JISC

JISC promotes best practice on copyright through its programmes, international partnerships, and the Scholarly Communication Group.  JISC supports the Zwolle Principles, Creative Commons, and Science Commons.

Traditionally publishers have required authors to sign agreements transferring copyright of their publications to the publisher and managed copyright on their behalf.  In the age of print-only publications, most authors went along with this practice.  With the advent of electronic publishing and the Internet, the academic community started to question whether transferring all rights to the publisher was in the interests of scholarly communication.  For example, this could limit an author’s right to post his/her article on their web site or deposit it in an open access repository.  

The Zwolle Group has been instrumental in encouraging authors, their universities, librarians and publishers to adopt scholarship-friendly copyright practices that balance the interests these diverse groups.  The Group was formed as an outcome of the conferences on universities and copyright organised by SURF (JISC’s counterpart in the Netherlands) held at Zwolle.  The Zwolle Principles are a set of core principles for managing copyright to maximise access to scholarly works in the interests of all stakeholders.  

JISC is a member of the Zwolle Group and promotes best practice on copyright through its programmes, international partnerships, and the Scholarly Communication Group.  JISC supports the Zwolle Principles, Creative Commons, and Science Commons.

JISC-SURF Partnering on Copyright

Since 2004, JISC has been working with SURF to promote best practice on copyright for the research and education communities.  The JISC-SURF Partnering on Copyright programme has strands of work covering publishing agreements, university copyright policies, the Copyright Knowledge Bank, advocacy, and open access.  The programme website provides a range of practical tools and guidance for academics, university administrators, and librarians on issues related to copyright in the context of open access and self-archiving.  

Publisher Policies on Self-archiving

Academic authors cannot archive their journal articles in repositories if they have already signed legal agreements with publishers that prevent this. Similarly, publisher policies on self-archiving can influence an author’s choice of publisher. RoMEO allows authors to check publisher policies on self-archiving before they choose a journal. Entries are colour coded to indicate if a publisher allows archiving of pre-prints, post-prints, both, or does not allow archiving. RoMEO was originally developed in the JISC FAIR programme and is now maintained by the JISC-funded SHERPA project.  

Model Licence to Publish

SURF and JISC have published a model agreement that will help authors make appropriate arrangements with publishers for the publication of a journal article. This Licence to Publish is the result of several years of international consultation and aims to establish a balance of rights and interests in the emerging scholarly communications environment.  The main features of the Licence to Publish are that:  

• Copyright in the published work remains with the author
• The author grants the publisher a licence to publish the work
• The licence takes effect as soon as the publisher indicates that it wishes to publish the work
• Once the article has been published, the author can make it publicly accessible (in the form it was published by the publisher) by making it available as part of a repository
• If the publisher so requests, the start of such public accessibility can be delayed for a maximum of six months.

The new model agreement will be particularly useful where articles are published in traditional journals, as it allows the author to deposit the article in an open access repository. Use of the Licence to Publish is supported by the Wellcome Trust, the UK's largest non-governmental funder of biomedical research.

Study on Copyright and Open Access Journals

Esther Hoorn (University of Groningen) and Maurits van der Graaf (Pleiade Management & Consultancy), Towards Good Practices of Copyright in Open Access Journals, August 2005

This study was commissioned by the JISC-SURF Partnering on Copyright project. The aim was to identify good practices for copyright management in open access journals with an emphasis on authors’ attitudes and viewpoints. A literature survey and a series of interviews with open access publishers and copyright experts were used to identify good practice models and key copyright issues.  Academic authors who had published in open access journals were then surveyed to get their views on the practices and issues identified.  

The report identifies and explores four copyright models of good practice for open access journals.  The key copyright issue emerging from the interviews focuses on the rights to reuse articles – for scholarly and educational purposes, for commercial purposes, and the demarcation between the two.  

The author survey found that while many open access authors are involved with traditional journals as referees or members of editorial boards, most want to retain copyright.  The copyright model whereby the author retains copyright and handles permission requests for reuse is most popular.  The report recommends that awareness of copyright should be raised through models and standard licences. In addition, it finds that members of editorial boards are an important target group for advocacy and awareness-raising activities.