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What is copyright?
Copyright is traditionally associated with exploitation rights (the reuse, republication etc. of the work). These are often transferred to the publisher, significantly reducing the scope of the author or readers to reuse the research output in other contexts, such as in textbooks or translation into another language. The copyright of research articles generally rests with the academic author himself/herself.
The principles of OA move the goalposts on copyright issues, and the establishment of an IR provides an opportunity to renegotiate with publishers over the rights to disseminate research more widely. Rights management should be formally set out, enshrined in policies and procedures, and communicated to all stakeholders in your institution.
Authors' basic rights
There are a number of basic rights that the author should hold in the scholarly publishing process, whether the publishing model is traditional or Open Access, and these should be represented in any publishing agreement; by protecting the author's rights, you allow your institution the opportunity to provide maximum access to the research being produced. Such rights might range from the right to reuse the work in the classroom, or in an e-learning environment, to the right to deposit a copy in the IR. Ensuring your academics’ key needs are represented in author-publisher agreements will therefore also help ensure the whole institution benefits from the research it produces. These needs and rights give you maximum control over how your institution’s work is accessed, used and reused (e.g., through your IR), and need to be borne in mind whenever agreements are negotiated with a publisher, who will also have a set of rights they will wish to preserve. A full list of the author’s and publisher’s potential basic rights were drawn up as part of the ‘Publishing Agreements’ project and can be found here.
The Zwolle Principles: balancing divergent rights
The sets of rights of both authors and publishers need to be carefully balanced. It is in the interests of all stakeholders to have an effective and fair scholarly communication system and the rights and requirements of academics, publishers and HEIs should be reconciled and represented in publishing agreements and in self-archiving policies. To encourage this balance and mutual understanding the so-called Zwolle Principles were created to help achieve maximum access to scholarly research without compromising on quality or denying the actual costs involved in publishing. Following these principles will help encourage the creation and implementation of good copyright practices in the pursuit of wider dissemination and use of research, which is of benefit to everyone.
A publishing agreement is a document which formally sets out the rights and responsibilities of both the publisher and the original copyright owner of the work.
To add next - outputs of WP2 ‘University Copyright Policies’, e.g. What are good practices and the issues involved in institutional copyright policy, set of practical guidelines suitable for HEIs.
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