Universities and article copyright

In all the debates about copyright and intellectual property in recent years, the battle lines have tended to be drawn between librarians and publishers. This neglected what in some ways is the most important player of all, the employer. There seems little doubt that the university owns the copyright in articles, and universities are beginning seriously to turn their attention to this. Whether the article is in printed and/or electronic form probably makes no difference in law to ownership, but custom and practice are important here. A study has just been completed by the Centre for Educational Systems at Strathclyde University at the request of the Funding Councils to review current practice and benchmark the present position against future action. Higher education has turned itself into big business and as a result is beginning to contemplate more fully how to manage its assets. The total turnover in the sector now exceeds £10 billion pounds per annum. An 'average' university will have a turnover in the region of £120-150 million, less than half of which comes directly from the state. More than half of funds now come from a combination of overseas student fees, competitively tendered research grants, endowment income and intellectual property rights. This last can increasingly represent several millions of pounds and the figure is growing. Quite apart from some of the ownership questions raised below, staff structures are increasingly organized to allow some staff additional research time for the benefit of all. Universities have no other purpose than the creation, dissemination, understanding and development of knowledge, and it is inevitable that intellectual property asset management is an area of growing concern

Cyberscience and the Knowledge-Based Economy, Open Access and Trade Publishing: From Contradiction to Compatibility with Nonexclusive Copyright Licensing

Open source, open content and open access are set to fundamentally alter the conditions of knowledge production and distribution. Open source, open content and open access are also the most tangible result of the shift towards e-Science and digital networking. Yet, widespread misperceptions exist about the impact of this shift on knowledge distribution and scientific publishing. It is argued, on the one hand, that for the academy there principally is no digital dilemma surrounding copyright and there is no contradiction between open science and the knowledge-based economy if profits are made from nonexclusive rights. On the other hand, pressure for the ‘digital doubling’ of research articles in Open Access repositories (the ‘green road’) is misguided and the current model of Open Access publishing (the ‘gold road’) has not much future outside biomedicine. Commercial publishers must understand that business models based on the transfer of copyright have not much future either. Digital technology and its economics favour the severance of distribution from certification. What is required of universities and governments, scholars and publishers, is to clear the way for digital innovations in knowledge distribution and scholarly publishing by enabling the emergence of a competitive market that is based on nonexclusive rights. This requires no change in the law but merely an end to the praxis of copyright transfer and exclusive licensing. The best way forward for research organisations, universities and scientists is the adoption of standard copyright licenses that reserve some rights, namely Attribution and No Derivative Works, but otherwise will allow for the unlimited reproduction, dissemination and re-use of the research article, commercial uses included

Rethinking the British World

Copyright @ 2013 The North American Conference on British StudiesThis article rethinks the concept of the “British World” by paying close attention to the voices of those who attended the 1903 Allied Colonial Universities Conference. They identified not one, but three different kinds of British world space. Mapped, respectively, by ideas and emotions, by networks and exchange, and by the specific sites of empire, this article suggests that, in the light of criticisms the British World concept has faced, and in the context of recent scholarship on the social and material production of space, this tripartite approach might offer a useful framework for British and imperial historians interested in the history of the global

Connecting does not necessarily mean learning: Course handbooks as mediating tools in school-university partnerships

This is the author's accepted manuscript (titled "Course handbooks as mediating tools in learning to teach"). The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2011 American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education.Partnerships between schools and universities in England use course handbooks to guide student teacher learning during long field experiences. Using data from a yearlong ethnographic study of a postgraduate certificate of education programme in one English university, the function of course handbooks in mediating learning in two high school subject departments (history and modern foreign languages) is analyzed. Informed by Cultural Historical Activity Theory, the analysis focuses on the handbooks as mediating tools in the school-based teacher education activity systems. Qualitative differences in the mediating functions of the handbooks-in-use are examined and this leads to a consideration of the potential of such tools for teacher learning in school–university partnerships. Following Zeichner’s call for rethinking the relationships between schools and universities, the article argues that strong structural connections between different institutional sites do not necessarily enhance student teacher learning

A Fresh Look at Copyright on Campus

This Article reviews developments in these three areas of higher education through the lens of copyright, examining, in particular, the copyright ownership – as opposed to use – questions they present. In these emerging contexts, institutional claims to copyright often work to the detriment of students, faculty, and the public. Also harmful are campus copyright policies that are ambiguously worded or inappropriately purport to vest ownership interests in colleges and universities

