Nature’s response to IsItOpenData
Thanks to Nature for responding to our IsItOpenData enquiry. The enquiry is archived at the IsItOpenData website, and the response is appended below.
All three publishers to whom we sent enquiries in late August have now responded: BMC, PLoS and Nature. We appreciate the time they have taken to make their policies clear.
Many thanks for your email and, as a commercial publisher interested in ensuring scientific data is easily accessible and the rights of the author are preserved, we are happy to respond to your questions.
Where we have been unsure of your terminology we have referred back to the statement of the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) and the International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers (STM) (http://www.alpsp.org/ForceDownload.asp?id=129) when providing our answers:
1) YES – Supplementary Information is published under a non-exclusive license across all Nature-branded journals.
2) YES – Providing it is only data extracted and not text, such as figure legends.
3) YES – Providing it is only data extracted and not text.
4) YES – If substantial data is taken from a paper we believe there is a potential obligation on the extractor to request permission from the author (of the paper) about the re-use of their data, and a requirement to credit the original author.
5) YES – If substantial data is taken from a paper we believe there is a potential obligation on the extractor to request permission from the author (of the paper) about the re-use of their data, and a requirement to credit the original author.
6) YES/NO – Whilst all data in papers published under a CC license is available for downloading and reuse, data in subscription content (generally available via a Site License) is not. This is due to the significant traffic nature.com receives 24 hours a day, seven days a week from millions of scientists around the globe. If a user wishes to download data from content on nature.com, in a systematic way, please contact Jessica Rutt at NPG (j.rutt@nature.com). NPG specifically permits downloading and mining of data in archived NPG content on UKPMC.
7) YES – this is something we would consider if our answers to point 6 do not preclude us.
I hope this helps but if you need any more information please do not hesitate to contact me.
Jason
Dr Jason Wilde CPhys
Publishing Director
Nature Publishing Group
About that YES on 4 (“May the extracted data be used as Open Data [1,2] without discrimination against users, groups, or fields of endeavor?”) and 5 (“May users expose the extracted data as Open Data [1,2], in a manner consistent with the Panton Principles (https://pantonprinciples.org/)? Specifically, may they expose the extracted data on the internet under a Public Domain, PDDL (http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/pddl/) or CC0 waiver (http://wiki.creativecommons.org/CC0)?”).
I am wondering if that answer should not really be a NO. That is, they clearly write that if you extract significant data, you still require permisson. That does not sound like Open Data to me.
Do you agree with Nature that their answer is really YES, instead of NO or YES/NO? If so, what arguments would you give for that? If not, why do you think their answer does not open the doors for discrimination against users, groups, or fields of endeavor?