Law Commons^™

Maximizing Your Faculty's Scholarly Impact: Techniques To Increase Findability, Caroline L. Osborne, Carol A. Watson, Thomas J. Striepe

Caroline L. Osborne

Redefining Open Access For The Legal Information Market, James G. Milles

James G. Milles

The open access movement in legal scholarship, inasmuch as it is driven within the law library community over concerns about the rising cost of legal information, fails to address - and in fact diverts resources from - the real problem facing law libraries today: the soaring costs of nonscholarly, commercially published, practitioner-oriented legal publications. The current system of legal scholarly publishing - in student-edited journals and without meaningful peer review - does not face the pressures to increase prices common in the science and health disciplines. One solution to this problem is for law schools to redirect some of their …

Worldwide Access To Foreign Law: International & National Developments Toward Digital Authentication, Claire M. Germain

Claire Germain

This paper was originally presented at the World Library & Information Congress of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), Helsinki, Finland, August 2012, as part of a panel on Promoting Global Access to Law: Developing an Open Access Index for Official Authenticated Legal Information, Part II. Europe. http://conference.ifla.org/ifla78/programme-and-proceedings-day/2012-08-14. It focuses on worldwide access to the official word of the law, specifically to statutes, codes, regulations, court decisions, and international agreements in different foreign countries. The importance of improving global access to foreign law was highlighted at a 2012 joint European Commission/Hague Conference on Private International Law, with …

Welcome To Dignity, Donna M. Hughes Dr.

Donna M. Hughes

No abstract provided.

The Open Access Advantage For American Law Reviews, Carol Watson, James M. Donovan, Caroline Osborne

Caroline L. Osborne

Open access within legal academia provides a case study for the effective use of digital formats to promote scholarship. The presenters review the background historical developments in this field, and consider the benefits and rationales for providing open access to legal scholarship, including the special faculty concerns arising from SSRN and its relationship to the institutional repository. Results from the presenters’ recent empirical study of the citation advantage for open access scholarship in American law reviews will be discussed and placed in broader context of the benefits of open access scholarship.

The Open Access Advantage For American Law Reviews, Carol A. Watson, James M. Donovan, Caroline Osborne

Caroline L. Osborne

Open access legal scholarship generates a prolific discussion, but few empirical details have been available to describe the scholarly impact of providing unrestricted access to law review articles. The present project ills this gap with specific findings on what authors and law reviews can expect.

Articles available in open access formats enjoy an advantage in citation by subsequent law review works of 53%. For every two citations an article would otherwise receive, it can expect a third when made freely available on the Internet. This benefit is not uniformly spread through the law school tiers. Higher tier journals experience a …

Copyright In An Era Of Information Overload: Toward The Privileging Of Categorizers, Frank Pasquale

Frank A. Pasquale

Environmental laws are designed to reduce negative externalities (such as pollution) that harm the natural environment. Copyright law should adjust the rights of content creators in order to compensate for the ways they reduce the usefulness of the information environment as a whole. Every new work created contributes to the store of expression, but also makes it more difficult to find whatever work one wants. Such search costs have been well-documented in information economics. Copyright law should take information overload externalities like search costs into account in its treatment of alleged copyright infringers whose work merely attempts to index, organize, …

Academic Authors And Copyright, Laura Quilter

Laura Quilter

No abstract provided.

Towards Voluntary Interoperable Open Access Licenses For The Global Earth Observation System Of Systems (Geoss), Harlan Onsrud, James Campbell, Bastiaan Van Loenen

Harlan J Onsrud

Access to earth observation data has become critically important for the wellbeing of society. A major impediment to achieving widespread sharing of earth observation data is lack of an operational web-wide system that is transparent and consistent in allowing users to legally access and use the earth observations of others without seeking permission from data contributors or investigating terms of usage on a case-by-case basis. This article explores approaches to supplying a license-based system to overcome this impediment in the context of the Global Earth Observation System of Systems. It discusses the benefits and drawbacks of the explored approaches and …

Creating A Legal Framework For Copyright Management Of Open Access Within The Australian Academic And Research Sector, Brian Fitzgerald, Anne Fitzgerald, Mark Perry, Scott Kiel-Chisholm, Erin Driscoll, Dilan Thampapillai, Jessica Coates

Mark Perry

This Report analyses the copyright law framework needed to ensure open access to outputs of the Australian academic and research sector such as datasets, articles and theses. It is written in the context of an increasing recognition, in Australia and internationally, that access to knowledge is a key driver of social, cultural and economic development and that publicly funded research should be openly accessible. With the objective of enabling access to knowledge, this Report proposes the development of clear protocols for copyright management (designed as practical and effective tools) for implementation in the Australian academic and research sector The Report …

Open Access Week (Retention Of Author Rights), Mark Perry

Mark Perry

No abstract provided.

