Are the COD Advisory Board members prepared to a legal

action against them ?



This reviewers comment received aftre the COD paper

submission is a closing speech for prosecution :



Integral text...



"As a summary of the history and current status of the COD, this paper

deserves publication in J. Appl. Cryst., but since it does have some

polemic aspects, perhaps it should appear in a database issue with papers

from the established databases.  The paper should be very useful - but not

in ways the authors intend. On publication, it will be very valuable to

attorneys for the established databases.  Directive 96/9/EC of the European

Parliament, and its implementation in national legislation, provide very

strong intellectual property protection for databases, and this paper (and

the web records of the COD) should provide ample justification for legal

action against the creators of the COD and shutdown of the COD.  The

Editors need to decide whether they want to become involved in such disputes.



The COD is sold to the community on false pretenses.  Once errors must be

corrected, changes must be tracked, there is a central repository, there

are maintainers and developers, data needs to be keyed in by hand,

duplicates are flagged and reviewed manually, entries are re-validated and

adjusted, and web mirrors are developed, real costs are incurred - and

these costs need to be paid by someone.  Ensuring that data published in

the COD persists as long as needed into the future also requires real expenses.



All organizations have learned that it is increasingly difficult to get

volunteers for anything.  The history of all the database organizations is

that they began as small groups of volunteers, who realized that the task

was too big for volunteers, and that organizations were needed to ensure

curation and permanence.  If the current COD volunteers are working on

their own time, that is fine, but if they are "borrowing" time funded for

other purposes, they are stealing somebody's tax dollars!  The paper as it

stands in unacceptable for publication.  Statements about where the money

comes from now and in the future are necessary.  There is no reason to

contribute to the COD if there is doubt about its permanence.



The authors do not make a case why they are wasting worldwide

crystallographic resources in duplicating effort already done.  (Never mind

the insanity of 3+ organizations - FIZ, Toth, MPDS, and ICDD - abstracting

the same inorganic structural data!)  The existing databases serve the

community well, and at a very low price.  The authors will admit that the

track records of governments at supporting scientific infrastructure of any

sort (and especially buried resources such as databases) are very poor.  I

have no confidence that any government will fund crystallographic databases

properly, and believe that a user-pays model is much better in the long

term.  The fact that the PDB is "free" is an accident of history; the

vision to create it came from a US national laboratory, and funding at a

marginal level has continued since then.  Academics (especially European

academics) seem to believe that information is free, and exhibit an

appalling ignorance of economics, and where their own resources come from.



Statements that the existing databases are "too expensive" are simply

nonsense.  The databases are supplied to academics at very low prices, and

in many countries there are national licenses, so the users actually think

of them as free!  An experimentalist who needs them has at least $250,000

worth of instrumentation, so the plea that they cannot earn a few hundred

dollars to license a database is disingenuous, at best.  The existing

database organizations have made arrangements for developing countries, so

such countries need to work with the database organizations.  Anyone who

claims that teaching institutes cannot afford the fees of the usual

databases has clearly never contacted the database organizations.  All of

them I know will make their databases available for teaching use free of

charge.  The authors simply make too many incorrect statements to let this

paper be published at it stands.



The ranges used to scan for duplicates (0.5 Ĺ on cell constants and 1.2° on

angles) are far too broad, and eliminate a great deal of potential utility

of the COD.



Reference(s) should be provided for the morphology program(s) written at

Portland State, and for the partial databases of modulated and magnetic

structures.  I additional to demonstrating little knowledge of economics

and the law, the authors do not exhibit enough professional courtesy in

their citations of existing work and resources.



The authors claim in the Conclusions to have demonstrated that an

alternative open access database is feasible.  My verdict is "not proven".

Now for the really picky bits...  There are several incorrect uses of

"it's".  It is not correct to talk of a "CIF file"; CIF is Crystallographic

Information File. "

There is no sense of a big debate about this message, if COD is so poor,

why such an agressive manner of telling it !



To scare us ? I got the use of never being scared ...



daniel



Armel Le Bail a écrit :

>

>

> Are the COD Advisory Board members prepared to a legal

> action against them ?

>

> This reviewers comment received aftre the COD paper

> submission is a closing speech for prosecution :

>

> Integral text...

