[GOAL] Charles Oppenheim on who owns the rights to scholarly articles
The recent decision by Elsevier to start sending take down notices to sites like Academia.edu, and to individual universities, demanding that they remove self-archived papers from their web sites has sparked a debate about the copyright status of different versions of a scholarly paper. Last week, the Scholarly Communications Officer at Duke University in the US, Kevin Smith, published a blog post challenging a widely held assumption amongst OA advocates that when scholars transfer copyright in their papers they transfer only the final version of the article. This is not true, Smith argued. If correct, this would seem to have important implications for Green OA, not least because it would mean that publishers have greater control over self-archiving than OA advocates assume. However Charles Oppenheim, a UK-based copyright specialist, believes that OA advocates are correct in thinking that when an author signs a copyright assignment only the rights in the final version of the paper are transferred, and so authors retain the rights to all earlier versions of their work, certainly under UK and EU law. As such, they are free to post earlier versions of their papers on the Web. Charles Oppenheim explains his thinking here: http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/guest-post-charles-oppenheim-on-who.ht ml Richard Poynder ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Elsevier opens to text mining?
I share this news that I've read on Nature... http://www.nature.com/news/elsevier-opens-its-papers-to-text-mining-1.14659 Best regards Tessa Piazzini Responsabile del Servizio di informazione e comunicazione all'utenza Biblioteca Biomedica http://www.sba.unifi.it/biomedica Università degli studi di Firenze Largo Brambilla 3 50134 Firenze tel. 055 4271137 fax 055 4221649 e-mail: tessa.piazz...@unifi.it Blog Bibliomedica In-forma: www.bibliotecabiomedica.wordpress.com Il 04/02/2014 08:28, Richard Poynder ha scritto: Forwarding from Iryna Kuchma Date: Mon, 3 Feb 2014 16:35:25 +0200 Subject: Call for proposals to host FOSTER training events on open access, open data and open science *Training for Open Science in Europe -- get involved! *http://www.fosteropenscience.eu/training-call-2014/ *Call for proposals to host FOSTER training events on open access, open data and open science* The FOSTER project (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research, http://www.fosteropenscience.eu/) aims to support different stakeholders, especially young researchers, in practicing open access, open data sharing and open science. FOSTER will support community training actions via two annual open calls for events. The first call is issued in February 2014 for events in June -- December 2014, and the second call will be issued in October 2014 for events in 2015. Do you feel you can effectively train on open science topics? Can you make a difference? We are now inviting proposals to host FOSTER training events on open access, open data and open science to be held from June to December 2014. FOSTER will provide limited co-funding for events. With your help we want to organize both engaging and instructive events that reach out to diverse disciplinary communities and countries in the European Research Area. We are looking to support different types of training events and strategies, ranging from short (one or two-hour) workshops, through to summer schools. Some examples of the training formats and content that we would like to support: * Training targeting graduate schools in European universities, e.g. summer schools, seminars, etc. * Courses for trainers/multipliers who can carry on further training and dissemination activities within their institutions, countries and/or disciplinary communities. * Workshops for researchers participating in community/disciplinary conferences. * Training in compliance with the open access policies and rules of participation set out for Horizon 2020. * Training in integrating open access and open data principles and practices in the current research work-flow by targeting young researchers. * Training targeting one of the stakeholders -- academic staff (researchers and students), institutions (research administrators, librarians), research project managers, policy-makers and staff working in funding bodies. *FOSTER support* FOSTER will provide assistance in shaping the training programme, selecting training materials and speakers/trainers, etc. Co-funding for the events will also be provided (such as cost of the venue, materials, travel of speakers, etc.). *How to apply and a deadline* 1. Describe the training goals, target audiences, budget needed and any co-funding offered. Please fill in the application form which can be downloaded here: http://www.fosteropenscience.eu/form/training/FOSTER_Training_proposal_form.doc 2. Please submit your training application *no later than Monday, 17 March 2014* here: http://www.fosteropenscience.eu/form/training/. 3. If you have any have technical problems, you can email your training application to iryna.kuchma[@]eifl.net http://eifl.net *Who can apply?