First results of the 'Jisc-SURF partnering on copyright' project available

Study on Copyright and Open Access Journals

 The main issues in copyright as far as research articles in Open Access Journals are concerned are the rights to reuse articles by the authors of those articles. New research involving detailed interviews with Open Access authors has found that while many authors are involved in traditional journal publishing as referees or as members of editorial boards, most want to keep copyright and to handle the permission requests to reuse articles themselves rather than hand these rights over to traditional publishers.

These are just some of the results of a study carried out by the ‘Jisc-SURF partnering on copyright’ project. The study aims to identify good practices in copyright management in Open Access journals with an emphasis on the authors’ attitudes and viewpoints. A literature survey and a series of interviews with Open Access publishers and copyright experts were carried out, followed by a qualitative and quantitative study among academic authors of articles in Open Access Journals.

The report identifies and explores four copyright models of good practice of copyright in Open Access journals, including what the report identifies as the ideal copyright situation according to most respondents: that the author keeps all rights to reuse of the article for educational, scholarly or commercial purposes.

Awareness of copyright should be raised through models and standard licences, the report finds. In addition, it finds that members of editorial boards are an important target group for advocacy and awareness-raising activities. A further aim of the report is to encourage the development of standard licenses in addition to the present Creative Commons licenses.

Jisc-SURF Partnering on Copyright

The report ‘Towards good practices of copyright in Open Access Journals’ is the first result of the project ‘Jisc-SURF partnering on copyright’.

The study was carried out by Maurits van der Graaf (Pleiade Management and Consultancy) and Esther Hoorn (University of Groningen).