Freedom to Explore: Using the Eleventh Amendment to Liberate Researchers at State Universities from Liability for Intellectual Property Infringements

In its 1999 decision in Florida Prepaid Postsecondary Education Expense Board v. College Savings Bank, the Supreme Court held that the Eleventh Amendment protected states from suit for patent infringement, effectively making state universities immune from intellectual property suits. This Article analyzes how the Florida Prepaid decision affects researchers at state universities, and how those researchers may avoid liability under existing law. It first concludes that researchers at state universities might still be subject to injunctions against future infringement. The Article next observes that individual researchers at state universities might also face personal liability for damages, but then suggests that researchers at state universities should be entitled to assert qualified immunity when they are accused of patent or copyright infringement, and thereby potentially avoid liability. It then provides a framework for applying this qualified immunity, proposing that courts should grant researchers at state universities qualified immunity when their conduct does not violate a clearly established right of the patentee or copyright holder. Whether such a violation has occurred should be analyzed in much the same way that willful infringement is analyzed. Going beyond existing law, this article proposes a counterthrust against the current trend towards diminishing the public domain, in the form of legislation granting researchers at state universities absolute immunity from liability for patent and copyright infringement. Such a grant of immunity would create in state universities a space for exploring and developing new innovations that would otherwise be blocked by the presence of intellectual property protection—a particularly acute problem in some areas, where a veritable patent thicket would necessitate that any researcher desiring to work in those areas license a prohibitive number of patents from a variety of patentees. Thus freed from concerns over patent infringement, researchers at state universities could continue their work for the benefit of the citizens of their states and the public, in keeping with the mission of state universities

Limits on the freedom to manifest one's religion in educational institutions in Uganda and the United Kingdom

This article is available open access through the publisher’s website through the link below. Copyright @ The Author 2009.This article analyzes the treatment of the freedom to manifest one's religion in educational institutions in Uganda and the United Kingdom in light of recent judicial decisions by these two states highest courts, the Supreme Court of Uganda and the House of Lords. It focuses on three questions: First, are schools and universities obliged to respect the right of students to show their religion on campus? If so, can the educational institutions question the sincerity or legitimacy of religious beliefs held by students? Second, what are the limits on the freedom to display one's religion on campus? Third, is the approach adopted by the courts in Uganda and the U.K. consistent with each state's international human rights obligations

Establishment of higher education institutions and new firm entry

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Research Policy. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2011 Elsevier B.V.The presence of universities has generally been associated with technological entrepreneurship. But what is the real impact of new universities on the levels of firm creation in a region? The present paper uses policy evaluation methodologies and longitudinal data on the establishment of higher education institutions in Portuguese municipalities for the period 1992–2002 to examine its effect on entry rates of new firms in different sectors. We find that the establishment of a new university has a positive and significant effect on subsequent levels of knowledge based firm entry in municipalities, and a negative effect on the levels of entry in other sectors, such as low-tech manufacturing

Institutional conceptualisations of teacher education as academic work in England

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Teaching and Teacher Education. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2012 Elsevier B.V.Through an analysis of job recruitment texts, and interviews with academic leaders, this article shows how the university-based teacher educator is produced as a category of academic worker in England. Focussing on the discursive processes of categorisation provides insights into how English universities conceptualise teacher education. Variations in conceptualisations are noted within and between institutions, with the teacher educator produced as a hybrid or exceptional category. Often, variations are produced around a practitioner/researcher contradiction. The article concludes by asking whether such variations and potential lack of coherence matter, in the context of national policy and funding constraints, and internationally

Higher Education and the DMCA

The nearly twenty-year history of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s safe harbor provisions has been marked by criticism from content owners, online service providers, and end users. Content owners complain about the cost of monitoring online content and sending takedown notices. Online service providers complain about the cost of receiving and processing the notices. And end users complain about their legitimate use of copyrighted works being subject to DMCA takedown. Colleges and universities have been at the forefront of this controversy; as providers of online services to their students, they have been a focus of both Congress and copyright owners. Higher education therefore provides a fitting case study of the effect of the safe harbor provisions, and particularly the nature, volume, and cost of the notice-and-takedown system. This Article presents the results of a survey of colleges and universities regarding their copyright and DMCA practices. The results expose infirmities in the administration of the DMCA system, both within the world of higher education and within the U.S. Copyright Office. Additionally, the results suggest that colleges and universities need to take better advantage of the safe harbors and correct certain fundamental misunderstandings of important and essential aspects of the DMCA