Purdue University Senate passes CIC Author’s Copyright Contract Addendum
Posted on March 18, 2008
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This year, the University Senate has devoted a considerable amount of time to the topic of intellectual property rights. We started by broaching this topic within the context of inventions, copyrightable works with potential commercial value, tangible research property and research data, and income derived from intellectual property. At the most recent meeting, we returned to the topic within the context of intellectual property rights associated with something that has been called the “lifeblood of a research university,” publications.
The nature of the problem has been defined by a variety of organizations, including the Scholarly Publishing & Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) and the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC).
SPARC notes the author or authors of a publication, book, or other work holds the copyright “unless and until” they transfer the copyright to someone else. SPARC notes that the copyright agreement received from most journals and publishers asks for “exclusive rights of reproduction, distribution, public performance, public display, and modification of the original work.” They note that “Authors who have transferred their copyright without retaining any rights may not be able to place the work on course Web sites, copy it for students or colleagues, … or reuse portions in a subsequent work.” Finally, SPARC notes “The law allows you to transfer copyright while holding back rights for yourself and others.”
Last year, the leadership of the Senate attended a CIC Conference on Faculty Governance at which the CIC Statement on Publishing Agreements was discussed. As of June, 2007, faculty governance from six of the CIC campuses formally endorsed this statement and Addendum to Publication Agreements for CIC Authors. This fall, we asked the Faculty Affairs Committee to consider endorsing this agreement for use at Purdue University. As can be seen in Senate Document 07-9, the Faculty Affairs Committee has recommended that the Senate endorse this agreement.
The CIC Statement on Publishing Agreements has also been considered by the ad hoc Task Force on Scholarly Communication at Purdue that was created by the Provost and chaired by Jim Mullins, dean of Libraries.
By passing Senate Document 07-9, Purdue joined other CIC institutions such as the University of Illinois (both the UI-C and UIUC campuses), Indiana University, the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison as endorsing faculty rights to retain use of their intellectual property. The Addendum to Publication Agreements for CIC Authors is now available for use by Purdue faculty, if they chose to do so.
Click here to read the Addendum to Publication Agreements for CIC Authors (pdf).
For more information about the CIC’s involvement in scholarly communication and author’s rights, please visit their website: www.cic.uiuc.edu/groups/CICMembers/archive/Report/AuthorsRights.shtml.
-George Bodner
Harvard mandates open access to Arts and Sciences faculty research publications
Posted on February 13, 2008
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Late yesterday, Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted on a measure to permit Harvard to distribute their scholarship online. This will likely have major implications for the open access movement.
Links to articles about this in the New York Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, and the Harvard Crimson: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/books/12publ.html?_r=1&ref=arts&oref=slogin
http://chronicle.com/news/article/?id=3943&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=521835>
http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=521861
–Beth McNeil
High-energy physics and SCOAP: proposing a new model for publishing
Posted on February 12, 2008
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An interesting development in alternative business models has been put forward by the high-energy physics community, through their SCOAP3 initiative (www.scoap3.org), Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing. In short, they are attempting to turn the entire field of high-energy physics open access. By creating a super-consortium, they would make a tender offer to the current publishers of HEP physics. The publishers would be guaranteed operating money to cover the cost of editorial work, and in return, they offer up the content freely to the entire world. National Labs, funding agencies, and libraries all might be part of this consortium, and one of the hopes is that the costs to the scholarly community overall would drop significantly, since we would be switching from the relatively inelastic subscription model, where libraries have to buy in or their community loses out, to an author/payer focused model where publishers will lose out if they don’t keep costs at a level that is supported by the consortium.
Another, cautionary one, by the Editor in Chief of the American Physical Society, Gene Sprouse: http://www.science.doe.gov/hep/HEPAP/November2007/hepap2-1.pdf)
–Michael Fosmire
ISI and impact factors
Posted on January 23, 2008
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Published impact factors affect authors’ decisions about manuscript submission, funding awards, and promotion and tenure. While critiques of the use of impact factors are common, this report by the editors of the Journal of Cell Biology and the Journal of Experimental Medicine is the first to raise serious questions about the underlying validity of the data used to calculate impact factors and therefore the accurracy of the metrics that are published
Mike Rossner, Heather Van Epps, and Emma Hill reported on their inability to verify published impact factors using data provided provided by ISI. In their report, they note that they were unable to replicate published impact factors for their own and other journals, found numerous and serious errors in several data sets provided by ISI, and call into question the validity of both ISI’s dataset and their published impact factors.
The editorial by Mike Rossner, Heather Van Epps, and Emma Hill was published in the Journal of Cell Biology and is available at http://www.jcb.org/cgi/content/full/179/6/1091
–Beth McNeil (with content from Karla Hahn, ARL)
Bill mandates open access for NIH-funded research
Posted on January 4, 2008
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On December 26, 2007, President Bush signed the omnibus appropriations bill, including the NIH research access provision requiring the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) to mandate open access for NIH-funded research. This is major news, as it’s the first OA mandate for a major public funding agency in the US, and sets a precedent for other US agencies wanting to move in this way.
The NIH is the world’s largest funding provider for scientific research, with a budget last year of $28 million. This open access mandate will mean an unprecedented quantity of research will be available.
For more information, visit http://www.taxpayeraccess.org/media/release07-1226.html and http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/20/AR2007122002115_pf.html.
Welcome from the Scholarly Communication Task Force
Posted on December 18, 2007
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Victor Lechtenberg, Interim Provost, appointed a Scholarly Communication Task Force earlier this fall. James Mullins, Dean of Libraries, chairs the task force. Members of the Purdue Scholarly Communication Task Force are Thomas Bacher, Director, University Press; George Bodner, A. Kelly Distinguished Professor of Chemistry & Education; Nancy Bulger, Assistant Provost; Peter Dunn, Associate Vice Provost for Research; Christine Ladisch, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs; John Larson, Professor & Director of Graduate Education; Beth McNeil, Associate Dean, Libraries; Cindy Nakatsu, Interim Dean, Graduate School; and Bernard Tao, Professor, Agricultural Engineering & Food Science.
What is scholarly communication? While definitions vary, most agree that scholarly communication is the system through which research and other scholarly writings are created, evaluated for quality, disseminated to the scholarly community, and preserved for future use.
Why does Purdue have a task force on scholarly communication? The traditional system of scholarly communication is evolving. Electronic publishing, innovative business models, and the intervention of scholars and societies offer new opportunities for sharing scholarly information. The Task Force was formed to bring together diverse view points on the issues related to scholarly communication and to help inform campus of the changing issues.
We plan to post information about scholarly communication in general, and specific Purdue-related information, at this site. Please visit often!