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Hiya Folks,

The National Research Council here in Canada, which I work for, issues its own license to publish. While publishers prefer to use their own licenses, NRC is resolute that it will not use alternative licenses, and as a national reserach organization, has the clout to make it stick. Consequently, all journals use our licenses to publish (with some, such as the IEEE journals, using slightly amended versions).

Thus, using your own license to publish is not a 'non-starter'.

This system isn't perfect and I have lost some publications (including one with OECD) because of our agency's stance. That said, I support the stance, because it reserves copyright in these articles to the Government of Canada, and does not vest it to publishers. They don't need to own copyright in order to publish, and there's no reason to give it to them.

I have attached a typical NRC license to publish to this email.

-- Stephen

Clare Allan wrote:
[log in to unmask]" type="cite"> 
Fred, 

Thanks for this it's very interesting.

The last time I pointed out the Licence to Publish to one of our academic staff (Professor in Computing Science) this is the response I got:

"It's a new one on me, but frankly a non-starter. All journals, conferences and publishers I deal with have their own copyright agreements that they won't budge on."

Given this sort of response, what would be really useful are the names of publishers that are known to be "friendly" towards either the author using the Licence to Publish, or if asked, to use their own that retains the same author's rights.

Do you have specific examples of publishers known to respond positively?

Perhaps a list of friendly publishers could be created on the Licence to Publish web site and people add to it as hopefully the list grows.

Clare  
________________________
Clare Allan
Stirling University Library
University of Stirling
Email: [log in to unmask] 

-----Original Message-----
From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of FrederickFriend
Sent: 29 January 2008 10:03
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: License to publish

Alice,

The response from publishers in the UK to the JISC/SURF Licence to Publish has been to express preference to use their own Licence to Publish. We have no problem with this if the publisher's wording allows the author to retain the same rights as expressed in the JISC/SURF Licence, and by and large they do. What is needed is more advocacy with authors to make them aware that a publisher will often have a Licence to Publish which they will use if the author requests it. If the author does not ask to use a Licence to Publish, most publishers' default position is to ask the author to sign a copyright assignment contract. The answer to your second question is that we have not found a good way of reaching out to authors, given the very large number of academic authors, but we are seeing a growing interest from authors in copyright issues. That growing interest provides an opportunity.

Fred Friend
JISC Scholarly Communication Consultant
Honorary Director Scholarly Communication UCL Land-line +44 1494 563168 Mobile +44 7747 627738

----- Original Message -----
From: "Alice Keefer" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, January 28, 2008 7:49 PM
Subject: License to publish


Hello,

In the course of a project involving several Spanish universities, a 
question
arose about the level of acceptance of the SURF/JISC "License to publish" 
and
so I'm passing it to members of this list:

1. Have publishers readily accepted it in lieu of their own contracts?  If 
so,
which ones?  If not, have some been willing to modify their license clauses?

2. Are authors now actively (and willingly) proposing its use to publishers
when they submit articles?  Has anyone found a particularly good way of
reaching out to authors to convince them to use the license?

Many thanks!

Alice Keefer




*******************************************
Alice Keefer <[log in to unmask]>
Tel. 93 403 5781; Fax 93 403-5772

Universitat de Barcelona
Facultat de Biblioteconomia i Documentació
c/Melcior de Palau, 140
08014 Barcelona
*******************************************

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-- 
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Stephen Downes  ~  Researcher  ~  National Research Council Canada
http://www.downes.ca  ~  [log in to unmask]        ** Free Learning