[T]he situation regarding the reuse of an author's own articles in traditional journals post publication appears to be unsatisfactory. A large percentage of the authors surveyed (29%) do not ask permission from the publisher, and a significant percentage (19%) state that they feel limited in reusing the article in ways they would like. 4% ask permission for reusing their own article but do not always get it. In addition, asking permission is felt to be cumbersome and time-consuming....The attitudes of the authors on copyright issues in relation to traditional journal publishers are surprising: although most are involved in traditional journal publishing, only 2% prefer the transfer of copyright to the journal publisher and only 10% think that the publisher should handle permission requests to reuse the article. A large majority (71%) wants the authors to keep the copyright; an equally large majority wants to see the author handling permission requests as well. This is also true for the editorial board members of a traditional journal among the respondents....The ideal copyright situation according to most respondents looks like this: the author keeps all rights to reuse the article for educational, scholarly or commercial purposes. The others (readers, users) have the rights to reuse the article for educational or scholarly purposes, but do not have the rights to reuse article for commercial purposes.
(PS: Note that this survey of author attitudes applies to non-OA journals just as much to OA journals.)
JISC and SURF funded research on five copyright topics, and this report is just the first to appear. Still to come are the reports on publishing agreements, university copyright policies, copyright knowledge bank, and advocacy. Also see the JISC press release on the OA report.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 9/01/2005 08:35:00 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.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
