Open Source Licenses For Academic Work? 173
An anonymous reader writes "We're in the process of submitting a scientific paper describing some techniques for data analysis. We'll be releasing the associated code, so we're faced with choosing an appropriate license. My supervisor insists there should be a citation clause, requiring any published article that uses results of the software to cite our paper. Of course, ideally, free software shouldn't have such encumbrances, and I initially tried to talk him out of it. However, in academia, the issue of attribution and citation is very important. Also, it is not a restriction on use of the software per se, only on publication of results. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any such license. So I wondered: what do other academic Slashdotters do?"
Enforcing the license? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if you were to get such a license and then somebody published a result without citing your software (as opposed to mentioning that they used the software), how would you (or your boss) enforce it?
Would your boss really sue another academic for not citing the software?
Of course, as an academic myself, not citing the paper for some software that I used, is sloppy anyway.
Unnecessary and Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Your academic papers don't have such a licensce. They are cited because it's considered unethical not to do so. The same would apply to using your source code.
Also, your license can't actually enforce the citation clause. I mean whoever uses the code won't necessarily be the same person who writes the paper. Additionally I have some doubts that the kind of clause you are interested in would be legally enforceable.
Science works because we trust other scientists to cite our work if they use it. If we kept our work secret unless other scientists signed agreements to do so nothing would get done.
Plagiarism (Score:2, Insightful)
It's not like they can use your work without attribution in academic papers, since that would be plagiarism, right? So any specific clause that required citation would be unnecessary.
Re:Creative Commons Attribution (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't think it is possible to enforce restraints on the output of an application.
Think of the implications of Microsoft if was able to have a similar clause in Microsoft Word, Wordpad, notepad, or even Windows.
I think the best thing he can do is ask for citations/attribution.
Ask nicely. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, academia and publishing and citation is a massive reputation system. It almost entirely works on the honor system, with formal inquiries occurring (rarely) when there are major transgressions. Let's say you find or write some complicated open-source license that requires citation. The code will still be available. Unscrupulous people could still use the code and publish without citation. Do you really think you (or your supervisor) would ever bother suing them? I highly doubt it. But you would certainly spread the word that these researchers don't cite properly. You would certainly bring up this issue during peer review. This is where the real damage to them will occur.
So, my recommendation is to just skip the middle-man, and don't bother with the unconventional FOSS license (which would just confuse people who want to use the software but won't ever publish anything). Wherever you post the code, just include a prominent request (on webpage, in README, and code headers) along the lines of "If you publish any work that uses this software, please cite XXX." Most scientists would be happy to add that citation. The only ones who wouldn't are the ones who try to pass off other's work as their own: do you really think they care about respecting copyright?
This is, at least, the procedure used in my field. Publish your paper. Release the code using a standard FOSS license.. Add a citation request. Done.
BSD, MIT, etc licenses (Score:5, Insightful)
The BSD license is from UC Berkeley, the MIT license is of course from MIT, llvm is from the University of Illinois / NCSA and uses a license almost identical to the BSD license, etc. For some reason, this sort of "free as in knowledge" type license seems to be rather popular among educational institutions.
My supervisor insists there should be a citation clause, requiring any published article that uses results of the software to cite our paper.
That is a restriction on how it can be used, and I seriously doubt it is at all compatible with Open Source. It certainly wouldn't be compatible with Free-as-in-FSF software.
pointless (Score:3, Insightful)
If they use your software in a manner that, from an academic point of view, requires citation, then they are going to cite you anyway if they are honest.
If they use your software in a manner that, from an academic point of view, does not require citation, then your clause puts them in a difficult position. For example, their editor might insist the citation be removed, but then your license kicks in.
Besides, how are you going to enforce this anyway? Are you going to sue? What kind of damages and remedies are you going to put in there?
I have been there: just use a standard license. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just pick a standard OSI license, tell people who want to cite it how they can, and trust that it will work out. Don't try to force people to use your software in any peculiar way, even if that way does not seem "evil."
I asked a related question here [slashdot.org] several years ago. I have completed my schooling and released some open source software, some of which has been used and cited.
Copyright licenses generally protect holders from having others distribute their works in a way that they do not want. They do not place many restrictions on how the legally obtained work can be used. You might be able to use an end user license agreement that attempts to mandate citation & worse restrictions (such as not being able to publish software benchmarks) have certainly been imposed. Some authors even mandate registration before others can receive the source code & can then see who may be using but not citing their software. But I think this may actually be counterproductive & it certainly wouldn't be considered free software.
Academic integrity necessitates describing your work accurately in such a way that others can reproduce it. To do this, others will need to say what software they used to obtain the results they publish & they should choose to cite you. This won't always happen, but it will probably happen more frequently than you or your advisor think. It is certainly valid to write or call other academics who you know use your program and ask that they cite your paper in the future. In extreme situations, you can send a note to the editor of the journal that considers such papers that didn't cite your work & most editors will err on the side of strongly encouraging authors to add a citation.
