A local licence for Henbury! (a response to @HEPI_news)

In line with proposals published by the most august and esteemed of our Higher Education think tanks, I’ve decided to experiment with “local” licences. Whilst there is much to commend the idea of a “national” licence, such as a splendid sense of isolation and old maids cycling to communion through the morning mist, I feel aggrieved that the world class research carried out by the fine folk of Henbury, (in the north of Bristol) can be read by those as far afield as Stoke Bishop, Catbrain and even Brentry without any expectation of reciprocity.

Such a licence would allow open access to all research carried out within Henbury, within Henbury. To the knee-jerk zealots that say that this is unworkable, I offer the following response:

• Requests from IP addresses within the Henbury area will be honoured… no, hang on, what about people from Westbury on Trym who come to the Toby Carvery?
• Maybe we issue a Henbury browser certificate to all Henburyians? Would that work? Maybe a bit of a hassle to get it on to all devices, and I suppose it could be copied…
• wait, what about people who live in Henbury and then leave? Could we revoke access there?
• Or a password – but that could be shared outside Henbury…

Actually, I’ll come back to the technical implementation another time. The important think is identifying what research is conducted in Henbury…

• So that’s Dr Yeoh at number 22, that new couple in number 14, and Professor Hartson down by the co-op, ooh and Dr Akharta in that posh house up on Dragonswell Road…
• But Dr Yeoh normally publishes with Dr Martin, and she lives in Henleaze. So maybe we just allow access to half of those papers…
• … and that new couple probably wrote some of their research whilst they rented that flat in Redland, so only papers after 2015 from them…
• … and Dr Akharta is a part of that huge research project with people all over the world. That last paper of his had 60 authors from 13 countries…

I’m sure we’ll sort that out.

Anyway, the important thing is coming to an agreement with publishers. I spoke to Evil Sir and they estimate 0.006 of the papers in their journals are from Henbury, and would allow access to Henburians at £30 per paper, plus a £8000000000 admin charge and some chips with garlic mayo and chilli sauce (is that not double-dipping?)

Pearsona Nongrata, meanwhile, don’t want to enter into a local license at all. And what about those funny “open” journals that are so popular these days – they persist in showing Henburian research to the whole world. We’ll need to put a stop to that! Oh yes!

Where was I?

Yes, the economic benefits. The economic benefits to the publishing industry would be massive. Which is good, except that no publishers are based in Henbury, and most are in fact multinational. And I suppose Henbury researchers will have the opportunity to build on Henbury research, but they make reference to research from all over the world – most likely that openly licensed stuff they are all into. Even more so in those collaborative papers with people from far flung places like Sneyd Park and Clifton Village.

Local businesses will gain from all this Henbury research – but the Pet Shop on Crow Lane already work with that Dr Harby from up the top of the estate on canine digestive motility. And they found out about that research from one of those open journals.

So in conclusion, I’m right, this is a great idea, and anyone that disagrees is a zealot and wants to close down debate.

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