Intellectual Property Law Commons^™

The Copyright Permissions Culture In Software Preservation And Its Implications For The Cultural Record, Patricia Aufderheide, Brandon Butler, Krista Cox, Peter Jaszi

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

This report summarizes results from research with the professionals who make up the software preservation community about how their understanding of copyright intersects with their preservation mission. Professionals typically face significant challenges from perceived copyright barriers. They tend to assume that a license or other express permission from a copyright holder is required before embarking on a wide variety of preservation activities, and typically find that such permissions are difficult or impossible to obtain. In the absence of reliable information to guide informed risk assessment, professionals act on the reasonable assumption that high levels of legal risk could be associated …

The Evolving Institutional Repository Landscape, Judy Luther

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Advances in technology affecting content creation and digital dissemination continue to reshape the role of academic libraries. The impact of these changes requires reimagining a strategy for the library built around digital collections–not only those acquired from publishers but the growing variety of files created in the development of scholarship and learning. Institutional Repositories (IRs) are emerging as a vehicle for new directions in how libraries can support the academic community both locally and globally.

To gain insights and gather data on IR operations, we conducted interviews, an open survey, and web research to obtain a snapshot of the current …

Mdpi Annual Report 2017, Mdpi

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Contents: Message from the CEO ● MDPI at a Glance ● Key Figures ● 19 Journals Launched in 2017 ● Preprints.org in 2017 ● Scilit in 2017 ● Sciforum in 2017 ● Institutional Open Access Program in 2017 ● OA Initiatives in 2017 ● Top MDPI Books in 2017 ● Journal Development in 2017 ● Journals Tracked for Impact Factor in 2018 ● Electronic Conferences in 2017 ● Call for Expression of Interest ● Physical Conferences in 2017 ● About MDPI ● Corporate Social Responsibility at MDPI ● Upcoming Physical Conferences in 2018 ● Collaborations with Societies ● JAMS ● …

Opening Academic Publishing - Development And Application Of Systematic Evaluation Criteria, Anna Björk, Juho-Matti Paavola, Teemu Ropponen, Mikael Laakso, Leo Lahti

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This report summarizes the development of a standardized scorecard for evaluating the openness of academic publishers. The assessment was completed in January 2018 as part of the Open Science and Research Initiative of the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture.

The project complements the previous reports published by the Open Science and Research Initiative and the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, which have covered (i) the openness of universities and polytechnics, (ii) the overall situation of OA publishing costs in Finland, and (iii) research organization and research funding organizations, including selected European research funders.

The project mapped and evaluated …

Big Deal: Should Universities Outsource More Core Research Infrastructure?, Roger C. Schonfeld

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Research universities have developed in symbiosis with a robust set of commercial providers that serve their needs. From food service providers to run dining halls to private equity firms to manage parts of the endowment, outsourcing has allowed universities to remain more focused on their core educational and research functions. But universities have also at times elected to outsource academic infrastructure. Commercial firms have developed a major role in several significant university functions, including scientific publishing, library management systems, and course management systems. And in all three cases, the commercial priorities of vendors have at times left academia frustrated. While …

Osi2018 Summary Report On The 1st Summit Meeting Of The Global Open Scholarship Initiative, March 12-14, 2018, The Open Scholarship Initiative, Glenn Hampson

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When the roadmap for OSI was first being developed in 2015, our original intent was to hold a series of 10 annual meetings beginning in 2016. After the first two meetings, however, it became apparent that the next step in this process should be to pause and have just the summit group meet to formally discuss and plan out what comes next instead of having this complex conversation online (which we had been doing since mid-2017) or amongst a group of several hundred participants. This decision was also necessitated by the lack of a large enough budget to put together …

Janeway: A Scholarly Communications Platform [Start-Up Story], Martin Paul Eve, Andy Byers

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Describes how developers at the Centre for Technology and Publishing at Birkbeck, University of London embarked upon building a journal submission and hosting platform, Janeway, learning from their experiences of running the Open Library of Humanities (OLH).

