JISC-SURF Partnering on Copyright
The JISC–SURF partnering on copyright programme focuses on five work packages that are jointly funded and managed by JISC and SURF:
- Publishing Agreements
- University Copyright Policies
- Copyright Knowledge Bank
- Advocacy
- Open Access
SURF is a similar organisation to JISC and is based in the Netherlands. It funds ICT across the education sector in the Netherlands.
The partnering on copyright initiative came about following work under the JISC Focus on Access to Institutional Resources (FAIR) programme and the work of the Zwolle Group overseen by SURF. The Zwolle Group is an international group that aims to help balance copyright across the interested stakeholders. Within the FAIR programme the Romeo project undertook work in the area of rights metadata and management in open archiving. As a result of these two initiatives it became clear that both JISC and SURF had common interest in the requirement to develop practical advice to support the implementation of good copyright practice to enable access to scholarly information.
In July 2004 the JISC-SURF Partnering on Copyright programme was announced. A joint JISC-SURF Coordinating Committee oversees the programme of work. This Committee includes: Mark Brown (University of Southampton and JISC Content and Services committee), Rachel Bruce (JISC) Gerard van Westrienen (SURF), and Leo Waaijers (SURF).
Within JISC the programme is seen as integral to the broader Digital Repositories programme that is ongoing.
The five work packages are now underway:
Work Package 1: Publishing Agreements
This work package focuses on the Author to Publisher relationship. The Zwolle Group drafted an initial set of clauses to help form the basis of a ‘toolkit’ to assist stakeholders (publishers, authors and institutions) in determining the rights that are important to their business. An important part of the ‘toolkit’ is the presentation of a limited number of model agreements. This work package will develop this work further.
Tasks in this work package include:
- further developing and refining of the web-based copyright toolkit and the underlying models for publishing agreements in consultation with publishers and with the goal of making them applicable for the UK and the Netherlands
- listing of the ‘elementary rights’ authors and publishers should hold or acquire, which already have a high level of consensus among stakeholders involved
- testing the toolkit and models in the Netherlands and the UK and making them user-friendly, i.e. suitable as an educational and practical tool for the main target group: scientific authors, staff members and others at institutes for higher education and publishers
- drafting an implementation path for the UK and the Netherlands
This work package is being undertaken by Ralph Weedon (JISC Legal) and Wilma Mossink (SURF legal adviser).
Work package 2: University Copyright Policies
This work package focuses on the university to author relationship, as these are the parties whose interests are most at stake in university copyright policies. Within universities, we can distinguish different parties involved, for example university management, administration, libraries and academic authors. The aim of this work is to do a multi-national study of different university copyright policies in the UK and the Netherlands, the outcome of which will be presented in such a way that it supports universities in (re)phrasing their copyright policies in the light of the Zwolle Principles and according to their particular needs and priorities. The toolkit will aim to allow relevant terms and clauses to be selected that can be used in university copyright policies. Furthermore this work package is very much related to institutional repositories which will need to consider the rights and warranties they require of academics in order to mount and disseminate their work electronically.
Tasks in this work package include:
- further developing and refining the first survey of university copyright policies, presented at the third Zwolle Conference, for the UK and the Netherlands
- identifying and presenting good practices, interesting examples and lessons learned from the UK and the Netherlands
- to prepare a set of practical guidelines for a university copyright policy for the UK and the Netherlands
- developing model author/HEI license(s) for institutional repositories
- developing a set of ‘notice and take down’ procedures for material on institutional repositories
This work package is being undertaken by Ralph Weedon (JISC Legal) and Wilma Mossink (SURF legal adviser).
Work package 3: Copyright Knowledge Bank
Academics also need to be informed about publishers’ self-archiving policies. The JISC funded RoMEO project developed a list of such policies, and this is being maintained and updated by the JISC funded SHERPA project at Nottingham University. However, the long-term maintenance of this database needs addressed. In addition the functionality of the database needs enhanced to form a Copyright Knowledge Bank. To be of maximum benefit, the database needs to be developed to include a wider range of prohibited or allowed activities, for example including the ability to use work in PhD theses, to distribute to colleagues, students, etc. This project will also incorporate some of the results of the CoMa project on copyright management, one of the SURF DARE projects at the Tilburg University. The primary focus of this work will be on journal articles but there will also be an investigation into broadening the scope towards relevant copyright information regarding other scientific publications and teaching and learning materials.
This work package is being undertaken by the University of Nottingham, University of Loughborough, and Tilburg University.
Work package 4: Advocacy
This work package will work to disseminate the outputs of the other packages. The outputs are likely to cover: policies, exemplar clauses and licences, examples of good practice and reports. It will develop a work plan for communication as well as designing an approach to advocacy to support better copyright practice and understanding within universities. The RoMEO research has shown that 41% of authors “freely” assign copyright to publishers without fully understanding the consequences. So the advocacy work will aim to develop an approach that supports a flexible “Know your rights” initiative that can be used across all universities (for authors and management). It will be important for this work to build on the findings from across the FAIR projects, in particular DAEDALUS, RoMEO, SHERPA and TARDis are relevant as well as the Zwolle work. The advocacy approach that is developed will be tested within a university in the UK and in the Netherlands to ensure the approach can be used in either country.
This work package is being led by the University of Loughborough with close involvement of the communications team at SURF.
Work package 5: Open Access
Maximising access to scholarly information is a key element in the Zwolle Principles. 'Open Access' is a recent development which could bring this goal closer. Under this work package a study was commissioned to examine the consequences of Open Access for the Zwolle Principles in general and for the different stakeholder groups. The study examined different copyright approaches and possible copyright models for use with Open Access journals and then surveyed Open Access authors to assess views on copyright in order to recommend a way forward for best practice.
The study was carried out by Maurits van der Graaf (Pleiade Management and Consultancy) and Esther Hoorn (University of Groningen).
The report Towards good practices of copyright in Open Access Journals is the first output of the ‘JISC-SURF partnering on copyright’ project.
The report examines aspects of copyright in the Netherlands and United Kingdom with regard to ‘Open Access’, i.e. the free availability of scientific information over the Internet.
The report finds that the main issue in copyright regarding research articles concerns the rights to reuse articles. Furthermore it 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.
From interviews with authors it appears that many Open Access authors are involved in traditional journal publishing, as referees or as members of editorial boards. Most authors, the report finds, want to keep copyright and to handle permission requests to reuse the article themselves.
The report suggests that awareness of copyright should be raised through models and standard licences. In addition, it recommends that members of editorial boards should be an important target group for advocacy of copyright issues and other awareness-raising activities.