The changing copyright landscape in academic publishing

Abstract

This article marks the publication of the Tenth edition Clark's Publishing Agreements: A book of precedents. The growing complexity of traditional assignment agreements is accompanied by researchers’ misunderstanding about their rights. There is a shifting balance between assignment and licensing of rights in an author's work. Academics continue to agree standard assignment contracts even where they disagree with the principles. Publishers are loosening control over copyright in response to demands from funders and a growing minority of researchers. There is a complex range of researchers’ attitudes to copyright issues.

Ten hot topics around scholarly publishing

“…Этим можно отчасти объяснить, почему авторыисследователи, в отличие от авторов из всех других отраслей, где создатели оригинальных продуктов получают гонорары или роялти, как правило, не получают никаких платежей от издателей. Это также объясняет, почему многие авторы, по-видимому, отказываются от своих прав, одновременно не соглашаясь с обоснованием этого [103].…”

The UK Scholarly Communication Licence: Attempting to Cut through the Gordian Knot of the Complexities of Funder Mandates, Publisher Embargoes and Researcher Caution in Achieving Open Access

“…The environment is seen as confusing to authors, with institutions and their libraries finding it difficult to give authors simple messages about how to adopt OA practices. Funder mandates in particular were seen by participants in this research to be focused on enforcing compliance without effectively addressing challenges around author behavioural incentives (particularly around journal impact factor-related esteem), which currently militate against adoption of OA practices [40,85]. The UK-SCL is in many respects a bold attempt to cut through these complexities by achieving greater simplicity and clarity for institutions through a focus on pre-emptive rights retention.…”

Ten Hot Topics around Scholarly Publishing

“…This might in part explain why authors in scientific research, in contrast to all other industries where original creators get honoraria or royalties, typically do not receive any payments from publishers at all. It also explains why many authors seem to continue to sign away their rights while simultaneously disagreeing with the rationale behind doing so [103].…”