Document Repositories and the copyright issue Marc Goovaerts Hasselt University Library ODIN-PI TRAINING OSTENDE, May 2008

Disclaimer This presentation does not constitute legal advice Information Managers are not Lawyers

The copyright issue 1 Originally the author and/or his employer owns the copyright of the scientific work (e.g. an article). The copyright holder can decide how the work can be used and reused. Publishers try to protect their economic situation: When a scientific article is published, the author has to sign a contract where he transfers his copyright to the publisher. When an article is included in a repository, the autorisation of the copyright holder is necessary.

The copyright issue 2 A copyright holder can be: –The author –The employer of the author (university – research institution – government) –A publisher (Elsevier, Springer, American Chemical Society, …)

Publishers wants the exclusivity of publications Through the copyright contract the publisher has the exclusivity of an article. This article can not be published in another journal or on a website. People has to buy the journal to read the article. Scientists need to access the literature of their scientific domain, but are limited by the price barrier and the monopoly position of the publishers over these articles.

The lifecycle of an article When an author has written his article, he controls the copyright (= Preprint). If a journal accepts an article, it will be published after peer reviewing and (most of the time) after transfer of the copyright to the publisher (= Published Article). After the publication the author can still correct and adapt his article (= Postprint).

Has the publisher all the rights 1 The publisher has clearly all the rights over published articles in that specific format. But a preprint and even a postprint can be seen legally as another object. There is an opportunity for institutions to create their repository based on these pre- and postprints. Under pressure of the scientific community many publishers are changing their copyright policy and accept that pre- and/or postprints are posted on repositories.

Has the publisher all the rights 2 A survey of all the publishers and their policy is available at: –ROMEO-project of JISC –Publishers who permit self archiving: –Journals Copyright Policies

Publishers accepting self-archiving Example of the Sherpa database About 90% of all journals accept that authors put their articles as a pre- and/or a postprint (=self- archiving) on a personal or institutional website.

copyright agreement: allowing self-archiving Blackwell Publishing and Author Self-archiving Blackwell Publishing recognizes the importance of the Open Access debate for scholarly communications and its aim to deliver unrestricted access to academic research to all those who seek it. As the world’s leading society publisher, Blackwell has a responsibility to ensure that viable high quality society publishing continues to flourish. As well as making an active contribution to the OA debate, we have also made a public commitment to support Open Access models which contribute to this goal. This now includes allowing the author to retain the copyright of their Article while granting Blackwell exclusive rights to publish it. The author may also self-archive their final version of the Article on personal websites or institutional repositories, while providing a link to the definitive published version for users to refer to. See:

copyright agreement: Elsevier allows pre- and postprint Electronic Preprints Our Attitude Elsevier is liberal with respect to authors and electronic preprints. Unlike some publishers, we do not consider that a preprint of an article (including a prior version as a thesis) prior to its submission to Elsevier for consideration amounts to prior publication, which would disqualify the work from consideration for re-publication in a journal. We also do not require authors to remove electronic preprints from publicly accessible servers (including the author's own home page) once an article has been accepted for publication. Further, we have announced in May 2004 a change in policy that facilitates institutional repositories by permitting authors to revise their personal versions of their papers to reflect changes made in the peer review and editing process. This new policy permits authors to post such revised personal versions on their own web sites and the sites of their institutions, provided a link to the journal is included. Our policy however is that the final published version of the article as it appears in the journal will continue to be available only on an Elsevier site. See at:

copyright agreement: ACS exclude self-archiving American Chemical Society Learning Module: What Chemists Need to Know about Copyright 24. May I post papers I have authored on my Web site, even though ACS holds copyright? Only the title, abstract, and graphical material may be used without further permission of the ACS. You may provide a link to the paper using the Digital Object Identifier link. See: Alternative Policy: See

copyright agreement: Checking the self-archiving policy Check SHERPA/RoMEO list Check publisher web site Contact publisher directly to seek permission if situation is unclear or no information about authors’ rights are provided Full text therefore added in good faith

Authors, Publishing and Copyright Authors believe that they have to yield their copyright to the publisher, to have their article published (which is important for their career). Authors do not know that most of the publisher accept self-archiving on a personal website or institutional repository. The number of journals forbidding the preprint self-archiving is rapidly diminishing in the face of self-archiving pressure from authors in the interests of research progress (Nature, for example, has dropped it, and other journals are following).Nature Authors can be reluctant when asked to post their pre- or postprints on a repository. Authors has to be informed.

Repositories and Copyleft 1 An agreement between the institution responsible for the repository and the author is also needed. Repositories are developed to make publications accessible for the scientific community. Therefore the agreement between repository and author will be based on copyleft: The author will keep his copyright – he still can do with his work what he wants, the repository has no exclusive rights on it – while the repository receives the right to make it available on the repository.

Repositories and Copyleft 2 In fact the author has to give for every article his agreement to use the document in a repository. This can be a specific license presented during the upload procedure. A general agreement for all articles delivered to the repository is desirable. In this way authors only have to sign once for all their articles deposited in the repository: see:

Institute policy about copyright Institutes and universities can have impact on the use of copyright by their authors: –As employer they can be copyright holder too (depending on the legislation) –They can stimulate their authors not to yield their copyright without conditions or to use a copyleft policy (see also: Creative Commons). Creative Commons Every organization involved in repositories has to create a policy for creating document collections. This includes the use of a standard license agreement for the repository.

Information managers and copyright The information manager will have to stimulate the authors of the institute to deposit their articles on the repository: –Helping the author with finding out which publication and which format can be deposited (Use the Sherpa-database).Sherpa-database –Administer the repository-agreements. The information manager will have to stimulate their organization to work out: –A license policy for the repository –A copyright policy: guidelines for authors to deal with publishers.