http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/398-guid.html

I’d encourage those reviewing the study and considering creative-thesis OA to consider that writers and scientists have very different professional environments. The scientists benefit tangibly from having wider distribution; science has a citation-and-credit economy, and the more widely a scientist’s work is disseminated, the greater the chance (one would assume) that the work might be cited. The costs of free dissemination are borne by the journal publisher, who loses reprint revenue, not the scientist, who draws an institutional salary.

On the other hand, writers generally do not have institutional salaries, unless they’ve already gotten a solid publication CV and have become creative-writing professors. There is no citation/credit economy for creative writers. We often live on part-time and itinerant jobs so that we’ll have time to write, and if we’re successful we depend on copyright sales and royalties. This is why writers will regard as theft any attempt to make their theses OA.

The closest analogy may be patents, but even there some recognition that science and creative writing work differently is warranted. It is unreasonable to embargo for 20 years while waiting for a scientist to get a patent; it is not unreasonable for a novelist to spend 20 years on a novel.