Harvard’s open access (OA) policy, which has become a template for many institutional OA policies, intrinsically undermines the rights of scholars, researchers, authors and university staff, and it adulterates a principal tenet of open access, namely, that authors should control the intellectual property rights to their material. Assessing the implications of Harvard’s open access policy in the light of Peter Suber’s landmark book, Open Access, as well as resources from the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and Title 17 of the United States Code (USC), this article uncovers an intellectual ‘landgrab’ by universities that may at times not work in the interest of the author or creator of research and weakens the appeal of open access.
Category Archives: oa.addenda
Author Rights & the SPARC Author Addendum
“When you decide to publish an article in a peer-reviewed journal, you own the full copyrights to that article. If you publish in an open access journal, you retain your full copyrights. However, if you choose to publish in a traditional subscription access journal, you will be required to sign a form transferring some – or all – of your copyrights to that publisher.
That doesn’t have to be the end of the story. When you sign a copyright transfer form, you can decide which rights you want to keep, and which you want to give away. Understanding the effect of fully exercising the rights you have as an author can help you make educated choices about the publishing outlets you choose to submit work to. SPARC provides a full set of resources to help you learn more about your rights as an author, and the tools that are available to help you effectively manage your copyrights….”
ACADEMIC AUTHOR COPYRIGHT LOSS— IMPACTS AND REMEDIES
Abstract: One of the cornerstones of scientific advancement is academic, peer-review publishing. Published articles are critical to advancing scientific research and disseminating verified results to other scientists and the public. Despite its importance, the copyright issues surrounding publishing are poorly understood by many of its scientific authors. In an effort to demystify and empower scientific authors, this Note discusses copyright ownership during the peer-review publishing process, loss of author copyright through publishing agreements, and remedies authors may employ to protect and distribute their works.
New template institutional archiving agreement launched
“A template for agreements between academic publishers and universities for the deposit of metadata relating to journal articles has been launched today by the Publishers Association following input from members of the PA’s Academic, Professional and Learning Publishers Council.
The template is designed to provide those negotiating such agreements with a framework for discussions between publishers and staff in the university and library sectors. It relates to the deposit of academic research into institutional archives and is designed to help address common workflow issues. It is available to all those engaged in academic publishing, irrespective of whether or not they are a member of the Publishers Association. …”
Making Indian science more open and accessible
Interview of an Open Access advocate from India, Sridhar Gutam by the IndiaBioscience team on the status of Open Access in India.
Making Indian science more open and accessible
Interview of an Open Access advocate from India, Sridhar Gutam by the IndiaBioscience team on the status of Open Access in India.
Making Indian science more open and accessible – IndiaBioscience
“Sridhar Gutam is a senior scientist at ICAR-Indian Institute of Horticultural Research, Bengaluru. He is also the convenor of Open access India, an organisation advocating open access, open data and open education in India….”
Leveraging the License: Part I – Scholarly Communication
“The Scholarly Communication Department attended several orientations and events for new faculty over the last few weeks. During these events, I have had the privilege of chatting informally with a faculty members about IU Bloomington’s new Open Access Policy. Faculty have a lot of questions about how the policy works, what kinds of scholarship the policy applies to, and author processing charges (or APCs).
The question that has been most difficult to explain quickly and effectively in these informal conversations has been about how faculty can ‘leverage’ or utilize the license established by the Open Access policy when negotiating with potential publishers. This post will explain in more detail what ‘leveraging the license’ means and clarify when in the publishing process faculty should attempt to negotiate. This post on leveraging the OA policy license is part one of a two-part series. The second post will explore the OA policy license in more detail, particularly when it concerns utilizing third-party content.”