Academics and copyright ownership: ignorant, confused or misled?

Academics and copyright ownership: ignorant, confused or misled

Journal author rights and self-archiving: the case of Spanish journals

Contiene 10 figuras y una tablaOpen access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. The lack of clarity of publisher permissions for archiving in OA repositories affects the adoption of the green OA route. This paper explores editorial policies and elf-archiving conditions in 1,615 Spanish scholarly journals. 48% are published by university and research institutions, 25% by associations/societies, and 17% by commercial publishers; social sciences and humanities (SSH)accounted for 67% of the journals (44.5% and 22.5%, respectively) followed by health sciences (20%); 71% offered gratis access immediately after publication, and 11% after an embargo; 31% provided some mention of author rights. Self-archiving was specifi cally allowed by 65% of the journals; 52% were classified as ROMEO-blue, 12% as green and 15% as white, and 21% could not be classifi ed; 21%, mostly in SSH, used some type of Creative Commons license.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Proyecto coordinado refs. CSO2011-29503-C02-01 CSO2011-29503-C02-02.Peer reviewe

An investigation into stakeholders' approaches to copyright ownership in university-produced scholarly works and the effect on access to UK scholarship

This thesis considers the various perspectives of universities, academic staff and publishers to the copyright ownership of teaching and research outputs produced by UK universities, with a particular focus on how this affects the provision of online and/or open access to those outputs by university libraries. It presents ten papers written over a twenty year time frame that consider these issues within the context of a number of practitioner research projects and demonstrate how practices are changing over time. The papers employ a range of methodologies including questionnaire surveys, comparative design studies, interviews and content analyses. The key findings relating to research outputs (the scholarly royalty-free literature) are that rights are still mainly relinquished to academic staff by UK HEIs, although some HEIs are beginning to assert the right to re-use those works in various ways. Whilst academics are relied upon to either retain copyright or communicate their HEI s copyright policy terms to publishers, in most cases they (reluctantly) assign copyright to publishers. Publishers are increasingly allowing green open access to their scholarly works in some form, but under a growing array of restrictions and conditions principally embargo periods. Publishers terms of re-use for such works (when made explicit) are often restrictive, however most academics would be happy for their works to be re-used non-commercially as long as their moral rights remain protected. This situation creates challenges for both Institutional Repository Managers and copyright clearance staff in Libraries to manage access to, and re-use of, these outputs. The key findings relating to teaching outputs are that copyright mainly lies with HEIs although there are signs that HEIs are moving towards a shared ownership position through licensing. Academics seem to expect some degree of shared ownership, but as with research outputs, are principally concerned that their moral rights are protected. UK HEI copyright policies in this area are fledgling and do not comprehensively address either moral rights issues or other key copyright issues pertaining to OERs. Failure of universities to address these issues is impacting on the motivation of academics to share OERs

Green open access policies of scholarly journal publishers: a study of what, when, and where self-archiving is allowed

The degree to which scholarly journal articles published in subscription-based journals could be provided open access (OA) through publisher-permitted uploading to freely accessible web locations, so called green OA, is an underexplored area of research. This study combines article volume data originating from the Scopus bibliographic database with manually coded publisher policies of the 100 largest journal publishers measured by article output volume for the year 2010. Of the 1,1 million articles included in the analysis, 80.4% could be uploaded either as an accepted manuscript or publisher version to an institutional or subject repository after one year of publication. Publishers were found to be substantially more permissive with allowing accepted manuscripts on personal webpages (78.1% of articles) or in institutional repositories (79.9%) compared to subject repositories (32.8%). With previous studies suggesting realized green OA to be around 12% of total annual articles the results highlight the substantial unused potential for green OA.peerReviewe

RoMEO Studies 4: An analysis of Journal publishers' Copyright Agreements

This article is the fourth in a series of six emanating from the UK JISC-funded RoMEO Project (Rights Metadata for Open archiving). It describes an analysis of 80 scholarly journal publishers’ copyright agreements with a particular view to their effect on author self-archiving. 90% of agreements asked for copyright transfer and 69% asked for it prior to refereeing the paper. 75% asked authors to warrant that their work had not been previously published although only two explicitly stated that they viewed self-archiving as prior publication. 28.5% of agreements provided authors with no usage rights over their own paper. Although 42.5% allowed self-archiving in some format, there was no consensus on the conditions under which self-archiving could take place. The article concludes that author-publisher copyright agreements should be reconsidered by a working party representing the needs of both partie

