Beware of License to Publish agreements: or ensuring authors retain rights to their openly published work – OA2020

“One of the key points coming out of the 16th Berlin Open Access Conference was the crucial need to fully enable author choice and author rights when publishing their research open access:

We strongly support retention of copyright and all rights therein by authors. Open access agreements with publishers should stipulate that authors only grant “limited” or “non-exclusive” licenses to publishers, and liberal Creative Commons (CC) licenses (e.g., CC BY) should be applied as the default choice. (…) author “license to publish” agreements should not limit the author’s rights in any way.

Not rarely authors are misled by the language of “License to Publish” agreements, unwittingly granting an exclusive license to all rights held in copyright to publishers, which is against the spirit of open access publishing and the licenses that support them.

In this webinar, Arjan Schalken of UKB (Netherlands) and Rich Schneider of University of California San Francisco (USA) talked about problems with current license to publish agreements and discussed strategies to prevent publishers from abusing restrictive CC licenses and ensure that authors retain all their rights and can decide how their work is disseminated and used….”

Beyond compliance: Curation as essential open science infrastructure

Abstract:  Presented October 19, 2023: “Developing New Approaches to Promote Equitable and Inclusive Implementation of Open Scholarship Policies.” Hosted by The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Scholarship.

 

Transormative Agreements: Communicating Next Phase of Library Collections

Abstract:  Open Access journals and scholarship share a new relationship as content has transitioned from a subscription commodity to rights management. As federal governments encourage and increasingly mandate sponsored research outputs be freely and widely available at the time of publication sustainability of such models led to varied ways of how OA could be made viable. Recent practices suggest successes and trials in changing the footprint of collections. Libraries accustomed to acquiring content for perpetual ownership, and those that created institutional repositories to allow authors when they didn’t retain intellectual property could distribute and repurpose their works are but examples of how collections have changed. Some disciplines expanded the preprint culture. Publishers must rethink whether to publish them after peer review. OA contributes to increased diversity as authors in developing countries and in emerging disciplines share their research findings as libraries eagerly seek this material. Disciplinary differences advance and restrict the OA marketplace and business models explore how to communicate to the next generation of authors what the future of scholarly publishing will be. Costs of knowledge creation suggest different models of transformative agreements and positions libraries and their academic affiliates with new options for submission and publication with publishers trying to offer social, economic, and sustainable incentives to maintain a competitive publishing landscape while influencing and responding to author behaviors. Instead of renewing subscriptions, many libraries seek strategies that offer how to demonstrate impact and encourage new business practices. This paper explores how libraries and publishers will communicate this evolution anticipating what changes will likely define library collections in the future. Speculating about what role transformative agreements have in libraries as they rethink the focus of collections is uncertain.

 

‘Responsible use of what?’ Navigating US university governance to approve an institutional statement on the responsible use of metrics

A slide presentation by Rachel Miles, Research Impact Coordinator at Virginia Tech University Libraries. 

 

Der Publikationsfonds für Open-Access-Monografien des Landes Brandenburg. Verlagserfahrungen und Kostentransparenz | Zenodo

From Google’s English:  “In these presentation slides, information on the publication fund for Open Access monographs of the State of Brandenburg is presented in a broken down manner. The presentation slides were used as part of a training course held on February 22nd, 2023 by the Networking and Competence Center Open Access Brandenburg (VuK). The applications for approved publications and the Open Access cost breakdowns by the publishers, which must be submitted as part of the application process, are particularly highlighted. 

The publication fund for Open Access monographs and the work of the VuK is financed by the Ministry of Science, Research and Culture of the State of Brandenburg.”

Invest in Open Infrastructure Funders Summit 2022: Summary and resources | 29 November 2022

“Between October 31 and November 4, 2022, Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) organized our first Funders Summit, where we brought together over 80 funders, budget holders, and other key stakeholders involved in the financing and resourcing of open infrastructure to collaboratively explore and discuss a shared framework for investment in open research infrastructure and test out building an alternative funding mechanism. As outlined in our strategic plan, we recognize the need for global cooperation and coordination to increase and sustain open infrastructure investment at an ecosystem-wide level. In our many conversations with stakeholders throughout the past years, we have also come to understand the desire for more evidence-based strategic guidance and recommendations for funders looking to invest more meaningfully in open infrastructure, as well as the need to test new models and interventions. In organizing this Summit, we aimed to: Go beyond the “usual suspects”, to bring together diverse stakeholders from around the world, from those representing inter-governmental organizations to those from the broader digital and/or public infrastructure space. Share key research and data to spark discussions and challenge assumptions on what to fund and how to fund. Create a safe space for experimentation, to test out an alternative means to collectively fund open infrastructure and for all participants – including IOI – to learn from the experience. Below, we share a summary of the discussions at the Summit, as well as links to recordings, slides, and other related resources. We’ll reflect on the collective fund pilot run during the Summit and key lessons we learnt in the following weeks….

The shared notes and complete recordings remain accessible to Summit participants. The links and ways to access these additional artefacts can be found on our HackMD page.” 

https://hackmd.io/@investinopen/Funders-Summit-2022