Digital Infrastructures That Embody Library Principles: The Imls National Digital Platform As A Framework For Digital Library Tools And Services, Trevor Owens, Ashley E. Sands, Emily Reynolds, James Neal, Stephen Mayeaux, Maura Marx

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Digital library infrastructures must not simply work. They must also manifest the core principles of libraries and archives. Since 2014, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) has engaged with stakeholders from diverse library communities to consider collaborative approaches to building digital library tools and services. The “national digital platform” for libraries, archives, and museums is the framework that resulted from these dialogs.1 One key feature of the national digital platform (NDP) is the anchoring of core library principles within the development of digital tools and services. This essay explores how NDP-funded projects enact library principles as part of …

Leveraging Elsevier’S Creative Commons License Requirement To Undermine Embargoes, Josh Bolick

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In the last round of author-sharing policy revisions, Elsevier created a labyrinthine title-by-title embargo structure requiring embargoes from 12 to 48 months for authors sharing via institutional repository (IR), while permitting immediate sharing via an author’s personal website or blog. At the same time, all prepublication versions are to bear a Creative Commons-Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) license. At the time this policy was announced, it was criticized by many in the scholarly communication community as overly complicated and restrictive. However, this CC licensing requirement creates an avenue for subverting an embargo in the IR to achieve quicker and wider open distribution …

The African Open Science Platform: The Future Of Science And Science For The Future, African Academy Of Sciences, Academy Of Science Of South Africa, Committee On Data For Science And Technology, International Council For Science, National Research And Education Networks, Research Data Alliance, South African Department Of Science & Technology, National Research Foundation, Square Kilometre Array, Unesco

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This document presents a draft strategy and makes the scientific case for the African Open Science Platform (AOSP). It is based on an expert group meeting held in Pretoria on 27-28 March 2018. Its purpose is to act as a framework for detailed, work on the creation of the Platform and as a basis for discussion at a stakeholder meeting to be held on 3-4 September 2018, which will lead to a definitive strategy for implementation from 2019. Expert group members at the March meeting were drawn from the following organisations: African Academy of Sciences (AAS), Academy of Science of …

Surveying The Scalability Of Open Access Monograph Initiatives: Final Report, Christopher Barnes,, Rebecca Welzenbach, Kathleen Folger

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In June of 2016, the University of Michigan Library (MLibrary) and Knowledge Unlatched (KU) announced the start of a collaboration “to study and overcome remaining obstacles to the spread of open access scholarly publishing in the humanities and social sciences.”1 This survey grew out of that partnership and was designed to gather data useful for determining the scalability of library-supported open access (OA) initiatives focusing on monographs in the Humanities and Social Sciences such as Luminos, Open Book Publishers, and KU. The survey was designed and conducted by Christopher A. Barnes, Ph.D., while a graduate student in library and information …

Mandatory Deposit Laws In Selected Jurisdictions (2017 Update), Global Legal Research Center

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Summary

This report, which updates and expands on a report prepared by Law Library staff in March 2015, contains data on 131 countries, indicating whether or not published books are subject to a mandatory deposit requirement at the national level and, if so, how many copies are required, where they must be deposited, and whether the deposit is part of the copyright system. Citations to the controlling legislation for mandatory deposits are provided. In all but thirteen of the jurisdictions surveyed, deposits are required. For some of these thirteen jurisdictions, deposits are voluntary, while in others, no information regarding deposit …

Oer State Policy Playbook [Draft], Sparc

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Why State-Level OER Policy?

The rising cost of higher education is about more than tuition—expensive textbooks and course materials remain a looming barrier to college affordability and access. Open educational resources (OER) are a solution to high-cost materials and state legislators are starting to take notice. Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that can be freely used, downloaded and shared to better serve all students. OER include all kinds of content such as textbooks, lesson plans, assignments, games, and more, and can include printed materials, not just digital materials. Nearly half of all states have considered OER …

Next Generation Repositories: Behaviours And Technical Recommendations Of The Coar Next Generation Repositories Working Group, Confederation Of Open Access Repositories, Eloy Rodrigues, Kathleen Shearer

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In April 2016, the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR) launched the Next Generation Repository Working Group to identify new functionalities and technologies for repositories. In this report, we are pleased to present the results of the work of this group, including recommendations for the adoption of new technologies, standards, and protocols that will help repositories become more integrated into the web environment and enable them to play a larger role in the scholarly communication ecosystem.

