{"id":3659,"date":"2017-06-16T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-16T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pl-asapbio.local\/licensing\/"},"modified":"2025-03-28T21:38:18","modified_gmt":"2025-03-28T21:38:18","slug":"licensing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asapbio.org\/licensing\/","title":{"rendered":"ASAPbio launches preprint licensing task force"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every month, more and more life scientists are <\/span>choosing to post a preprint.<\/span><\/a> This decision can give scientists visibility in their field, establish priority of their work in progress, gain recognition by funding agencies, and elicit feedback to improve their manuscript.<\/span><\/p>\n

But once the decision to preprint is made, authors posting to some servers are faced with another important choice: which license to pick\u2014that is, what they will allow others to do with their work. The aggregate effect of such choices will expand or restrict the possible future benefits of preprinting.<\/span><\/p>\n

Permissive licenses, such as <\/span>CC-BY<\/span><\/a>, remove barriers to the innovative reuse of content. Such reuse could include new display tools incorporating annotation (such as <\/span>SciLite<\/span><\/a> and <\/span>SourceData<\/span><\/a>), discovery tools that excerpt passages to create summaries, archives for preservation, or use of the figures in educational materials. Restrictive licenses, on the other hand, could create barriers for reuse scenarios, such as those that create modified versions of the work or that are commercially motivated. The choice of license has implications not only for potential uses, but also for the journal that ultimately publishes the papers.<\/span><\/p>\n

The current state of preprint licensing<\/span><\/h3>\n

Some preprint servers (preprints.org and PeerJ Preprints) apply a CC-BY license by default, making all preprints full open access. Others (arXiv and bioRxiv) only require authors to grant the preprint server a license to post the article; in addition, they offer a range of creative commons licenses or the choice to retain all their rights.<\/span><\/p>\n

Presented with choices, authors do not prefer permissive licenses at <\/span>bioRxiv<\/span><\/a> or <\/span>arXiv<\/span><\/a>. However, based on <\/span>initial conversations<\/span><\/a>, we find that licensing and the ramification of different licensing are issues that are very poorly understood by the scientific community.<\/span><\/p>\n

Recently, some funders and journals have also entered the conversation. The NIH <\/span>encourages the use of CC-BY licenses<\/span><\/a> for preprints, while <\/span>some journals<\/span><\/a> have implemented policies that concern preprints posted under certain licenses, but not others.<\/span><\/p>\n

ASAPbio\u2019s Preprint Licensing Task Force<\/span><\/h3>\n

To stimulate informed conversation on the licensing of preprints, ASAPbio has established a Preprint Licensing Task Force.<\/span><\/p>\n

The goals of the task force are to:<\/span><\/p>\n