Most other free/open source software that is used a lot in the sciences does not have a EULA of the type you subscribe, yet many are popular & are cited. They may have a FAQ entry or a mention in their README on what should be cited, but they don't try to make it legally binding.
You should ask yourself why you want to release it as free and open source software. Presumably, you hope that others will use it (obscurity is a worse threat than piracy) & maybe even to help you improve it. You also probably want to obtain some kind of academic prestige (which can come not only in the form of citation, but also from name recognition of both the program and the authors of that software). The best way to get this to happen is to write a solid piece of work that can do something that other works that cost (financially, time invested, and responsibilities involved) the same or less can't do as well and that other people want to do. Use a standard FSF/DFSG/OSI license (such as the GPL) & trust that everything else will work out. Getting quirky will discourage use of your software.
Re:Unnecessary and Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
what's wrong with priority? (Score:2, Insightful)
I publish a paper on new research, I get priority, no amount of pissing about by other people removes that priority, regardless of what may be attempted.
I am, and remain, the originator of that work, it cannot be patented by anyone else, or copyrighted, because my own work precedes that of any other. My permission must be sought, and even if given, cannot ever remove my priority.
Further developments based on it may be copyrightable by others, but this again does not remove my priority on the original research.
That's been the case for hundreds of years.
If you're wanting to ensure others cannot use your work for anything without express permission, that's a different issue, and why would you want to do that for academic research?
If its being done for business, and being financed by a company, the issue is moot, they own it.
If not, quit whining, you are either a scientist who wants to share their work openly (for which priority is fine), or a scientifically minded businessman who wants to turn a buck. Either is fine, but if your a business type, don't screw around, admit you want to make money and copyright/patent your work.
In the UK all you have to do is write your name on a work, and its copyrighted anyway, not sure about the US.
As for code? Well I've used the GPL for all my research related code, and I've had no problems.
Re:Unnecessary and Silly (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm with you. Making it a legal requirement is silly.
The other option is to add a note asking people to PLEASE cite the paper when using results derived from the program. Stick the citation in the command-line output or display it prominently (or a link to it) in the window of the program. There's nothing wrong with making such a request and it doesn't prevent the software from being considered "free". It's what I do.
If you make it easy for people to find the information needed to properly cite it, is there any legitimate reason not to do so in an academic environment? Not that I can see. It's sloppy not to say which tools you are using, and if there is a published paper describing them, it is discourteous not to cite it.
Having a proper citation makes it easy to track who is using the work (e.g., it will probably show up in the Science Citation Index [wikipedia.org]), and that makes it easier to justify to granting agencies that it is worthwhile to continue to support it financially.
Personally, I would never make such a citation manditory, but I would encourage people to do the right thing and, like I said, make it easy for them to find the correct citation information.
Your school's legal team (Score:2, Insightful)
How about you talk to the lawyers your school keeps around for this kind of stuff? Since you're going to be obligated to follow whatever their rules are anyway, you might as well defer to them now instead of after their lawsuit.
Re:Unnecessary and Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Creative Commons Attribution (Score:5, Insightful)
If you accept the basic premise of EULA's, which specify a contract, then that contract can do basically anything it likes, within the law.
Existing EULA's can and do put restraints on what you are allowed to do with an application. Consider for example 'student' versions of software, such as Matlab, Visual C++, etc, that cannot be used for commercial or research purposes. Also a lot of scientific software has a 'no commercial use' clause.
Re:Enforcing the license? (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, as an academic myself, not citing the paper for some software that I used, is sloppy anyway.
So you cite the paper for every piece of software you use (ssh, Linux, gcc, etc.)?
As a member of the networking / distributed systems community, researchers certainly don't cite all of the relevant tools they use. Testbeds (like Emulab and PlanetLab) and simulators (NS2, etc.) are cited in the results section because the reader needs to understand the methodology of experimentation. However many researchers use tools created by researchers to run their experiments (CoDeploy, PLuSH, PLMAN, Stork, etc.) and these are rarely cited because they do not alter the results.
The unfortunate reality is that citations are a metric of "credit" in the academic community and the lack of citations presents a problem for researchers who build tools.
But is it OSI Certified open source software? No. (Score:3, Insightful)
If you accept the basic premise of EULA's, which specify a contract, then that contract can do basically anything it likes, within the law.
But once you've gone that route, you've probably already given up the idea of using an OSI approved open source license.
Re:Creative Commons Attribution (Score:5, Insightful)
He wants them to attribute when they use the results of the code, not when they use the code.
Personally, I think this wrong-headed.
It seems to me that one of two cases apply: the software in question is critical to reproducing the results presented, in which case it would be mandatory to cite the software in any real peer reviewed paper. Or the software is not critical in reproducing the results, in which case the developers don't merit citation in the paper, although they may be deserving of gratitude and a pat on the pack.
For example, should people who used LaTex or Open Office to prepare printed materials used in the course of their research cite those products? Only if the particular materials produced could only be produced in precise form by that software.
