A couple of questions for you all:

We make a recommendation to postgraduates submitting etheses in our 
digital repository that they consider using a Creative Commons licence, 
and we recommend a fairly restrictive licence.  Users are able to opt 
out of this if they wish to, or choose a less restrictive licence.
We have recently had queries from postgraduates and academics re. the 
longevity of Creative Commons licences and whether they can be future 
proofed to keep pace with, as yet, unanticipated developments.  If 
important changes are made to the licences, how are "outdated" licences 
kept up to date.  So for example if a thesis is deposited in 2008 with 
the current version of a licence, what will the situation be in several 
years time when that licence may have been superceded.
We wanted to ask if other sites are using CC licences for etheses and 
whether they have considered or addressed these issues.  Would you 
consider trying to keep licences up to date and how would you go about 
this?  Do you think this is a major problem, or do you think that the 
spirit of CC licences will remain pretty constant, despite the fact that 
specific licences will be renamed?

A second question is with regard to publisher policies when they 
consider publication of material which has previously been presented in 
a public and electronically available thesis.  Our institution takes 
this into consideration when considering restrictions for electronic and 
print theses.
We are interested in any current information with regard to publisher 
policies.
I am assuming that the most obvious route is to query this with 
individual publishers and seek information on their websites. But does 
anyone know of any consolidated source of information about publisher 
policies?  Are there any recent summaries or presentations on typical 
policies which are available?  We would be interested in using recent 
presentations/case studies as potential training material for postgrads. 
so that they could become acquainted with these issues.

Thanks in advance for your answers
Janet

-- 
Janet Aucock
Bibliographic Data Services Manager
LIS
University of St Andrews
North Street
St Andrews
Fife
KY16 9TR

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