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title: "OA books being reprinted under CC BY license"
layout: post
image: 
    feature: oa.png
---
I have to admit, today, that I was wrong about the risk of others reprinting open-access monographs produced under a Creative Commons license. An outfit called "Saint Philip Street Press" has reprinted (on demand) the entire catalogues of Open Book Publishers, Ubiquity Press, UCL Press, and others. Here's my [Literature Against Criticism](https://www.bookdepository.com/Literature-Against-Criticism-Martin-Paul-Eve/9781013288265?ref=grid-view&qid=1614677493139&sr=1-3) for sale, for instance. In any case, this poses some threat to OA publishers who rely on a revenue stream from selling the print copies of their books.

A few mitigating points/remedies:

1. Perhaps the -NC license should be considered, after all. Again, I admit that I may have been overly naive/trusting/hopeful in previously spurning such a license. The world is such a disappointment.
2. That said, it's _much cheaper_ to buy the book from [Open Book Publishers](https://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/530). Even a cursory search would reveal this, say, [on Amazon](https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=literature+against+criticism&ref=nb_sb_noss).
3. It is possible for authors to contact the publisher -- I am just working on getting their contact details -- and insist that attribution is removed. This would be a lot of work for them and would also mean that they will have to reformat the book; take down its metadata etc. We could formulate a systematic approach to such troublesome takedowns to make it not worth their while.
4. I am not sure that I, personally, care that much as an author (although I know that others certainly will). It's more the potential for undermining, say, OBP that worries me here.
5. There are those who will argue that this is a _feature_ of OA books, not a _bug_. I understand this argument. It could be good for keeping old titles in print if abandoned by the press, for instance. However, I worry about the reputational damage this may do in the eyes of humanities authors who were just coming around to OA books. The copies are not high-quality reprints. They have third-party images etc. removed.

I suppose that the real author decision here, now, is: if you go for the most liberal licenses, you have to accept that this may happen. If you are not OK with this, then this license appears too liberal. I will probably still opt for CC BY-SA where I can, but others will be dissuaded.