Partnering on Copyright

Overview

The 'Publishing Agreements' project further develops and refines the already existing web-based © toolkit, which was presented at the Third Zwolle conference held in February 2004, and which can assist stakeholders in creating balanced publishing agreements. Publishing agreements are an important step in achieving a balance of rights in the process of scholarly communication. The publishing agreement determines the rights which are important for the stakeholders involved. It is, after all, the publishing agreement which allows or doesn’t allow authors to use their articles for various purposes like teaching or research or to mount their intellectual output in an Institutional Repository (IR). Therefore, the development of a limited number of balanced model publishing agreements , different ‘terms and clauses’, provisions, good practices, and addenda to agreements is important and so have a prominent place in the JISC-SURF collaboration.

Project Outcomes

This project aims to assist in the creation of balanced publishing agreements. The first deliverable is a list of 'elementary rights' academic authors and publishers should hold or acquire, which already have a high level of consensus among the stakeholders involved.

This list of 'elementary rights' subsequently leads to the creation of model balanced publishing agreements, which are dependent on whether an author wants to transfer/assign his rights or to give the publisher a (temporary) license. In the model agreements, certain minimum rights for each stakeholder involved are laid out. Also suitable ‘terms and clauses’, good practices and addenda to agreements are to be created, which can then be incorporated into publishing agreements. These deliverables underlie the web-based copyright toolkit, which can be used in the UK as well as in the Netherlands.

By using the toolkit the stakeholders can determine which rights are necessary for them, thereby contributing to a more balanced process of scholarly communication.

Project Partners

Project Management

Project work undertaken by: Wilma Mossink (SURF-DiRECt Community) & Ralph Weedon (JISC Legal).