Importance of Public Access for Patient Advocates
The Alliance for Taxpayer Access has made available a Webcast in which two speakers address the importance of public access to federally-funded research outcomes for patient advocates:
In this brief (30-minute) and informative event, Pat Furlong (Founding President and CEO of Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy) and joins Heather Joseph (Executive Director of SPARC and administrator of the ATA) to review:
- What is public access and why is it important to patient advocates?
- What is the Alliance for Taxpayer Access?
- Current public access legislative initiatives and their status
- How you can help make public access to publicly funded research a reality
Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography, Version 69
Version 69 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography is now online:
The Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography (SEPB) presents selected English-language articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet. Most sources have been published between 1990 and the present; however, a limited number of key sources published prior to 1990 are also included. Where possible, links are provided to sources that are freely available on the Internet.
SEPB is searchable with Boolean operators. Updates on new resources are posted on the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog. The 2006 annual edition of SEPB is also available.
Keep Your Copyrights
Keep Your Copyrights is a new Web site launched by Columbia Law School that aims at helping authors and creators in the United States with retaining and managing their rights:
Today, too many creators take a passive attitude toward their copyrights. The matter seems complex, and publishers or distributors may tell you that everyone does it their way, or that giving up copyrights is standard practice. But giving up your rights under copyright is a decision, not a default option. If you stand passively by, you may over the course of a long creative career produce a large body of work, most of which is owned and controlled by other people, whose interests and yours may diverge.
We encourage a more proactive attitude toward copyright management. We encourage creators to understand that you start with all the rights, and that you should actively decide what you want to do with them. Your copyright in fact consists of multiple rights, and you can grant one right (or part of one right) without giving away the others. …
The site offers information about copyrights and contracts. It also provides a glossary of legal and business terms.
Background on Anti-Public Access Campaign
There have been follow-up reports on the recent PRISM anti-public access campaign. One of them is this post on the Open Access News blog. Dr. Peter Suber provides the background information about and a related proposal for the campaign.
e-Social Science Conference 2007
The Third International Conference on e-Social Science will be held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on October 7-9, 2007. It aims at facilitating an exchange of ideas and experiences about how to make the best use of the cyberinfrastructure to benefit Social Science research. Click here for details on individual sessions and papers.
Fair Use in U.S. Economy
The Computer & Communications Industry Association has released a report (Fair Use in the U.S. Economy) that points out that "fair use industries" accounted for $4.5 trillion in revenue in the U.S. economy in 2006. From the report’s executive summary:
While policymakers pay much attention to copyrights, exceptions to copyright protection also promote innovation and are a major catalyst of U.S. economic growth. Specific exceptions to copyright protection under U.S. and international law, generally classified under the broad heading of Fair Use, are vital to many industries and stimulate growth across the economy. Companies benefiting from fair use generate substantial revenue, employ millions of workers, and, in 2006, represented one-sixth of total U.S. GDP.
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Industries that depend on or benefit from fair use include:
- manufacturers of consumer devices that allow individual copying of copyrighted programming;
- educational institutions;
- software developers; and
- internet search and web hosting providers.
Publishers’ Anti-Public Access Campaign Backfired
A recent public relations campaign (PRISM), which was sponsored by the Association of American Publishers, argued against public access to the findings of federally funded research. In response, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has issued a statement that sets the record straight:
About peer review
The peer review system is rightly seen as the central contribution journals have made to science, however neither public access policies to federally funded research or open access journals alter the traditional practice of peer review.
About government censorship
Current NIH policy (http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-05-022.html) calls for authors to deposit their versions of articles in PubMed Central. These articles will be freely accessible unless temporarily embargoed for up to one year by their authors. This policy in no way affects the published versions of articles that are held in libraries.
About publishers’ intellectual property
NIH’s public access policy calls for authors to deposit the final electronic manuscript after peer review and acceptance for publication. Authors deposit works and may set an embargo period that can serve to protect publisher revenues. However, no proposal has been made either to force publishers to deposit their own published versions of articles or to deposit works that they have published in the past. No existing or proposed policy has extended beyond authors’ works that are directly funded in some way with government dollars.
In July, ARL and the American Library Association jointly issued a statement that explained why mandatory public access to federally funded research does not violate copyright obligations.
There have been reports that the publishers’ campaign has drawn a great deal of criticism. Among them is a Chronicle of Higher Education article (Project of publishers’ association is criticized by some of its members and open-access advocates) about the negative reactions to the campaign. There is also an online report (Critics say publishers’ PRISM initiative causing more discord than discussion) available from Library Journal.
Copyright, Fair Use, and Cultural Commons
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has made available a Webcast of a panel discussion: Copyright, Fair Use, and the Cultural Commons:
Moderator William Uricchio sets the scene for panelists’ discussion of current copyright wars with a brief historical overview of copyright protection. In 1790, when news traveled by horse and carriage, copyright protection was good for 14 years. Today, when a digital, networked society enables instant transmission of data, protection lasts 70-plus years. Uricchio notes, “Bizarrely, the faster information circulates, the longer we’re extending copyright protection. It seems totally at odds with where our constitution framers and case law emerged from.”
Publishers’ Policies for Open Access Publishing Option
A scientist at the University of Cambridge recently voiced concerns over publishers’ lack of clarity about their "author pays" business model. From the news report (Scientist accuses OA policies of being unclear):
Scientist Peter Murray-Rust has blasted publishers for “a systemic failure to embrace open access”. He warns that anyone who purchases author-pays Open Access content may end up paying a lot of money for something not labelled as Open Access.
…
“I am a scientist who believes that there is a major advance taking place with data driven science, using data as a primary route to understanding. I believe all scientific data should be published openly, relying on the BOAI declaration which implies that any data associated with open access should be openly and freely used without any permission,” he told IWR.
Public Access to Health Research Findings in Canada
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) announced today that its grant recipients will have to make their peer-reviewed research articles freely available online within six months of publication. From the press release:
"Timely and unrestricted access to research findings is a defining feature of science, and is essential for advancing knowledge and accelerating our understanding of human health and disease," stated Dr. Alan Bernstein, President of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. "With the development of the internet it is now feasible to disseminate globally and easily the results of research that we fund. As a publicly-funded organization, we have a responsibility to ensure that new advances in health research are available to those who need it and can use it - researchers world-wide, the public and policy makers."
Click here for CIHR’s new policy on access to research outputs.
