"Copyright for Researchers in Academia"

Presented by Kimberly Douglas, Director of the Sherman Fairchild Library and
Peggy Luh, Assistant Intellectual Property Counsel, Office of the Intellectual Property Counsel

Abstract

In the scholarly community researchers are active authors and readers, producers and consumers. This seminar will discuss the rights and responsibilities of these roles as governed by U.S. Copyright Law. Issues of photocopying, fair use and scholarly publisher copyright agreements will be included.

Resources

• Caltech Intellectual Property Office
  • Copyright Tutorial
  • Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (http://www.copyright.com/) Publisher founded in 1978.
  • Guidelines for Classroom Copying (http://www.publishers.org/conference/pubinfo.cfm?PublicationID=3)

U.S. Copyright Law, Library Exemptions

• Sec. 108. Limitations on exclusive rights: Reproduction by libraries and archives (http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/108.html)
• Copyright and Fair Use. (http://fairuse.stanford.edu/)
• U.S. Copyright Office. Copyright Circular 21. Reproduction of Copyrighted Works by Educators and Librarians. (http://lcweb.loc.gov/copyright/circs/circ21.pdf)

Publisher Agreements with Authors - a Sampling

Societies

• American Mathematical Society: Allows author to retain copyright. Consent to Publish. (http://www.ams.org/authors/ctp.html)
• American Physical Society: Allows author to freely distribute personally formatted (not APS formatted) version of article. Copyright transfer form. (ftp://aps.org/pub/jrnls/copy_trnsfr.pdf)
• American Society for the Advancement of Science Directorate for Science & Policy has issued a report, Seizing the moment: Scientists' authorship rights in the digital age, July 2002, in which core values in research are affirmed as they relate to authors asserting their community's interests in publishing. http://www.aaas.org/spp/sfrl/projects/epub/
  

Commercial Publishers

• Academic Press: Requires transfer of copyright and strictly prescribes what an author may do with a preprint throughout each step of the publishing process. Copyright transfer agreement. [pdf]
• Elsevier: There appears to be a choice. However, one may have to ask for the license. Transfer of copyright agreement [pdf] or Nonexclusive License agreement [pdf]

Universities

• Caltech Library System Digital Library: Permission to post and electronically distribute. Permission form

Public Library of Science (http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/)

• The Open Letter http://www.publiclibraryofscience.org/plosLetter.htm)
• Scientists Responses
  • Web sites
  • Nature Web debate: Future e-access to the primary literature (http://www.nature.com/nature/debates/e-access/index.html)
  • Science Discussion: Public archive for primary scientific literature. (http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/hottopics/plsdebate.shtml)

Other Recent Articles

• Karow, Julia. "Publish Free or Perish" Scientific American (April 23, 2001) (http://www.sciam.com/explorations/2001/042301publish/).
• Krzysztof Apt, "One more revolution to make: free scientific publishing." Communications of the ACM 44(5):25-8; (http://www.acm.org/pubs/articles/journals/cacm/2001-44-5/p25-apt/p25-apt.pdf)

Other Related Material

• Scientist efforts
  • Campaign for the Distribution of Scientific Work. (http://ethology.zool.su.se/freescience/)
  • OpCit Project. (http://opcit.eprints.org/)
• Government efforts - Access to content is controlled by publishers.
  • PubMed Central (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/)
  • PubScience. [Discontinued] (http://pubsci.osti.gov/)
• Research University and Library efforts
  • Association of Research Libraries. Create Change. (http://www.createchange.org/home.html)
  • Open Archives initiative. (http://www.openarchives.org/)