Now suppose you used postscript to produce images used for vitual perception experiments. Well, you'd probably want to publish the routines, and certainly stipulate they ran on such and so a Postscript implementation, if there were any chance at all that different implementations would render those images differently.
Now, in cases where results are produced that are dependent on a particular piece of software, whether that software be proprietary, open source, or in the public domain, it is academically dishonest NOT to cite the software, in my opinion.
Publishing Ethics (Score:3, Insightful)
"...what do other academic Slashdotters do?"
I always provide attribution because it's part of the rest of the ethics of science. But for code, don't expect everyone to continue to attribute the paper itself, just the source lab and university. We use the EEG system most common to labs like ours. Everyone mentions the vendor in their work, but nobody mentions the validation papers and review of same. Similarly, everyone mentions what statistical analyses they use, but hardly anyone would even know where to begin to find the original publications validating them. If the code becomes widely accepted, expect it to become commonplace enough that the lab and university get mentioned, but not the paper.
And to be that widely accepted, you'd need to either provide ample validation in this publication, or better plan on doing a validation paper as a follow up. Enlisting similar labs for the latter would give your analysis more weight and them a worry-free pub, and everyone wins. If your analysis doesn't happen to be novel enough to warrant this (say, it's a mash up of previously known analyses) then your validation is reference of the sources, but it's not something you can expect much referencing to.
Re:Creative Commons Attribution (Score:3, Insightful)
But I guess they want citation in publications (academic paper), not just displayed in software.
this is going the opposite direction, though (Score:5, Insightful)
A clause like this is attempting to inflate citation counts beyond what would normally be expected, mainly by forcing even marginal use to result in a citation when often it wouldn't merit one (I don't cite, say, the manual for the Dell computer I use).
Re:Creative Commons Attribution (Score:4, Insightful)
If you accept the basic premise of EULA's, which specify a contract, then that contract can do basically anything it likes, within the law.
Existing EULA's can and do put restraints on what you are allowed to do with an application. Consider for example 'student' versions of software, such as Matlab, Visual C++, etc, that cannot be used for commercial or research purposes. Also a lot of scientific software has a 'no commercial use' clause.
Before I begin: IANAL. I have, however, read widely on law, particularly copyright and contract law. The following is not legal advice.
What you say is true, as far as it goes.
But you see, saying "you can use this program, as long as what you are doing falls into one of these categories" is entirely different from stating what you can do with the output of the program after you've finished using the program.
Contracts have limits on what they can achieve, and when the requirements of a contract start to seem too onerous, courts tend to decide that the contract's aims are outside of the scope of a contract.
I've never seen a relevant test, but I would expect that a contract that attempts to stifle the freedom of speech of one its parties would be very difficult to enforce, except in very specific circumstances. Such circumstances would probably include stuff like near-equality of bargaining power between the parties, which isn't the case here (where there's a producer/consumer relationship). Contracts that cannot be simply terminated without leaving behind residual obligations are harder to form, too. In this case, you can't just say, "I don't agree to that any more" and stop using the software, because you still have the results that you obtained from the software.
My suggestion to the OP is quite simply this: pick any OSS license you like. I'm fond of BSD/MIT style licenses, and they are (as you can guess by the names) popular with academic institutions, at least in the field of CS. Release the software under that license, and put a note in the documentation politely asking people publishing results obtained from the software to include a citation to the paper about it. Include suitable example references in a number of formats, so it's particularly easy to cite.
Really, people will want to provide a citation. It backs up their paper with more depth, provides additional information about the methods they have used and gives the reader more confidence in their results to know how they were derived.
Why not just trust people?
We can't choose for you (Score:3, Insightful)
It has to be worked out by you, your employer, your funding body, your university policies, and everybody's egos and lawyers. Any one of them can wind up preventing the sensible others from a sensible answer, especially federal regulatory policy on publicly funded research.
I prefer to use GPL myself, and encourage my employers to do so. It's well documented, easy to follow, and there is now a reasonable body of case law to work with. Whatever you do, don't invent your own, special, unique license. Dan Bernstein did that, and it helped keep djbdns, daemontools, and djbdns from becoming default system components in any OS distribution that I've ever worked with, despite their technical advantages over most other such tools.
Re:Enforcing the license? (Score:3, Insightful)
Another issue that no one seems to have mentioned yet is the credibility aspect. If the publications associated with a piece of software start getting enough citations to where it becomes well known and other researchers build on that software then citing it helps to give your own work a measure of credibility.
You show that your results are obtained by building on top of battle-tested, proven software that's already been vetted by others. It deflects concerns about mistakes in your basic implementation and helps referees to be able to focus on what's really new in your results.
Requiring citation not necessary (Score:2, Insightful)
Publish in Digitalcommons or Open Access Journal (Score:2, Insightful)
Code/paper distinction is artificial and unuseful. (Score:2, Insightful)