Copyright Week: public domain and open access

From 13 - 18 January, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is hosting Copyright Week. Each day is devoted to a different issue, with participating organisations contributing blog posts and encouraging online discussions on a particular theme.

Day 2 was devoted to problems of material in the public domain not actually being publicly available, and included information from the Internet Archive which hosts several projects to address that concern.
[If you haven't tried it - have a look at the WayBack Machine for websites that have otherwised disappeared. See for example the JISC-funded TrustDR project website - content has a Creative Commons licence but no longer has a publicly hosted site.]

Day 3 (15 Jan) is focussed on Open Access, with the proposal: "The results of publicly funded research should be made freely available to the public online, to be fully used by anyone, anywhere, anytime." One blog post addressing this topic comes from the Creative Commons blog, which makes the point "the fewer restrictions are put on the public’s use of materials, the more swiftly scientific progress".

Links to the continuing discussions will be captured under 6 topics at https://www.eff.org/copyrightweek

Not just acronyms: threats to sharing and public access

Several bills that threaten the ability to share content on the internet are currently being discussed in the US. I won’t pretend to understand the full legal details or legislative process, but thanks to some much better informed commentators, it is clear that PIPA/SOPA and the OPEN Acts really need to be stopped in their tracks. Here is a small selection of comments.

PIPA = ‘Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act’
SOPA = Stop Online Piracy Act
‘OPEN’ Act = Online Protection and Enforcement of Digital Trade Act


PIPA, SOPA and the OPEN Act quick reference guide by the American Library Association - Dates and main points of the Acts (thanks to @copyrightgirl for this tip)

When Even The Librarians Are Against SOPA... http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111110/00563216705/when-even-librarians-are-against-sopa.shtml

Urgent: Stop [U.S.] American censorship of the Internet https://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/30375

http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/stopped-they-must-be-on-this-all.html - reddit will have a blackout on 18 Jan in protest, and other major internet services are considering joining the boycott

UKCORR blog post and comments http://ukcorr.blogspot.com/2012/01/sopa-and-app-dumb-and-dumber-publishers.html

..and if all this is not enough to incite outrage, the US House of Representatives have also introduced the Research Works Act – a bill that will stop public access to publicly funded research…

New approach to mandating open access

A world-renowned University introduces a new development on the path towards open access, and aims to put pressure on publishers.

Princeton University has introduced a new policy that requires their researchers to retain some rights in their scholarly outputs, rather than assigning all copyright to journal publishers. The aim is to widen access to the University’s research outputs. Under the new policy, Faculty must grant the University a licence to use their publications for non-commercial purposes, including posting online. In order for them to grant this licence, authors would need to ensure there is provision for this in their copyright agreement.

See further comment in The Conversation report , headlined ‘Princeton bans academics from handing all copyright to journal publishers.’

Unlike most institutional mandates on open access, Princeton do not require their academics to post their articles to a University repository – in fact they do not currently have one. Instead they see this as a voluntary but logical extension of their policy, allowing academics to choose where they put their work as appropriate to their discipline.

With the weight of this University’s policy in place, it will be interesting to see if large publishers will bend their policies to fit. There is provision in the policy to obtain a waiver so in practice many copyright transfers will continue as before. However, this kind of mandate plants the idea that open access should be the norm, rather than at the will of publishers.

'Explosion of openness' with Creative Commons

There are now more than 400 million works available on the internet under Creative Commons licences - allowing resources such as artworks, literature, films, learning materials and research articles to be shared and reused.

The Creative Commons organisation has released The Power of Open, a new book celebrating the impact of Creative Commons (CC) and highlighting individual stories. These include the adoption of CC for the Open University's OpenLearn website for course materials and the development of the open access publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS). The Power of Open states "The core principle behind open access journals is impact" and PLoS director of publishing Mark Patterson is quoted as saying “We set out to remove all barriers to reusing research and transforming research literature into a resource for further research,”...“CC has provided a strong, consistent signal that you can use openly published research to do with what you want”

The book also gives a useful overview of CC licences and a description of the vision for a growing culture of openness.The Power of Open © 2011 Creative Commons Corporation can be downloaded here.

Authors rights to deposit in repositories

The UK Open Access Implementation Group (OAIG) have made a statement supporting the rights of authors to deposit a copy of their published work in repositories. "Do you know your publishing rights?" is a response to recent changes in the policies of some publishers.

If authors want to investigate how to retain certain rights, the JISC/SURF Copyright toolbox provides practical suggestions.

OAIG: http://www.open-access.org.uk
"The aim of the UK Open Access Implementation Group is to add value to the work of the member organisations to increase the rate at which the outputs from UK research are available on OA terms."

Balancing rights

Pushing the boundaries for Open Access while maintaining good relationships with publishers can be a tricky balancing act.

Organisations are constantly negotiating on a global scale to ensure a 'balance of rights' between stakeholders concerned with scholarly communication - the Statement of Principle published by the Research Information Network is a good example of this, describing how to take advantage of new technologies to move practice forward while recognising publishers' concerns.

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) aims to "correct imbalances in the scholarly publishing system" and has produced a briefing paper on how to change copyright transfer agreements - http://www.arl.org/sparc/bm~doc/SPARC_AuthorRights2006.pdf

The Copyright Toolbox produced by JISC and the SURF Foundation states that rights "need to be managed in a way that respects the interests of both author and publisher", in keeping with the Zwolle Principles.

The RCUK, in its position statement supporting open access, also acknowledges the need for both authors and publishers to respect this balance: "Full implementation of these requirements must be undertaken such that current copyright and licensing policies, for example embargo periods or provisions limiting the use of deposited content to non-commercial purposes, are respected by authors. The research councils' position is based on the assumption that publishers will maintain the spirit of their current policies."

We encourage our researchers to take full advantage of the benefits of making their research outputs available in Research@StAndrews:FullText, while respecting the current scholarly publishing framework.