Earlier today, Richard Van Noorden pointed out on Twitter that in this video, at about 5:40, the speaker says that “CC BY is essentially a viral licence”. I was surprised to say the least that the speaker — Sue Joshua, Director of Legal Affairs at John Wiley & Sons — would make such a basic mistake. I’d have expected a copyright lawyer to know what the term “viral licence” means. Hence this post.

Hot on the heels of the UK House of Lords’ inquiry into Open Access, the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee of the House of Commons has begun its own inquiry. This morning I submitted my own evidence. Here it is. [It’s not too late to make your own submission. It doesn’t have to be as long as this: just let the government know your attitude regarding the parts of the question that concern you most.

Here are cervical vertebrae 2-15 of Diplodocus carnegii in right lateral view, from Hatcher (1901: plate 3). Click to embiggen, and then just gaze in wonder for a while.

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There’s a lot more Sauroposeidon material these days than there used to be, thanks to the referral by D’Emic and Foreman (2012) of Paluxysaurus and Ostrom’s Cloverly material and the new Cloverly material to my favorite sauropod genus.

Michael Richmond asked an interesting question in a comment on an earlier post: That’s an interesting question, Because I’ve not really thought about it at all, I am tempted to sidestep and say “I’m only writing about journal articles”. But that would be a bit cowardly, so here are some opening thoughts.

You may remember this: {.aligncenter .size-full .wp-image-7587 loading=“lazy” attachment-id=“7587” permalink=“http://svpow.com/2013/01/31/rapetosaurus-is-just-plain-wrong/rapetosaurus-mount-at-field-museum-2/” orig-file=“https://svpow.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/rapetosaurus-mount-at-field-museum.jpg” orig-size=“2272,1704” comments-opened=“1”

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In a comment on a recent Guardian piece (not mine, but a response to it), Peter Morgan asked: Don’t worry — you can be very confident . Reputable open-access journals arrange for their content to be archived in well-trusted third-party archives such as PubMed Central and CLOCKSS. See for example PeerJ’s blog about the arrangements they’re making or this statement from PLOS ONE.

[Background for anyone who’s not been following: 1, Hiding your research behind a paywall is immoral. 2, Those who publish research behind paywalls are victims not perpetrators. 3, Is it immoral to hide your research behind a paywall?] Thank you! First of all, I’d like to offer my profound gratitude to all of you who commented on the previous article on paywall morality.

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