At COAR, we believe the globally distributed network of more than 3000 repositories can be leveraged to create a more sustainable and innovative system …

Laws On Erasure Of Online Information: Canada, France, European Union, Germany, Israel, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, United Kingdom, Luis Acosta

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Comparative Summary by Luis Acosta, Chief, Foreign, Comparative, and International Law Division II, Law Library of Congress (United States), Global Legal Research Center

This report describes the laws of twelve jurisdictions that have some form of remedy available enabling the removal of online data based on harm to individuals’ privacy or reputational interests, including but not limited to defamation. Six of the countries surveyed are within the European Union (EU) or the European Economic Area, and therefore have implemented EU law. Five non-EU jurisdictions are also surveyed.

Comparative analysis across jurisdictions presents terminological challenges, because legal language across jurisdictions seems …

Spec Kit 357 Libraries, Presses, And Publishing November 2017, Laurie N. Taylor, Brian W. Keith, Chelsea Dinsmore, Meredith Morris-Babb

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Many Association of Research Libraries (ARL) members have robust and long-standing publishing activities, often in collaboration with or running parallel to the press of the larger institutional entity. As reported in the Association of American University Presses (AAUP) 2015–2016 annual report, 30 AAUP member presses are in libraries. Eighty-one institutions are both ARL and AAUP members, and at 21 of those institutions, the press reports to the library. Other libraries—including Amherst College Press and the University of Cincinnati Press—launched new presses within libraries. Most of the 123 ARL member libraries are engaged in publishing or publishing support activities such as …

Copyright For Publishing 2, Paul Royster

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For B. Rilett's Editing & Publishing class, August 28, 2017. Updated for Sept. 13, 2018.

The 2.5% Commitment, David W. Lewis

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The commitment: Every academic library should commit to contribute 2.5% of its total budget to support the common infrastructure needed to create the open scholarly commons.

Recommended Versus Certified Repositories: Mind The Gap, Sean Edward Husen, Zoë G. De Wilde, Anita De Waard, Helena Cousijn

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Researchers are increasingly required to make research data publicly available in data repositories. Although several organisations propose criteria to recommend and evaluate the quality of data repositories, there is no consensus of what constitutes a good data repository. In this paper, we investigate, first, which data repositories are recommended by various stakeholders (publishers, funders, and community organizations) and second, which repositories are certified by a number of organisations. We then compare these two lists of repositories, and the criteria for recommendation and certification. We find that criteria used by organisations recommending and certifying repositories are similar, although the certification criteria …

Connect Oer Annual Report 2016-2017, Brady Yano

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Earlier this year, SPARC launched Connect OER—a platform to share and discover information about Open Educational Resources (OER) activities at campuses across North America. Through Connect OER, academic libraries create and manage profiles about their institution’s efforts on OER, producing valuable data that we use to populate a searchable directory and produce an annual report.

As the first Connect OER Annual Report, this document summarizes insights from the Connect OER pilot, which ran from May - July 2017. The data encompass 65 SPARC member libraries spanning 31 U.S. states and five Canadian provinces who participated in the pilot. Our analysis …

Section 108 Of Title 17: A Discussion Document Of The Register Of Copyrights, Chris Weston, Aurelia J. Schultz, Emily M. Lanza, Michelle Choe, Karyn Temple Claggett

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The objective of the discussion document is: to review the issues raised over the past decade of revision work; to outline the Office’s current views and proposals on the various revision issues; and to present and explain model statutory language for a new section 108. Although the model statutory language should not be seen as the Office’s final view on section 108, the Office believes that it is important to provide a more concrete framework for further discussion. Additionally, the Discussion Document includes copious illustrative examples of how the Office envisions the proposals might work in practice.

CONCLUSION

Libraries, archives, …

A Splendid Torch: Learning And Teaching In Today’S Academic Libraries, Jodi Reeves Eyre, John C. Maclachlan, Christa Williford

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In the winter of 2015, a handful of current and former CLIR postdoctoral fellows gathered at a small restaurant in Washington, D.C., to celebrate publication of The Process of Discovery: The CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship Program and the Future of the Academy. In typical CLIR fellowship alumni fashion, it took about an hour of relaxation before we began to look at one another and ask, “Now what?” Over fried pickles, barbecue brisket, and vegan spare ribs, we decided to recreate the Collaborative Writing Group (CWG) experience that fostered the collection of essays about what we had learned from our work in …

Information In The Ecosystem: Against The “Information Ecosystem”, Timothy B. Norris, Todd Suomela

