The Paris Accord is a project of TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue to draft a statement on behalf of creative and consumer groups as to challenges facing both. A 2006 draft included a brief section on scholarly publishing. Delegates will meet this weekend in Paris to work on a next draft; the current draft text includes a significantly expanded section on scholarly publishing.
... In licensing the rights to works for publication, authors should retain sufficient rights to use works in a variety of ways, including to provide access to scholarly works from their own personal web page, or in digital repositories, ...the right to authorize others to make certain uses of the Article ... and the right to republish the work when a work is out of print. ...
The public interest will be served by shorter terms of exclusive rights for scholarly works. ...
[C]opyright laws should allow authors to authorize the republishing of works that are out of print, or the republishing of works where copyright owners cannot be located. ...
Authors and readers agree to oppose mergers that lead to excessive concentration in the area of publishing, and agree that governments and institutions that buy scholarly works should undertake measures to curb excessive pricing of scholarly works. ...
The benefits of free access to scholarly works are well documented, appreciated and frequently experienced. ...
It is essential that authors, readers, governments, universities, libraries, funders and other institutions build strong collaborative mechanisms to support open access publishing and archiving for scholarly works.
Governments, philanthropic donors, and other entities that fund research should require authors to publish in open access platforms, or place works in open archives soon after the date of initial publication.
Public libraries and universities should be resourced by governments to spend a fraction of their budgets to support open access scholarly publishing. ...
Trade agreements should include chapters on the global supply of public goods, including agreements to provide financial support for open access publishing, and to require open access to government funded research. ...
Posted by
Gavin Baker at 10/21/2009 03:01:00 PM.
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.
