Copyright: perspectives from the repository coalface 2003-2009

Morag Greig

Advocacy Manager- Enlighten

University of Glasgow

Outline

• Copyright & repositories: the early days• Author attitudes• Publisher attitudes• SHERPA-RoMEO• The ‘versions’ issue• Copyright and mandates• Copyright and non-journal material• Funding bodies mandates – issues• Copyright and repository managers• Current concerns for repository managers

Background

• Involved with repositories and OA since 2003• Advocacy manager for Glasgow’s repository

Enlighten• Involved with advocacy/copyright/policy

issues• Recently involved in implementing Glasgow’s

mandate (‘Publications policy’)

Copyright and repositories: the early days

• Started seeking permission to add journal articles in 2003

• Initially very difficult – publishers unwilling to give permission and lack of understanding of what was being asked

• Repository community much smaller so far fewer people to seek advice from or compare experiences with

• Balancing act of getting authors enthusiastic about OA while not raising expectations too high, as many papers could not be added to the repository

Early author attitudes to repositories and copyright

• Major lack of awareness of what authors were permitted to do with their work

• Fear that authors would not be published if they challenged copyright agreements or other rights

• View that making papers available in repositories was simply ‘not allowed’

• Copyright issues definitely a major hurdle in getting authors to deposit

Changing publisher attitudes

• Gradual publisher recognition of the need to be more flexible about author rights

• Growing understanding of open access and the possible implications of repositories

• Recognition of the need to have a policy on deposit in repositories rather than having to answer a steady stream of individual permission requests

• However, lack of consistency over what was allowed and not allowed and terminology for describing rights

Issues with publisher OA policies

• Perceived artificial distinction between repositories and author personal web pages

• Confusion over whether repositories were covered by references to ‘secure institutional servers’ etc.

• Statements such as ‘Authors are required to contact publisher before posting (permissions below will always be granted)’

• Subtle nuances of policies that may not be picked up by authors

Copyright and repositories – SHERPA-RoMEO

• Major step forward was the development of the SHERPA-RoMEO database of publisher policies

• Has continued to develop and grow over the years, and now a key source of information for repository managers and authors

• Ongoing existence of this resources is critical for repositories

The ‘versions’ issue

• Lack of clarity about versions of papers that can be deposited in repositories has been a problem right from the start

• Recognised as such, and various projects established to look at this, e.g. VERSIONS

• Recommendations made on describing versions etc.

• However, has not entirely solved the problem – lack of a suitable version of papers is still one of the major issues authors bring up with us as repository managers

The ‘versions’ issue ctd.

Authors:• Don’t understand the terminology used by publishers

and repository managers to refer to versions of papers;

• Don’t have, or don’t have time to create, a suitable version;

• In some cases don’t want to make publicly available the version permitted by the publisher, even if a funding body is happy with this version;

• Have concerns about how different versions will be cited, and how this will affect citation impact

Copyright and mandates

• ‘Mandate’ in place at Glasgow since start of academic session 08/09

• Requires staff to ‘deposit a copy of peer-reviewed, published journal articles and conference proceedings into Enlighten, where copyright allows, as soon as possible after publication.’

• Encouragingly copyright has not been raised as a major issue that is making it difficult for staff to comply with the policy

Copyright and non-journal material

• Checking if non-book material can be deposited often more resource intensive

• Individual permissions need to be sought for individual items

• Response from publishers on depositing books and book chapters varies depending on date of publication, whether book is still in print or not etc.

• Some issues with publishers asking for payment, or thinking requests are for copyright cleared material to be scanned

• However, getting this material into repositories is often more rewarding for authors (as material less likely to be electronically available) and so worth effort

Most commonly raised issues – not copyright related!

• Versions of articles• Articles appearing in multiple locations• Issues with citing material held in

repositories• Confusion over funder requirements – where

to deposit, publisher paid OA options

Funder mandates and rights issues

• Compliance with some funder mandates only possible by choosing publisher paid OA option (e.g. Wellcome – UKPMC – Elsevier)

• Not all funding bodies provide funds for this• Some authors have no funds available to pay

for this• Some publishers will not permit deposit of

AFV in UKMPC• Only option is author addendum to copyright

agreement, but publisher may not accept this

Copyright and repository managers

• New repository managers may be overly concerned with copyright issues

• While no case law in place, community of practice has build up over the last few years

• Since Glasgow’s repository was established we have only been challenged once by a publisher, and the issue was quickly resolved

• Clear that copyright matters should not be a hurdle to developing a successful repository

Concerns for repository managers

• Changes in publisher policy and picking these up/keeping up to date

• Publisher mergers and subsequent policy changes in a retrograde direction

• Complex rights issues, e.g. performance material, visual material etc.

• Copyright and theses

Summary