Project Retain Preliminary Findings: Rights Retention, Licensing & Copyright

Did you know that over 60 European higher education institutions have policies covering the copyright of research publications and almost 45 institutions either have or will soon have rights retention policies […]

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New Project. DIAMAS, building capacity for OA diamond publishing

The institutional OA diamond publishing sector can be challenged by fragmentation; its visibility can be limited, its service of varying quality, and its sustainability is not always secure. A new European […]

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NERL Demands a Better Deal?

“NERL members are among the most prestigious and productive research institutions in the United States, with researchers at NERL-affiliated institutions producing an estimated 10-12% of the most important and impactful scholarship in the world. We are committed to leveraging our influence to achieve global sustainability, parity, and access in scholarly publishing. Ensuring a sustainable ecosystem for scholarly communications is crucial across our institutions for impact, access, and preservation. When we say we demand a better deal, we mean more than a good price. In keeping with NERL’s support for The MIT Framework for Publisher Contracts, we are committed to contracts that allow for maximum flexibility and options for researchers. As partners in the scholarly communication ecosystem, publishers and libraries share in the challenges of unprecedented health and economic crises, and our shared priority must be opening access to scholarship as our best way of supporting solutions to those crises….”

NERL Issues a Statement Demanding a Better Deal – NERL

“The NERL Consortium issued a statement, “NERL Demands a Better Deal,” articulating the values NERL will adopt in negotiating agreements with publishers. The statement, which originated in the NERL Program Council and which has generated broad support across the NERL community, outlines the following core values in service to an open, equitable, and healthy academic publishing ecosystem:

Transparency: NERL commits to transparency of the negotiating process and will share details of discussions, outcomes, and cost whenever possible to demonstrate leadership for academic libraries. We commit to demanding transparency from our vendor partners and will prioritize vendor partners who honor this commitment.
Sustainability: NERL negotiates for terms that ensure greater sustainability, pursuing opportunities to support collective infrastructure and collective ownership. We prioritize agreements that move past historical pricing models and precedent. We encourage smarter, better, and often smaller deals that do not increase cost with unrequested content while providing clear and transparent pricing models.
Equity: NERL negotiates for terms that support the rights of all researchers to participate in the scholarly communications ecosystem as knowledge creators; to do so requires partnership between libraries and publishers to eliminate barriers. We work to ensure that costs to researchers and institutions are aligned with the costs of publishing, so everyone has access to open access publishing.
 Reproducibility: NERL agreements uphold Author’s Rights, ensuring no forced copyright transfer from author to publisher, computational rights for researchers to use articles in text mining or other practices, and the right to deposit articles in institutional repositories.
Flexibility: We will encourage and prioritize NERL Agreements that incentivize emerging, efficient, and sustainable business models. We seek meaningful and creative alternatives that support the dissemination and preservation of the scholarly record. …”

How publishers can help SHERPA FACT

SHERPA FACT will interpret data from SHERPA RoMEO, JULIET and other sources to provide guidance to RCUK and Wellcome Trust funded authors on compliance with their Open Access (OA) policies and advise on the options available. Checking SHERPA FACT will be an integral part of the author compliance workflow and RCUK and the Wellcome Trust will be advising their funded authors to check SHERPA FACT for information on journal compliance and guidance on how to comply with their OA policies.

 

As part of this work we are currently reviewing and updating the policy information we hold in SHERPA RoMEO. From recent conversations with publishers we know that many have plans to amend and launch policy updates before or on 01 April, as a result we expect to receive an influx of updates to SHERPA RoMEO policies on the 1st of April which will take some time to process.

 

To help us ensure that we have current and proposed policy information ready for upload on 01 April, we would be grateful if publishers would take this opportunity to:

 

  • Visit www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo and review the policies listed against their entry and let us know of any changes required by using the ‘Suggest an Update for this Record’ button or e-mailing us on  romeo@sherpa.ac.uk
  • Lets us know the details of any Hybrid Open Access Options
  • Inform us of any proposed policy changes prior to 01 April, this information will be held under strict embargo in SHERPA RoMEO and will only be made available after the 01 April RCUK OA policy launch

 

Please note that the CRC will be closed over the Easter holidays 29th March to 2nd April, so our first working day after the 1st April will be Wednesday the 3rd April.