Page:Open access and the humanities - contexts, controversies and the future.pdf/114

 at having to buy the latest edition of a work that one already owns is not a valid pedagogical reason.18 This seems to affect all those who teach in higher education and provides a good rationale for at least the more restrictive forms of open licensing that permit redistribution as a minimum of open access.

Certain other ﬁelds of endeavour within the humanities beneﬁt differently under open licensing. Peter Suber lists some of these beneﬁts as the abilities:


 * to quote long excerpts
 * to distribute full-text copies to students or colleagues
 * to burn copies on CDs for bandwidth-poor parts of the world
 * to distribute semantically tagged or otherwise enhanced (i.e. modiﬁed) versions
 * to migrate texts to new formats or media to keep them readable as technologies change
 * to create and archive copies for long-term preservation
 * to include works in a database or mashup
 * to make an audio recording of a text
 * to translate a text into another language
 * to copy a text for indexing, text mining, or other kinds of processing

all of which are impossible under most ‘fair use/dealings’ provisions.19 While it should be clear from even a cursory glance at this list that every single one of these items might be applicable to the humanities disciplines, some are especially pertinent. Of especial note are: the possibility to quote longer excerpts and include academic images; the ability to translate texts; and the ability to textmine works for digital humanities projects. The remainder of this section will be dedicated to exploring these exemplar use scenarios.

Use beyond ‘fair dealing’

One way among many of conceiving of research work in the humanities is as an argument/refutation dialectic between scholars. Under such a formulation, research work is supposed to be an ongoing effort of communicating in public to negotiate on areas of contention in order to reach a shared truth or understanding. Given that