RoMEO studies 1: the impact of copyright ownership on academic author self‐archiving

Abstract

This is the first of a series of studies emanating from the UK JISC‐funded RoMEO Project (Rights Metadata for Open‐archiving) which investigated the IPR issues relating to academic author self‐archiving of research papers. It considers the claims for copyright ownership in research papers by universities, academics, and publishers by drawing on the literature, a survey of 542 academic authors and an analysis of 80 journal publisher copyright transfer agreements. The paper concludes that self‐archiving is not best supported by copyright transfer to publishers. It recommends that universities assert their interest in copyright ownership in the long term, that academics retain rights in the short term, and that publishers consider new ways of protecting the value they add through journal publishing.

UK university policy approaches towards the copyright ownership of scholarly works and the future of open access

“…The problem with this historical legacy is that academics have come to assume that the copyright in their scholarly works are their own (Monotti and Ricketson, 2003;Gadd et al, 2003a;Hoorn and Van de Graaf, 2006) and have come to conflate the idea of copyright ownership with that of academic freedom itself. Packard (2002;p.287) writes, "of all the arguments against the notion of university ownership of faculty work, none is more persuasive than the notion of academic freedom."…”

“…The second major study in this area was undertaken by the RoMEO project (Gadd et al, 2003a(Gadd et al, , 2003b. The authors surveyed 542 academic authors from 57 countries and found that 61% of academics thought they owned copyright in their research papers.…”

“…These issues were considered in detail by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)-funded Rights Metadata in Open Archiving (RoMEO) project in [2002][2003]. The resulting series of papers examined the impact of copyright on self-archiving (Gadd et al, 2003a, how scholars expected to both protect and use open access research papers (Gadd et al, 2003b and2003c), and a study of publishers' copyright transfer agreements (Gadd et al, 2003d). The principal message of the first of these studies (Gadd et al, 2003a) was a call to universities to join together with their academic employees to retain the copyright in their research papers.…”

“…The resulting series of papers examined the impact of copyright on self-archiving (Gadd et al, 2003a, how scholars expected to both protect and use open access research papers (Gadd et al, 2003b and2003c), and a study of publishers' copyright transfer agreements (Gadd et al, 2003d). The principal message of the first of these studies (Gadd et al, 2003a) was a call to universities to join together with their academic employees to retain the copyright in their research papers. The necessary publication rights could then be licensed to publishers, while copyright remained with the academic authors who created it, and their employing institutions who arguably owned it (more on this below), and papers could be made open access on their terms.…”

Copyright ownership of e-learning and teaching materials: Policy approaches taken by UK universities

“…A survey of academic staff at Monash University in 1997 performed by Monotti and Rickeston (2003) surprisingly found that respondents showed Ba considerable degree of willingness to share ownership of both research and teaching materials, or to consider this option (almost 90 per cent altogether), thus removing the possible conclusion that academic creators believe universities should have no rights in this material.Ŝ imilarly, the Jisc-funded Rights & Rewards (R&R) project (Bates et al 2007) utilised a methodology devised by the 2003 Rights Metadata in Open Archiving (RoMEO) project (Gadd et al 2003) to understand how academics wanted to protect any outputs they might make available in an open electronic environment. The R&R project focussed on e-learning materials whilst the RoMEO project focussed on research outputs.…”