* Organisations from the European Research Area are eligible to participate. *Evaluation procedure* Funding will be granted on a competitive basis. Proposals will be selected by FOSTER based on the following criteria: * Aims and topics of the event targeting open access and open science practices, in particular in relation to publicly funded research in Horizon 2020 and national funding schemes; * Outreach potential (number of relevant stakeholders directly involved on the training event); * Potential for multiplication (institutional or disciplinary) of train the trainers programmes; * Level of engagement with Graduate Schools and embedding in standard curriculum; * National/regional diversity; * Disciplinary diversity; * Cost-efficiency. Support will be provided to at least ten training programmes for academic staff and students, research administrators and librarians, research project managers and staff working in funding bodies. Selected proposals will be notified no later than 30 April 2014. *About FOSTER * FOSTER (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research), an FP7-funded project, aims to accelerate knowledge and practice of open
[GOAL] Re: Charles Oppenheim on who owns the rights to scholarly articles
Hi all, As in all things legal, only a court decision could really settle this issue. In the meanwhile, legal commentators can weight the various arguments, drawing upon similar court decisions and legal principles. Unfortunately, neither Charles Oppenheimer nor Kevin Smith go much farther than simply stating their opposite conclusions: CO: the author transfers the copyright on the last (revised) version, but keeps the copyright on all previous versions (notably the submitted version). KS: the transfer of the copyright on the last version implies the simultaneous transfer for all previous versions, which are derivatives of one another. I really would like to read a legal discussion about this issue (but I think this forum is not the right place for it). Being no legal scholar myself, all I can say is that I find both conclusions unconvincing. I have much difficulty accepting Oppenheimer's statement that the extent of the difference between versions is irrevelant: what if the only difference is a few typos? Same for Smith's use of the notion of derivative works: it's true that an author keeps rights in all future derivative works (that is, works containing a significant part of his original work), but not obvious if or how the same reasoning can be used backwards (acquiring rights to previous versions upon transfer). However, all of this is not that important in practice, as OA advocates, including Oppenheim himself, don't recommend the so-called Harnad-Oppenheim solution anymore (archiving the pre-print with a corrigenda describing the changes made after peer-review). OA mandates are all about the final, revised version. Marc Couture ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] Re: Charles Oppenheim on who owns the rights to scholarly articles
This will surely depend on on the wording of the copyright assignment notice. Prudent authors should only sign away the rights to the final version of their paper (in this case, as edited and modified by Elsevier). This was the subversiveness in the original Harnad subversive proposal to post/archive the final version anyway. But even more prudent authors simply shouldn't sign the copyright assignment form - publishers don't need anything more than a licence to publish. Chris Chris Zielinski On 4 February 2014 13:17, Richard Poynder richard.poyn...@btinternet.comwrote: The recent decision by Elsevier to start sending take down notices to sites like Academia.edu, and to individual universities, demanding that they remove self-archived papers from their web sites has sparked a debate about the copyright status of different versions of a scholarly paper. Last week, the Scholarly Communications Officer at Duke University in the US, Kevin Smith, published a blog post challenging a widely held assumption amongst OA advocates that when scholars transfer copyright in their papers they transfer only the final version of the article. This is not true, Smith argued. If correct, this would seem to have important implications for Green OA, not least because it would mean that publishers have greater control over self-archiving than OA advocates assume. However Charles Oppenheim, a UK-based copyright specialist, believes that OA advocates are correct in thinking that when an author signs a copyright assignment only the rights in the final version of the paper are transferred, and so authors retain the rights to all earlier versions of their work, certainly under UK and EU law. As such, they are free to post earlier versions of their papers on the Web. Charles Oppenheim explains his thinking here: http://poynder.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/guest-post-charles-oppenheim-on-who.html Richard Poynder ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
[GOAL] COAR Comments on NISO's Open Access Metadata and Indicators
