Hello, I’m attempting to publish one of my PhD chapters with PLOS ONE, and they have strict requirements about copyright and permissions for figures that include maps. I plotted the shoreline of St. Croix, USVI using GMT resources because I found it to be much cleaner and more detailed than any other resources I could find. I’d like to request permission to publish those figures in a research article with PLOS ONE.
PLOS ONE told me that the copyright license under which the shoreline imagery is published (the GNU Lesser Public License) is incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license under which PLOS is published, and so they cannot republish this imagery without explicit permission from the copyright holder. They provided me with a form to obtain permission from the owner, so if there’s someone I could email this too, that’d be super helpful.
I’d be happy to share my figures containing GMT shorelines (they are currently unpublished anywhere) and I’d also be happy to share the whole manuscript if that’s preferred. I also cited the data in the acknowledgements and data availability section of my manuscript.
Thank you!
I would assume there is a misunderstanding. PLOS ONE seemed to assume you are going to include verbatim copies of your artwork (imagery as they call it, that is, figures, maps, plots) taken directly from the thesis file and that the thesis file is licensed under LGPL. I don’t think they care about the data. I would also assume GMT coastline data project license have nothing to do with graphical artwork that is created based on it.
Is your thesis licensed under the GNU Lesser Public License? Under any license at all? Is it not public domain?
Are you going to reproduce exact 100% verbatim copies of your thesis plots? Or are you actually going to modify anything, like size, maybe color, title, any other parts, to better suit the new publication? Then you are going to produce new plots (inspired by your previous work but it does not imply any limitations). It will be a new separate artwork (figures) and your thesis and thesis license is no longer relevant.
Like I could read your thesis, see the figures and make my own versions based on GMT coastline data and publish it without asking any permission, citing your thesis as the source of inspiration. That would not imply any limitations.
Thanks for your response- They aren’t concerned that my figures are the same in my thesis as in the research article. I believe that they’re concerned that they cannot publish map figures from data sources that don’t fit under their Creative Commons license.
Instead of trying to persuade GMT folk or PLOS ONE personnel, you could make new plots using OSM coastlines, like in GMT illustration gallery Example 51
Or just tell PLOS ONE you replaced GMT coastline data to OSM to avoid wasting time and effort.
Maybe learning how to use OSM coastline worth it after all. But it’s a very hi-res coastline, resolution might need to be degraded for plotting large regions. This appears possible in GMT if needed, using gmtsimplify, GMT illustration gallery Example 40
1. USING OSM DATA
1.1. What license applies to the use of the OSM Data?
OSM data is made available under the Open Database Licence version 1.0 (the ODbL).
1.2. Who can use OSM Data?
Anyone can use OSM data. You do not need to register with the OpenStreetMap Project.
1.3. What can I do with the OSM Data?
The ODbL allows you to use the OSM data for any purpose you like. This includes personal, community, educational, commercial or governmental.
GSHHG: Global Self-consistent Hierarchical High-resolution Geography
GitHub release (latest by date) GitHub
This repository contains the data and scripts that maintain and build the gmt-gshhg package used by GMT.
...
License
The project is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License.
Nobody seems to care that LGPL does not really apply to data, only to code (as far as I can understand). At least not the publishers like PLOS ONE as the topic suggests.
This is a problem.
Personally I believe this is a non-issue, and I have no problems skipping attribution of GMT coastline data to avoid getting into stupid discussions with the publishing houses. But this is not good either and can be easily avoided by explicitly specifying that GMT coastline is some sort of public domain data.
yes sure they can. However the way this issue is described in the topic, to me it appears to be indicative of some PLOS ONE policy that they don’t publish stuff with licenses incompatible with their selected CC BY 4.0.
Approximately the same thing as many governmental funding agencies started to demand publications in open access journals.
Or that the PLOS ONE personnel who delivered that message to the topic starter was totally wrong and the topic starter needs to convince them they are wrong.
Thank you all for your suggestions. I’ve tried exploring other mapping resources but they don’t fit the Creative Commons license either… though I haven’t tried OSM, so I could ask if that would be acceptable.
I find it extra confusing because there are many articles published in PLOS that use the GSHHG shoreline (which is the same one I used) and they simply cited the data source in their article just as I did.
According to the editor, I either need to make a map using resources that have a Creative Commons license (and I cannot find any with high resolution of Caribbean Islands), or I need to obtain permission from the copyright owner on an official PLOS form provided by the editor. Unfortunately, the original creator of this data passed away earlier this year, so I’m not sure who to ask.
Using the data to create maps for publishing of academic research articles is allowed. Thus you can use the maps you made with GADM data for figures in articles published by PLoS, Springer Nature, Elsevier, MDPI, etc.
If I contact him, I will request this! But I just wrote an email back to the editor explaining that this all seems like a misunderstanding, and they’re reviewing it again. If they come back a third time and say I still need permission, then I will try emailing Walter Smith.