museumsandtheweb.com - Comments for "MW2010 Copyright Form Reworked as License"

or assign copyright and reserve what you want

dbear — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 21:56:00 +0000

Dear Jon,

Like Jennifer I often refuse to grant copyright at all, but in a recent negotiation I had with a publisher, I granted copyright in an article I feel is very timely and will not bear reprinting, but insisted that the publisher license back to me the rights I would need to disseminate it widely, especially in advance of their long lead-time print publication process..

As is usual in these case,they first refused to negotiate at all and implied that they would not publish the work after all, saying:

"Unfortunately, we cannot accept for publication any chapter for which we do not own the copyright. This is due to our contracts with our e-book distributors such as NetLibrary, ebooks, Books24x7, among others, by which we are mandated to have complete control over our publications. As such, it is vital that full copyright be signed over to us. Without our ownership of copyright, we are unable to use the services of these e-book distributors."

and added (meaninglessly) "Please know that your signing of this copyright agreement transfers solely the copyright of your chapter to us-not the intellectual property right. "

I could have insisted that I license them the rights they need, but in this case instead took the view that they could own the copyright as long as they granted me all the rights I would want. When I said I wanted to maintain the rights to use the text on the web and distribute it/reproduce it as I wished, they initially replied;

"our fair use policy (attached) addresses those concerns. We kindly request you submit a fair use request to XXX, prior to distributing your work. "

Obviously, this would put the burden on me, even if they were to say yes. So I insisted that they license me back all these rights in the text of the agreement up front. Eventually they agreed to that, and in the end, after a few more revisions, we ended up with a copyright assignment that concludes:

"Notwithstanding the above,...Publisher hereby grants to author a limited, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, and post the Manuscript, or any portion thereof, on author's personal or professional website. Additionally, Publisher hereby grants author a limited, non-exclusive license to use, reproduce, and distribute the Manuscript for personal ior professional purposes ....

Since these are the uses I would have made had I retained the copyright, I don't really care if they own it and give me these rights back. From their perspective, the book keeping issues to tracking whether they have copyright or not are pretty onerous, just as it would be onerous to me to have to ask permission in advance of doing things I consider normal with my paper. So both of us are fairly satisfied...

Having negotiated copyright from the pubklishers side of the fence and from the authors side for thirty years now, I've almost never failed to find a place where we can agree. The new ground that Jennifer is breaking with the MW2010 agreement is to try to start with a position that makes sense to both parties - if that works, it will be a breakthrough

David Bearman

© policy varies a lot

jtrant — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:04:48 +0000

hi Jon,

sorry for the slow reply -- i've been under the weatehr.

rights policies depend very much on the publisher, and on how much an author willing to push back. most academic journals start out asking for an assignment of copyright in order to publish your work -- that's the 'standard' form. [some in the sciences also have 'page charges' -- they're just what they sound like, a price per page to publish -- but that's a different question].

an assignment of © isn't really necessary for the use a journal wants to make -- to publish, and possibly re-publish, and to sell the right for others to re-publish. what i object to most is the fact that if copyright is assigned, then i no longer have any right to use that work.

when pushed, most will accept a license rather than an assignment of rights, but watch out. the license i got recently from a big publisher asked for an exclusive assignment of rights: i.e. i couldn't use my work. that's functionally no better than an assignment of copyright. so i pushed back.

this negotiation, which is often accompanied by threats to pull your article, is a great game of chicken. in the end we agreed on a non-exclusive license. much better, though even they can be too restrictive, putting limits on what an author can do. read them and make sure you feel comfortable.

there's a strong movement towards 'Open Access' now. Peter Suber's "Open access overview, focussing on open access to peer-reviewed research articles and their preprints" is a good guide. And access is facilitated by Creative Commons licenses, that offer varying levels of access, use and re-use. We use a CC-BY-NC-ND for the MW papers [we talked about that elsewhere].

when i look at a proposed publication agreement, the questions in my mind are about what kind of benefit the publication affords, who has access to it, whether i can also provide access to it [on my own site], and what kinds of restrictions there are on my future use.

ideally, aren't we looking for broad access and minimal restrictions, without completely removing any benefit the publisher may get from their investment in the distribution of the work?

/jennifer

j. trant archives & museum informatics www.archimuse.com

Good move - how do other publishers do it?

jon_pratty — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:22:32 +0000

This is a great move, Jennifer. I'm currently looking into the different ways we disseminate research. Some key points are arising: what exactly should we look out for when signing up with a publisher of a paper or research?

I'd like to hear from anyone who has tips about things to look out for in terms of copyright and things to avoid like the plague.

Any ideas or links to good lore on the subject would be appreciated.

Jon Pratty, Digital Publishing Consultant

jon@disabilityartsonline.org.uk

Good call! :-)

frankieroberto — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:46:56 +0000

Good call! :-)