Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
six months, which is the period stipulated by many funders for the
placement in subject or institutional repositories of the results of
research they have financed.
Following on from its survey, the SURF Foundation, in consultation
with publishers and funders, is developing an adapted version of the
Licence to Publish. The aim is to introduce and promote a standard
licence acceptable to all stakeholders.
The PEER project
The lack of consensus between publishers and research communities on
authors' rights of self-archiving and on the duration of the embargo on
publication of articles deposited in repositories was one of the reasons
for the PEER (Publishing and the Ecology of European Research)
project (PEER, 2009). This joint venture between publishers and the
research community, subsidized by the European e-Content
plus
(European Commission, 2009) project, is looking into the effects of
large-scale, systematic self-archiving of authors' manuscripts on journal
viability. Among the factors being taken into consideration are the
effects on reader access, author visibility and journal viability, and on
the broader ecology of European research. In the PEER project,
publishers, funders, authors/users and libraries/repositories are co-
operating. The aim is to produce a better understanding of large-scale
deposit and, through this, to inform future policies. The project also
aims to produce models showing how traditional publishing can exist
alongside self-archiving. Last but not least, the programme should lead
to trust and mutual understanding between the parties involved.
How users can know what they can and cannot do
Authors are advised to make clear to their readers the conditions under
which their work can be reused. This is not yet common practice, and
many works that are being distributed as OA publications have not
been provided with a user licence. Further, the majority of repositories
making scholarly works available do not provide clear information to
users on how they are allowed to reuse works. The absence of a user
licence limits the possibilities for reuse to those legally warranted. An
author can choose between different types of licence to inform users