Dear OA community, I thought some of you may be interested in COAR's comments on NISO's draft Open Access Metadata and Indicators COAR's Comments on NISO's Open Access Metadata and Indicators The Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) supports NISO’s efforts to harmonize the expression of open access and re-use rights for publications. We strongly believe that it would be very beneficial to have a common approach to these indicators across the entire scholarly community. COAR is an international association of repository initiatives representing over 100 organizations in 35 countries on 4 continents (Asia, Europe, North America and South America). Our mission is to enhance the visibility and application of research outputs through a global network of Open Access digital repositories. COAR’s members represent an important stakeholder community, as they would be tasked with adapting to any such community standard within the context of their repositories. To that end, we have a number of specific comments that we invite the NISO working group to consider. Adopt a common vocabulary within the context of existing metadata schemas, instead of creating new metadata elements: In principal, COAR concurs that there should be a clear distinction between the expression of access status and associated rights. However, we have strong concerns with the proposal to introduce new metadata elements in order to express these concepts. Most existing metadata schemas already have elements for expressing rights (for example, the rights element in Dublin Core). Instead of introducing new metadata elements, which will be extremely onerous for the community to adopt, COAR proposes the adoption of a common vocabulary that can be implemented into elements within existing metadata schemas. COAR and other stakeholders in the repository community are already maintaining the “info:eu-repo” vocabulary[1] that could promote the use of standard vocabulary elements around open access. In addition, any described standards should also be compatible with more detailed and extensive metadata formats beyond Dublin Core (for example MODS, MARCXML or CERIF) and should be checked in this respect. Use the term “open access” instead of “free to read”: Open access is a term widely used and understood in the scholarly community and has become the standard terminology. COAR sees no value in adopting a new term. Rather a new term, free to read, will only serve to obfuscate the issue. There should be no end dates for “free to read” (or “open access”) indicator: By allocating an end date to the “free to read” element, the working group is confusing open access content with promotional material (that may be made available for a short time and then attached with a fee). This practice would go against normal and best practice of the scholarly community. Open access (free to read), by its very nature, can be embargoed for a time, but once it has been made available without a fee, cannot be put again behind a pay wall. More repository use cases should be included: There are two major options for providing open access to articles: open access journals and open access repository. The NISO recommendations fail to take into account the range of indicators that are required in the repository context. For example, in their current form, there is no way to express who the copyright holder is or distinguish between pre-prints from post-prints. Furthermore, there is a significant portion of content in repositories that lacks a URI with information about re-use rights. Current repository platforms have already implemented much more sophisticated approaches to rights expression than the ones recommended by NISO. These may have to be drastically altered if current indicators are adopted. In terms of next steps, we strongly urge the working group to consider designing a simple mapping or crosswalk that would allow repositories to join into this harmonization effort. In addition, more repository use cases should be taken into account as the recommendations are adapted and implemented, and NISO should broaden its working group to include greater representation from the repository community. Widen the scope of recommendations: End users of repositories need transparent information on the access conditions for all types of material in their collections. The NISO draft emphasizes content and scholarly works, terms that imply a wide range of content types beyond publications. However, as acknowledged by NISO (pg. 2), these indicators do not take into account the characteristics of a range research outputs including datasets. Research data is increasingly recognized as an important scholarly output, valuable on its own or in connection with publications. It is clear that the issue of access to research data is difficult to describe with a simple free-to-read tag, or similar. Taking all this in
[GOAL] Re: Charles Oppenheim on who owns the rights to scholarly articles
Chris Zielinski ziggytheb...@gmail.com wrote: But even more prudent authors simply shouldn't sign the copyright assignment form - publishers don't need anything more than a licence to publish. Good luck with that if you're anything other than a tenured professor with a track record that means where your recent papers are published won't effect funding decisions (individually or for your univesity). I tried to apply this rule myself a few years ago and after a couple of occasions of getting nowhere with the publishers decided that doing this individually was just harming my career and not having any impact on the journals. Now, I just archive and be damnedposting the author's final text (not the publisher PDF) in open depot ignoring any embargoes. If any publisher bothered to issue a take-down I'd reset to closed access (and always respond to button requests). None have so far. -- Professor Andrew A Adams a...@meiji.ac.jp Professor at Graduate School of Business Administration, and Deputy Director of the Centre for Business Information Ethics Meiji University, Tokyo, Japan http://www.a-cubed.info/ ___ GOAL mailing list GOAL@eprints.org http://mailman.ecs.soton.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/goal