The influence of journal publisher characteristics on open access policy trends

Examines SHERPA/RoMEO publisher Open Access (OA) policy information for 100 publishers over a thirteen year period (2004-2016) to consider whether their size, type or country (UK or US) affected the development of their OA policy over time. A publisher’s RoMEO colour code, whether they offered a Gold OA option, and the mean number of restrictions as to when, how and where papers may be self-archived, were all mapped. Kruskal Wallis tests were run to assess whether the differences between their 2004 and 2016 positions were statistically significant. Finds that the growth of Green and Gold OA policy approaches has not been evenly distributed amongst publishers with some significant differences amongst publishers of different size, types and country (UK and US). Large commercial publishers are more likely to be allocated a RoMEO colour code, but at the same time place a high volume of restrictions as to where and how authors might self-archive. Small publishers are less likely to have a RoMEO green colour code, but the volume of restrictions they place on self-archiving are minimal. University presses appear not to be engaging with either OA agenda to any considerable degree. UK and US publishers’ OA policies appear to be influenced by the national OA policy environment which, considering the global nature of the scholarly journals market, was more pronounced than might have been anticipated

What does “green” open access mean? Tracking twelve years of changes to journal publisher self-archiving policies

Traces the 12-year self-archiving policy journey of the original 107 publishers listed on the SHERPA/RoMEO Publisher Policy Database in 2004, through to 2015. Maps the RoMEO colour codes (‘green’, ‘blue’, ‘yellow’ and ‘white’) and related restrictions and conditions over time. Finds that while the volume of publishers allowing some form of self-archiving (pre-print, post-print or both) has increased by 12% over the twelve years, the volume of restrictions around how, where, and when self-archiving may take place has increased 119%, 190% and 1000% respectively. A significant positive correlation was found between the increase in self-archiving restrictions and the introduction of Gold paid open access options. Suggests that by conveying only the version of a paper that authors may self-archive, the RoMEO colour codes do not address all the key elements of the Bethesda Definition of Open Access. Compares the number of RoMEO ‘green’ publishers over time with those meeting the definition for ‘redefined green’ (allowing embargo -free deposit of the post-print in an institutional repository). Finds that RoMEO ‘green’ increased by 8% and ‘redefined green’ decreased by 35% over the 12 years. Concludes that the RoMEO colour codes no longer convey a commitment to green open access as originally intended. Calls for open access advocates, funders, institutions and authors to redefine what ‘green’ means to better reflect a publisher’s commitment to self-archiving

Journal author rights and self-archiving: the case of Spanish journals

Open access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. The lack of clarity of publisher permissions for archiving in OA repositories affects the adoption of the green OA route. This paper explores editorial policies and self-archiving conditions in 1,615 Spanish scholarly journals. 48% are published by university and research institutions, 25% by associations/societies, and 17% by commercial publishers; social sciences and humanities (SSH) accounted for 67% of the journals (44.5% and 22.5%, respectively) followed by health sciences (20%); 71% offered gratis access immediately after publication, and 11% after an embargo; 31% provided some mention of author rights. Self-archiving was specifically allowed by 65% of the journals; 52% were classified as ROMEO-blue, 12% as green and 15% as white, and 21% could not be classified; 21%, mostly in SSH, used some type of Creative Commons license

UK university policy approaches towards the copyright ownership of scholarly works and the future of open access

Purpose: Considers how the open access policy environment has developed since the RoMEO (Rights Metadata for Open Archiving) Project’s call in 2003 for universities and academics to assert joint copyright ownership of scholarly works. Investigates whether UK universities are moving towards joint copyright ownership. Design: Analyses 81 UK university copyright policies are analysed to understand what proportion make a claim over i) IP ownership of all outputs; ii) the copyright in scholarly works; iii) re-using scholarly works in specific ways; iv) approaches to moral rights. Results are cross-tabulated by policy age and mission group. Findings: Universities have not asserted their interest in scholarly works through joint ownership, leaving research funders and publishers to set open access policy. Finds an increased proportion of universities assert a generic claim to all IP (87%) relative to earlier studies. 74% of policies relinquished rights in scholarly works in favour of academic staff. 20% of policies share ownership of scholarly works through licensing. 28% of policies assert the right to reuse scholarly works in some way. 32% of policies seek to protect moral rights. Policies that ‘share’ ownership of scholarly works are more recent. The UK Scholarly Communication Licence (UK-SCL) should have an impact on this area. The reliance on individual academics to enforce a copyright policy or not to opt out of the UK-SCL could be problematic. Concludes that open access may still be best served by joint ownership of scholarly works. Originality: This the first large-scale analysis of UK university policy positions towards scholarly works. Discovers for the first time a move towards ‘shared’ ownership of scholarly works in copyright policies