'lo all
Regarding a journal articles keyword and abstract copyright.
In both instances I believe abstracts and keywords may have been
produced by either:
a) The author[s] of the article
b) "Publishing house" staff
I had no idea as to the copyright status of these various combinations.
Charles Oppenheim, in a recent correspondence, helped to clarify the
issue for me, for anyone else who may have been in the dark over this:
> No problem about circulating my answers further if you wish as long as
you
> reproduce it in its entirety, especially the last line.
>
> The UK Copyright Act (note, not anywhere else in the world) makes so-
> called "author abstracts", i.e., those written by the author and
> associated with a scholarly article, totally free of copyright. So if
> such an author abstract is used, one is never infringing copyright by
> reproducing it. What's more you can reproduce it irrespective the
status
> of the article itself, e.g., you can display the abstract even if the
> article is embargoed for OA.
>
> If, however, the abstract was produced by a third party, e.g., the
> publisher, then the copyright belongs to them and they could object,
so
> permission is needed. However, I suspect the vast majority of
abstracts
> are author produced.
>
> Metadata is more complex for various reasons. Some may be author
produced,
> some may be publisher produced. Furthermore, as a series of keywords,
it
> attracts not copyright but database rights, which are somewhat
different
> to copyright in terms of lifetime and restricted acts. However, there
> seems little point in anyone adding keywords intended them to be used
for
> retrieval purposes unless they are made part of an index, so I would
argue
> there is an implied permission (licence) to copy such metadata
elements
> that are needed for retrieval purposes into a system designed to
assist
> retrieval. When it comes to other components of the metadata which
are
> not used for retrieval purposes, the position becomes very complex and
I
> wouldn't care to generalise.
>
> Hope this helps (a bit) - and of course, I am not a lawyer and this
does
> not represent formal legal guidance.
>
> Charles
>
> Professor Charles Oppenheim
> Head
> Department of Information Science
> Loughborough University
> Loughborough
> Leics LE11 3TU
>
> Tel 01509-223065
> Fax 01509 223053
> e mail [log in to unmask]
Matt Davies
Ashworth Building, Zone A
Peel Park Campus
University of Salford
Greater Manchester
t: [0161 29] 56644
e: [log in to unmask]
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