The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has released a major study, Seizing the Moment: Scientists' Authorship Rights in the Digital Age, by Mark Frankel. The study recommends new licensing agreements for scientific papers to give authors greater control over their dissemination and access. It deliberately avoids endorsing a single licensing model, but recommends a range of innovations and tracking to observe their actual effects on access. It is clear, however, on the kind of licenses it opposes: "agreements that grant access to some, but constrain sharing with others, could be contrary to the goal of increasing the availability and use of information for society's ultimate benefit." Bottom line: Scientific authors negotiating with journals now have the authority of the AAAS behind their request to retain copyright or some rights traditionally transferred to journals. (Thanks to SPARC E-News.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 7/31/2002 07:52:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
