NUL Copyright and Scholarly Communication
This blog is to share information and insight on trends in scholarly communications and copyright law and how they may affect the Northwestern University community.
June 10, 2009Publishers getting wiserResearch Information reports on a presentation from the London Book Fair that publishers are less concerned with obtaining copyright from authors than they were in the past. The article says in part: In 2008, however, just 53 per cent of publishers in the survey required a copyright transfer, with over 20 per cent happy with a licence to publish. A further 6.6 per cent of publishers no longer require a written agreement at all.The presenter, John Cox, has collected data for 2003, 2005, and 2008. Good news; let's hope the trend continues! April 1, 2009Jaszi on Fair Use in the educational settingPeter Jaszi has a thoughtful new post on the ©ollectanea blog this week, "Educational fair use: a provocation": "In the years since 1841, when Joseph Story first cooked up the fair use doctrine, there have been no decided cases--that's right, no cases!--that address the legal status of core educational functions conducted in and around conventional schools." March 19, 2009MIT faculty adopt open access mandateYesterday, the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) unanimously voted to adopt an open-access policy. Read more about it at Open Access News. Open Science : Good for Research, Good for Researchers?
Now available on the web a video of the panel presentation: "Open Panelists: Jean-Claude Bradley, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Please feel free to share this with anyone you think might be March 18, 2009Interesting links on Lessig vs. Conyers
http://www.thestandard.com/news/2009/03/10/stanford-prof-and-rep-conyers-duke-it-out-huffington-post-over-open-access http://www.lessig.org/blog/2009/03/john_conyers_and_open_access.html March 17, 2009Open Access Week declared for 2009For more information, contact: Jennifer McLennan, SPARC Open Access Week declared for 2009 Popular global event extended over one week, October 19 - 23 Washington, DC - March 5, 2009 - To accommodate widespread global interest in the movement toward Open Access to scholarly research results, October 19 - 23, 2009 will mark the first international Open Access Week. The now-annual event, expanded from one day to a full week, presents an opportunity to broaden awareness and understanding of Open Access to research, including access policies from all types of research funders, within the international higher education community and the general public. Open Access Week builds on the momentum generated by the 120 campuses in 27 countries that celebrated Open Access Day in 2008. Event organizers SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for FreeCulture welcome key new contributors, who will help to enhance and expand the global reach of this popular event in 2009: eIFL.net (Electronic Information for Libraries), OASIS (the Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook); and the Open Access Directory (OAD). "eIFL.net works to make intellectual outputs of developing and transitional countries more visible and more easily accessible," added Rima Kupryte, Director of eIFL.net. "We believe that Open Access contributes to improved education, teaching, and research, and accelerates innovations and economical developments in these countries. Open Access Week is a great opportunity to promote Open Access globally." This year's program will highlight educational resources on Open Access that local hosts can use to customize their own programs to suit local audiences and time zones. OASIS will serve as the centerpiece of the 2009 program, delivering resources for every constituency and every awareness level. The Open Access Directory will again provide an index of participants on five continents, as well as their growing clearinghouse for all OA resources. Through the collaborative functionality of the two initiatives, OA videos, briefing papers, podcasts, slideshows, posters and other informative tools will be drawn from all over the Web to be highlighted during Open Access Week. The organizers will also work with registrants to develop a variety of sample program tracks, such as "Administrators' introduction to campus open-access policies and funds," "OA 101," and "Complying with the NIH public access policy" that take full advantage of available tools. Participants are invited to adapt these resources for local use, and to mark Open Access Week by hosting an event, distributing literature, blogging -- or even just wearing an Open Access t-shirt. "After the success of last year's Open Access Day, we're delighted to be co-organizing the first ever Open Access Week with our fellow collaborators, again in conjunction with the anniversary of one of our flagship journals," said Peter Jerram, CEO for the Public Library of Science. "We ask our supporters to celebrate the fifth anniversary of PLoS Medicine by spreading the word about Open Access and getting involved in the week." "There's no more certain sign of the momentum behind Open Access to research than an annual, global celebration of this scale," added Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC. "Occasions like this are the best possible way to attract attention from busy faculty members and administrators, and to demonstrate the widespread appeal of Open Access. It's SPARC's pleasure to be working with our partners to realize the event once again this year." ## Publishers allow more than authors thinkFrom the Publishing Research Consortium: Publishers' agreements are more liberal than journal authors think, but do not allow self-archiving of the published PDF The Publishing Research Consortium has published another in its series of reports: Journal Authors' Rights: perception and reality (Summary Paper 5). Using re-analysis of the recently published ALPSP report Scholarly Publishing Practice 3 (which looks at the practice of 181 publishers, representing 75% of all articles), and a new survey of 1163 authors, the report compares what publishers actually allow authors to do with the different versions of their manuscript, and what they want to do and believe they are permitted to do. For both the submitted and the accepted version of their manuscript, the majority of publishers' agreements (as calculated by the number of articles they publish) allow authors to provide copies to colleagues, to incorporate into their own works, to post to a personal or departmental website or to an institutional repository, and to use in course packs; just under 50% also permit posting to a subject repository. However, far fewer authors think they can do any of these than are in fact allowed to do so. The published PDF version is the version that authors would prefer to use for all the above purposes; again, publishers' agreements exceed authors’ expectations for providing copies to colleagues, incorporating in subsequent work, and use in course packs. However, the picture is turned on its head when it comes to self-archiving; more than half of authors think that publishers allow them to deposit the final PDF, whereas under 10% of publishers actually permit this – probably because of serious concerns about the long-term impact on subscriptions. Why do authors have such a poor understanding of publishers' agreements? The PRC concludes that publishers need to do much more to make sure that their terms are crystal clear, but also suggests that the ambiguous term 'preprint' may mislead authors, and should be dropped in favour of the recommended NISO terminology. * Full report: Sally Morris, Journal Authors' Rights: perception and reality (PRC Summary Paper 5), PRC 2009 (PDF) http://www.publishingresearch.net/documents/JournalAuthorsRights.pdf The Publishing Research Consortium (http://www.publishingresearch.net) is a group of associations and publishers, which supports global research into scholarly communication in order to enable evidence-based discussion. Our objective is to support work that is scientific and pro-scholarship. Overall, we aim to promote an understanding of the role of publishing and its impact on research and teaching. |
"...while I shall think myself bound to secure every man in the enjoyment of his copyright, one must not put manacles upon science."
-Lord Ellenborough, Cary v. Kearsley, 1803
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Jaszi on Fair Use in the educational setting MIT faculty adopt open access mandate Open Science : Good for Research, Good for Researchers? Interesting links on Lessig vs. Conyers Open Access Week declared for 2009 Publishers allow more than authors think Bill introduced in House would reverse NIH open access mandate
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