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The “information ecosystem” metaphor is widely used in academic libraries and has become nearly ubiquitous when speaking of the information systems that support scholarly communication and varied forms of data sharing and publication. The trending use of this language arises from non-academic applications — for example in big data (the Hadoop ecosystem) or software development (the node.js ecosystem) — and there remains little critical examination of the use of this metaphor. Indeed, the definition of ecosystem as the set of relations between living organisms and their surrounding non-living environment is apparently not directly a part of the metaphor. This paper …

Nasig Core Competencies For Scholarly Communication Librarians, Andrew Wesolek, Wm. Joseph Thomas, Angela Dresselhaus, Julie Fielding, Char Simser, Sarah Sutton, Jason Boczar, Rachel Miles, Stephanie Spratt, Wendy Robertson, Betsy Appleton

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

The following Core Competencies for Scholarly Communication Librarians were developed out of research and discussion conducted by the NASIG Scholarly Communication Core Competencies Task Force. Scholarly communication is defined by ACRL as “the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use. The system includes both formal means of communication, such as publication in peer-reviewed journals, and informal channels, such as electronic listservs (Association of College & Research Libraries, “Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication 1,” 2003). The specific duties of the scholarly …

Using Fair Use To Preserve And Share Disappearing Government Information, William Cross

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Access to government information is a fundamental principle in a democratic society. Particularly in the digital environment, government information is a driver for economic and social progress as well as a predicate for an informed citizenry. From 2009 through 2016, open government was a hallmark of the Obama administration, which observed that, “openness in government strengthens our democracy, promotes the delivery of efficient and effective services to the public, and contributes to economic growth.” Libraries and archives have historically served as stewards of government documents, and in recent years, these institutions have paid special attention to the unique vulnerability of …

Metadata And Copyright: Should Institutions License Their Data About Scholarship?, Krista L. Cox

Copyright, Fair Use, Scholarly Communication, etc.

Institutions have a number of options for how to treat metadata while encouraging widespread use and sharing. Some institutions may determine that no license is necessary to openly share metadata, taking the position that the metadata they produce is not copyrightable. Others might share it using a CC0 license or CC0 with additional guidelines. In determining how to share metadata, institutions should consider possible cross-border implications as well as the potential that what is defined as metadata could grow in breadth and raise additional copyright concerns. Additionally, institutions should take into account the benefit that clear and easy-to-understand policies provide …

Making & Sharing Scholarship: Copyright Issues In Scholarly Communication (2017 Nebraska Acrl Scholarly Communication Roadshow, University Of Nebraska-Lincoln), William M. Cross, Elizabeth A. Brown

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Excerpts from the presenters' notes:

Today’s focus – not copyright generally, or copyright for things like library digitization, but copyright in the context of scholarly publishing.

Copyright’s purpose and higher education’s purpose have a lot in common. We as a society all benefit if people can build on the discoveries that came before them, while having an incentive to create new things.

Article I, Section 8, where the authority for US copyright law comes from, reads "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective …

Scholarly Communication: From Understanding To Engagement (2017 Nebraska Acrl Scholarly Communication Roadshow, University Of Nebraska-Lincoln), William M. Cross, Jaron Porciello, Elizabeth A. Brown

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“The goal of the program is to empower participants to help accelerate the transformation of the scholarly communication system.” From www.ala.org/acrl/issues/scholcomm/roadshow.

Understanding Scholarly Communication: Framing The Issues (2017 Nebraska Acrl Scholarly Communication Roadshow, University Of Nebraska-Lincoln), Jaron Porciello, William M. Cross, Elizabeth A. Brown

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Excerpts from the presenters' notes:

This is the (simple) big overview of the SC system. Within this system exist participants, pressures and intersections, which lead to the opportunities that we’re seeing now.

Participants: Researchers, authors, administrators, students, editors, peer reviewers, and others. Including libraries. Flow in and out and according to processes.

A system of systems: Higher education, publishing industry, disciplinary practice, scholarly societies, internet culture, research industry, IP/legal system, funders, AND OF COURSE faculty rewards system (P&T).

Reflection & Next Steps (2017 Nebraska Acrl Scholarly Communication Roadshow, University Of Nebraska-Lincoln), William M. Cross, Jaron Porciello, Elizabeth Brown

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How can we sustain our library community? Ideas for reaching out to your institution - students, faculty, administration, other library personnel.