>

> "As a summary of the history and current status of the COD, this paper

> deserves publication in J. Appl. Cryst., but since it does have some

> polemic aspects, perhaps it should appear in a database issue with papers

> from the established databases. The paper should be very useful - but not

> in ways the authors intend. On publication, it will be very valuable to

> attorneys for the established databases. Directive 96/9/EC of the

> European

> Parliament, and its implementation in national legislation, provide very

> strong intellectual property protection for databases, and this paper

> (and

> the web records of the COD) should provide ample justification for legal

> action against the creators of the COD and shutdown of the COD. The

> Editors need to decide whether they want to become involved in such

> disputes.

>

> The COD is sold to the community on false pretenses. Once errors must be

> corrected, changes must be tracked, there is a central repository, there

> are maintainers and developers, data needs to be keyed in by hand,

> duplicates are flagged and reviewed manually, entries are re-validated

> and

> adjusted, and web mirrors are developed, real costs are incurred - and

> these costs need to be paid by someone. Ensuring that data published in

> the COD persists as long as needed into the future also requires real

> expenses.

>

> All organizations have learned that it is increasingly difficult to get

> volunteers for anything. The history of all the database organizations is

> that they began as small groups of volunteers, who realized that the task

> was too big for volunteers, and that organizations were needed to ensure

> curation and permanence. If the current COD volunteers are working on

> their own time, that is fine, but if they are "borrowing" time funded for

> other purposes, they are stealing somebody's tax dollars! The paper as it

> stands in unacceptable for publication. Statements about where the money

> comes from now and in the future are necessary. There is no reason to

> contribute to the COD if there is doubt about its permanence.

>

> The authors do not make a case why they are wasting worldwide

> crystallographic resources in duplicating effort already done. (Never

> mind

> the insanity of 3+ organizations - FIZ, Toth, MPDS, and ICDD -

> abstracting

> the same inorganic structural data!) The existing databases serve the

> community well, and at a very low price. The authors will admit that the

> track records of governments at supporting scientific infrastructure

> of any

> sort (and especially buried resources such as databases) are very poor. I

> have no confidence that any government will fund crystallographic

> databases

> properly, and believe that a user-pays model is much better in the long

> term. The fact that the PDB is "free" is an accident of history; the

> vision to create it came from a US national laboratory, and funding at a

> marginal level has continued since then. Academics (especially European

> academics) seem to believe that information is free, and exhibit an

> appalling ignorance of economics, and where their own resources come from.

>

> Statements that the existing databases are "too expensive" are simply

> nonsense. The databases are supplied to academics at very low prices, and

> in many countries there are national licenses, so the users actually

> think

> of them as free! An experimentalist who needs them has at least $250,000

> worth of instrumentation, so the plea that they cannot earn a few hundred

> dollars to license a database is disingenuous, at best. The existing

> database organizations have made arrangements for developing

> countries, so

> such countries need to work with the database organizations. Anyone who

> claims that teaching institutes cannot afford the fees of the usual

> databases has clearly never contacted the database organizations. All of

> them I know will make their databases available for teaching use free of

> charge. The authors simply make too many incorrect statements to let this

> paper be published at it stands.

>

> The ranges used to scan for duplicates (0.5 Ĺ on cell constants and

> 1.2° on

> angles) are far too broad, and eliminate a great deal of potential

> utility

> of the COD.

>

> Reference(s) should be provided for the morphology program(s) written at

> Portland State, and for the partial databases of modulated and magnetic

> structures. I additional to demonstrating little knowledge of economics

> and the law, the authors do not exhibit enough professional courtesy in

> their citations of existing work and resources.

>

> The authors claim in the Conclusions to have demonstrated that an

> alternative open access database is feasible. My verdict is "not proven".

> Now for the really picky bits... There are several incorrect uses of

> "it's". It is not correct to talk of a "CIF file"; CIF is

> Crystallographic

> Information File. "

>

>





--



----------------------------------------------------------------------

Daniel Chateigner

Professeur, Université de Caen Basse-Normandie

Co-editor "Journal of Applied Crystallography", www.iucr.org

Editor-in-Chief "Texture, Stress and Microstructure", www.hindawi.com

----------------------------------------------------------------------

address: CRISMAT-ENSICAEN and IUT-Caen,

Université de Caen Basse-Normandie, campus 2

6, Bd. M. Juin 14050 Caen, France

tel: 33 (0)2 31 45 26 11

fax: 33 (0)2 31 95 16 00

daniel.chateigner@...

http://www.ecole.ensicaen.fr/~chateign/danielc/

----------------------------------------------------------------------

A Quantitative Texture Analysis Course:

http://qta.ecole.ensicaen.fr/

An Open Source for Crystallographic Data: the COD

http://sdpd.univ-lemans.fr/cod/

----------------------------------------------------------------------

People are strange…

Why on earth they continue drinking free fresh water while there are 100%

reliable, certified, perfectly copyrighted, protected by an army of attorneys

and reasonably priced beverages such as Coca Cola for instance?!