Creative Commons Licensing And Non-Creative Geographic Data, Harlan Onsrud

Harlan J Onsrud

Why does the scientific community need a simple method for letting each of us know that we are allowed legally to build on the work and data products of each other without asking permission? Does merely following the traditional practices of science and giving credit now make me a lawbreaker? What's the problem, how did we get here and what's the solution? Why does the solution for creative works not apply to geographic and other utilitarian data and databases? This presentation addresses these questions and approaches for arriving at solutions.

Open Access I Praktiken, Gunilla Wiklund

Gunilla Wiklund

No abstract provided.

Scholarly Journals And The Open Access Conundrum, Colin B. Sakumoto

Colin B Sakumoto

This paper examines the desirability and feasibility of open access scholarly journals with particular emphasis on the parties shaping the production of these journals. In examining how the current publishing model will shape the implementation of open access publishing, analysis of the obstacles likely to hinder implementation is given in depth. Finally, a number of measures are suggested to help build the momentum needed to one day realize a widespread open access publishing model.

Revitalizing Essential Facilities, Spencer Weber Waller, Brett Frischmann

Brett Frischmann

Revitalizing Essential Facilities

Spencer Weber Waller

Brett Frischmann

Our article examines an age old debate about the nature and limits of property rights and the current manifestation of this debate in antitrust law. Many areas of law struggle to balance private property rightsCmost importantly, the right of exclusionCwith the public=s right of access to essential resources. What is the best way to manage resources that provide both public and private benefits? For years, academics and law makers have debated this question with respect to transportation systems, communication networks, scientific research, and a variety of other "infrastructural" resources. Many press for …

Revitalizing Essential Facilities, Spencer Weber Waller, Brett Frischmann

Spencer Weber Waller

Revitalizing Essential Facilities

Spencer Weber Waller

Brett Frischmann

Our article examines an age old debate about the nature and limits of property rights and the current manifestation of this debate in antitrust law. Many areas of law struggle to balance private property rightsCmost importantly, the right of exclusionCwith the public=s right of access to essential resources. What is the best way to manage resources that provide both public and private benefits? For years, academics and law makers have debated this question with respect to transportation systems, communication networks, scientific research, and a variety of other "infrastructural" resources. Many press for …

Ssrn Considered Harmful, James Grimmelmann

James Grimmelmann

The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) has adopted several unfortunate policies that impair open access to scholarship. It should enable one-click download, stop requiring papers to bear SSRN watermarks, and allow authors to point readers to other download sites. If it does not reform, those who are serious about open access should not use SSRN.

Open Access, Law, Knowledge, Copyrights, Dominance And Subordination, Ann Bartow

Ann Bartow

The concept of open access to legal knowledge is at the surface a very appealing one. A citizenry that is well informed about the law may be more likely to comply with legal dictates and proscriptions, or at a minimum, will be aware of the consequences for not doing so. What is less apparent, however, is whether an open access approach to legal knowledge is realistically attainable without fundamental changes to the copyright laws that would recalibrate the power balance between content owners and citizens desiring access to interpretive legal resources. A truly useful application of open access principles would …

The Idea Of The Law Review: Scholarship, Prestige, And Open Access, Michael J. Madison

Michael J. Madison

This Essay was written as part of a Symposium on open access publishing for legal scholarship, held at Lewis & Clark Law School. It makes the claim that “open access” publishing models will succeed, or not, to the extent that they account for the existing “economy of prestige” that drives law reviews and legal scholarship. What may seem like a lot of uncharitable commentary is intended instead as an expression of guarded optimism: Imaginative reuse of some existing tools of scholarly publishing (even by some marginalized members of the prestige economy – or perhaps especially by them) may facilitate the …

The Movement For Open Access Law, Michael W. Carroll

Michael W. Carroll

My claim in this contribution to this important symposium is that the law and legal scholarship should be freely available on the Internet, and copyright law and licensing should facilitate achievement of this goal. This claim reflects the combined aims of those who support the movement for open access law. This nascent movement is a natural extension of the well-developed movement for free access to primary legal materials and the equally well-developed open access movement, which seeks to make all scholarly journal articles freely available on the Internet. Legal scholars have only general familiarity with the first movement and very …

Open Science: Open Source Licences In Scientific Research, Andres Guadamuz

Andres Guadamuz

sometime even commercially successful systems. Amongst these models, one of the most interesting licenses is that offered by so-called copyleft licenses, which are licenses that allow software to be transferred with the insurance that the source code will remain open, with the caveat that anyone who redistributes the software, with or without changes, must pass along the freedom to further copy and change it.

However, software development is not the only area in which this licensing model could apply. The viral nature of copyleft licenses has generated a considerable amount of interest in circles that transcend software development. The idea …

The Master's Tools V. The Master's House: Creative Commons V. Copyright, Severine Dusollier

Severine Dusollier

No abstract provided.

Open Source And Copyleft: Authorship Reconsidered ?, Severine Dusollier

Severine Dusollier

No abstract provided.