Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Protecting intellectual property while enabling the widest
possible use
A less time-consuming and possibly less costly approach than acquiring
permission from the copyright owner might be to establish a clear
strategy on copyright ownership and copyright management, with
explicit provisions on how authors should proceed to safeguard public
accessibility of publicly financed collective output. Authors need to be
made aware and informed of the consequences of copyright ownership
and transfer. They should realize that they need to preserve important
rights. An institution could achieve this by decreeing that authors
should retain their rights in their relationships with publishers, either
by means of an author addendum or by making a licence that facilitates
wider distribution of their articles. An increasing number of institutions
have recently decreed such measures.
Licence to Publish
In order to establish balanced copyright management and provide
improved access to scholarly information, JISC and SURF have
developed the 'Copyright Toolkit' (SURF Foundation, undated). An
important part of the Copyright Toolkit is the 'Licence to Publish'.
When publishing under this licence in subscription-based journals,
authors do not transfer their copyright to the publisher, but retain it for
themselves. This allows authors to deposit their work in an institutional
repository or subject repository, and to distribute it further as an OA
contribution. The Licence to Publish has been created as a uniform
licence that can be accepted as a standard by universities, authors and
publishers. To make it acceptable, its preamble explicitly states that
author and publisher believe that it is in the general interest to grant
maximum access to scholarly and/or scientific works without
compromising quality or academic freedom, especially when public
resources finance such works, and that a balance should be established
between author and publisher so as to achieve this.
Underlying the Licence to Publish are several principles that express
the balance between author and publisher in the copyright
arrangement. These include retention of rights by the author and
permission for the publisher to reproduce and distribute the work, and
an optional embargo period before publication, allowing for financial