--- In sdpd@yahoogroups.com, Armel Le Bail <armel.le_bail@...> wrote:

>

> Are the COD Advisory Board members prepared to a legal

> action against them ?

>

> This reviewers comment received aftre the COD paper

> submission is a closing speech for prosecution :

>

> Integral text...

>

> "As a summary of the history and current status of the COD, this paper

> deserves publication in J. Appl. Cryst., but since it does have some

> polemic aspects, perhaps it should appear in a database issue with papers

> from the established databases.  The paper should be very useful - but not

> in ways the authors intend. On publication, it will be very valuable to

> attorneys for the established databases.  Directive 96/9/EC of the European

> Parliament, and its implementation in national legislation, provide very

> strong intellectual property protection for databases, and this paper (and

> the web records of the COD) should provide ample justification for legal

> action against the creators of the COD and shutdown of the COD.  The

> Editors need to decide whether they want to become involved in such disputes.

>

> The COD is sold to the community on false pretenses.  Once errors must be

> corrected, changes must be tracked, there is a central repository, there

> are maintainers and developers, data needs to be keyed in by hand,

> duplicates are flagged and reviewed manually, entries are re-validated and

> adjusted, and web mirrors are developed, real costs are incurred - and

> these costs need to be paid by someone.  Ensuring that data published in

> the COD persists as long as needed into the future also requires real

expenses.

>

> All organizations have learned that it is increasingly difficult to get

> volunteers for anything.  The history of all the database organizations is

> that they began as small groups of volunteers, who realized that the task

> was too big for volunteers, and that organizations were needed to ensure

> curation and permanence.  If the current COD volunteers are working on

> their own time, that is fine, but if they are "borrowing" time funded for

> other purposes, they are stealing somebody's tax dollars!  The paper as it

> stands in unacceptable for publication.  Statements about where the money

> comes from now and in the future are necessary.  There is no reason to

> contribute to the COD if there is doubt about its permanence.

>

> The authors do not make a case why they are wasting worldwide

> crystallographic resources in duplicating effort already done.  (Never mind

> the insanity of 3+ organizations - FIZ, Toth, MPDS, and ICDD - abstracting

> the same inorganic structural data!)  The existing databases serve the

> community well, and at a very low price.  The authors will admit that the

> track records of governments at supporting scientific infrastructure of any

> sort (and especially buried resources such as databases) are very poor.  I

> have no confidence that any government will fund crystallographic databases

> properly, and believe that a user-pays model is much better in the long

> term.  The fact that the PDB is "free" is an accident of history; the

> vision to create it came from a US national laboratory, and funding at a

> marginal level has continued since then.  Academics (especially European

> academics) seem to believe that information is free, and exhibit an

> appalling ignorance of economics, and where their own resources come from.

>

> Statements that the existing databases are "too expensive" are simply

> nonsense.  The databases are supplied to academics at very low prices, and

> in many countries there are national licenses, so the users actually think

> of them as free!  An experimentalist who needs them has at least $250,000

> worth of instrumentation, so the plea that they cannot earn a few hundred

> dollars to license a database is disingenuous, at best.  The existing

> database organizations have made arrangements for developing countries, so

> such countries need to work with the database organizations.  Anyone who

> claims that teaching institutes cannot afford the fees of the usual

> databases has clearly never contacted the database organizations.  All of

> them I know will make their databases available for teaching use free of

> charge.  The authors simply make too many incorrect statements to let this

> paper be published at it stands.

>

> The ranges used to scan for duplicates (0.5 Ĺ on cell constants and 1.2° on

> angles) are far too broad, and eliminate a great deal of potential utility

> of the COD.

>

> Reference(s) should be provided for the morphology program(s) written at

> Portland State, and for the partial databases of modulated and magnetic

> structures.  I additional to demonstrating little knowledge of economics

> and the law, the authors do not exhibit enough professional courtesy in

> their citations of existing work and resources.

>

> The authors claim in the Conclusions to have demonstrated that an

> alternative open access database is feasible.  My verdict is "not proven".

> Now for the really picky bits...  There are several incorrect uses of

> "it's".  It is not correct to talk of a "CIF file"; CIF is Crystallographic

> Information File. "

>