation — do they get in the way, shouldn’t Brazil walk the walk? A: Petrobras should follow international standards.

Next: Hugh Hansen of Fordham University.

• Rational, fact-based decision-making is important. Non-interested assessments are important. Civility in the debate is important. IP academics used to be “secular priests” for IP. People in cities don’t innovate because they don’t have garages. Bias against capitalism is counterproductive. Protectionism is a prisoner’s dilemma: you have to ratchet up to protect your people relative to others (other companies, other countries). [Do you?] Little diversity in IP regimes = few laboratories to see how different policies work. Distrust: WBU treaty seen as Trojan horse.
• U.S. and E.U. should embrace protection for traditional knowledge, genetic resources, as a matter of social justice. [This is an area I want to know more about -- should check the presentations from the recent ALA conference.] Comparison to raw natural resources.

Q&A:

• Lea Shaver of Yale Law takes issue with general distrust of capitalism — thinks a lot of IP criticism is based on conservative economics (anti-monopoly).
• Is Obama administration a good opportunity to change shift to multilateralism rather than bilateral trade agreements? [Everybody wants to know about Obama.] A: You can only have a re-examination of IP policy when people trust the re-examiner. New WIPO DG is trusted party; so is Obama. Need dialogue among people who disagree. [Nice in theory, but when do we stop having "dialogue" and start mobilizing for policy change?]
• Bruce Perens: We need a fund for [free/cheap?] representation of smaller parties in IP disputes. Winning a dispute can be a Pyrrhic victory — you spend so much defending your position. Need better balance for IP, quid pro quo. Well-constructed patents are theoretical. A: IP has always been about securing rights for rightsholder, not about quid pro quo. [What about compulsory licensing for music recordings?]
• Too strong competition policy is damaging — our present antitrust law is well-balanced.

Last is Sisule Musungu of IQ Sensato. [Everybody's joking about the lack of coffee. Addicts, I tell you. But wish I had guaraná.] Title: opportunities for Obama administration and EU to do good with IP policy. More will be posted on his blog later.

• Obama: “Change has come to America”. What change is coming to patent and copyright policy? Leadership is important — we assume there’ll be good leadership from Obama on this. [Do we?] But less clear on lower positions: IP czar, USTR, etc. Also important is leadership at WIPO, other countries (e.g. Brazil, some African countries). Also needed at WHO — now seeing significant lack of leadership.
• Areas to do good: Innovation and access to medicine. Used to be: you’re either for access or for innovation. Pharma industry used to resort of insults and name-calling. Others focused on balancing. Financing is still an unresolved question. Obama should support the WHO working group on IP and their recommendations.
• Patents.
• Copyright. Had been focus on broadcasting treaty — no justification — “others have rights, therefore we have rights”. Obama should drop it — it just eats up attention that could go to more important areas (e.g. WBU treaty). Need global E&Ls (e.g. distance education).
• IP enforcement. Stop “counterfeit policymaking” — doing something major without evidence and in secret (e.g. ACTA). If there’s a legitimate interest in enforcement, why can’t we discuss it openly? Also applies to EU bilateral agreements (e.g. African, Caribbean countries — asking them to take on enforcement responsibilities even the EU doesn’t have).
• Generally, IP will be everywhere internationally, either because of forum shopping or because the issue touches on it (e.g. climate change). Should borrow WIPO’s principles: inclusiveness, focus on public domain, balancing interests of different countries and sectors. [Are these really WIPO's principles?]

Q&A:

• Is there compulsory licensing for patents (cf. copyright on sound recordings)? Is there use it or lose it for patents (cf. trademarks)? Concerned about move to protection by contract (nondisclosure). A: Compulsory licensing for patents is rarely applied.
• Michael Geist: Thanks for bringing up ACTA. Optimism about WIPO is based on a few countries like Brazil that have started to use it; but ACTA’s a closed door deal. What countries might push back on ACTA? A: We might see pushback when ACTA starts being used e.g. as a basis for technical assistance.

Final comments from panelists:

• de Aguiar Patriota: ACTA isn’t being pushed at WIPO because the developing countries would fight for their interests there — another example of forum-shopping; e.g. moved to World Customs Union, less balance of developed:developing countries, delegates aren’t negotiators but customs officials, close relationship with INTERPOL and enforcement interests — less substantive expertise. Breeds mistrust.
• Hansen: I don’t understand what the problem with ACTA is. There were always outside meetings where like-minded countries. Forum-shopping is appropriate — only applies to interested countries. [But they'll negotiate it in private first then pressure everyone else to adopt it later.] He says WIPO is an example of mistrust, so people go elsewhere [isn't it the other way around?].
• Musungu: People negotiating ACTA don’t know what they’re negotiating. ACTA won’t apply only to the countries who are negotiating it, but it would be used as a standard for other countries too. We need everybody to make their argument on the basis of evidence.

First panel’s over; will blog about the later panels in separate posts.

With this kind rhetoric, Obama might be setting up to move on campaign finance reform early in his administration…