[BOAI] Princeton bans academics from

[Carolina Rossini]

> 

> 28 September 2011
> Princeton bans academics from handing all copyright to journal publishers
> Sunanda Creagh
> 
> http://theconversation.edu.au/princeton-bans-academics-from-handing-all-copyright-to-journal-publishers-3596
> 
> Prestigious US academic institution Princeton University has banned
> researchers from giving the copyright of scholarly articles to journal
> publishers, except in certain cases where a waiver may be granted. The
> new rule is part of an Open Access policy aimed at broadening the
> reach of their scholarly…
> 
> Princeton Princeton University hopes its new Open Access policy will
> pressure academic publishers to stop requiring the copyright to the
> papers they publish. Flickr/Yakinodi
> 
> Prestigious US academic institution Princeton University has banned
> researchers from giving the copyright of scholarly articles to journal
> publishers, except in certain cases where a waiver may be granted.
> 
> The new rule is part of an Open Access policy aimed at broadening the
> reach of their scholarly work and encouraging publishers to adjust
> standard contracts that commonly require exclusive copyright as a
> condition of publication.
> 
> Universities pay millions of dollars a year for academic journal
> subscriptions. People without subscriptions, which can cost up to
> $25,000 a year for some journals or hundreds of dollars for a single
> issue, are often prevented from reading taxpayer funded research.
> Individual articles are also commonly locked behind pay walls.
> 
> Researchers and peer reviewers are not paid for their work but
> academic publishers have said such a business model is required to
> maintain quality.
> 
> At a September 19 meeting, Princeton’s Faculty Advisory Committee on
> Policy adopted a new open access policy that gives the university the
> “nonexclusive right to make available copies of scholarly articles
> written by its faculty, unless a professor specifically requests a
> waiver for particular articles.”
> 
> “The University authorizes professors to post copies of their articles
> on their own web sites or on University web sites, or in other
> not-for-a-fee venues,” the policy said.
> 
> “The main effect of this new policy is to prevent them from giving
> away all their rights when they publish in a journal.”
> 
> Under the policy, academic staff will grant to The Trustees of
> Princeton University “a nonexclusive, irrevocable, worldwide license
> to exercise any and all copyrights in his or her scholarly articles
> published in any medium, whether now known or later invented, provided
> the articles are not sold by the University for a profit, and to
> authorise others to do the same.”
> 
> In cases where the journal refuses to publish their article without
> the academic handing all copyright to the publisher, the academic can
> seek a waiver from the open access policy from the University.
> 
> The policy authors acknowledged that this may make the rule toothless
> in practice but said open access policies can be used “to lean on the
> journals to adjust their standard contracts so that waivers are not
> required, or with a limited waiver that simply delays open access for
> a few months.”
> 
> Academics will also be encouraged to place their work in open access
> data stores such as Arxiv or campus-run data repositories.
> A step forward
> 
> Having prestigious universities such as Princeton and Harvard fly the
> open access flag represented a step forward, said open access advocate
> Professor Simon Marginson from the University of Melbourne’s Centre
> for the Study of Higher Education.
> 
> “The achievement of free knowledge flows, and installation of open
> access publishing on the web as the primary form of publishing rather
> than oligopolistic journal publishing subject to price barriers, now
> depends on whether this movement spreads further among the peak
> research and scholarly institutions,” he said.
> 
> “Essentially, this approach – if it becomes general – normalises an
> open access regime and offers authors the option of opting out of that
> regime. This is a large improvement on the present position whereby
> copyright restrictions and price barriers are normal and authors have
> to attempt to opt in to open access publishing, or risk prosecution by
> posting their work in breach of copyright.”
> 
> “The only interests that lose out under the Princeton proposal are the
> big journal publishers. Everyone else gains.”
> 
> Professor Tom Cochrane, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Technology, Information
> and Learning Support at the Queensland University of Technology, who
> has also led an Open Access policy mandate at QUT welcomed Princeton’s
> new rule but warned that the waiver must not be used too regularly,
> lest the policy be undermined.
> 
> If all universities and research institutions globally had policies
> similar to Princeton’s, the ultimate owner of published academic work
> would be universities and their research communities collectively,
> Professor Cochrane said.
> 
> “They are the source of all the content that publishers absolutely
> require to run their business model,” he said.
> 
> Dr Danny Kingsley, an open access expert and Manager of Scholarly
> Communication and ePublishing at Australian National University said
> the move was a positive step and that the push for open access should
> come from the academic community.
> 
> In practice, however, the new policy requires staff have a good
> understanding of the copyright arrangements they currently have with
> journal publishers in their field.
> 
> They will need to ensure future publisher’s agreements accommodate the
> new position and if not, obtain a waiver from the University.
> 
> “This sounds easy but in reality might be a challenge for some
> academics. There is considerable evidence to show that academics often
> have very little understanding of the copyright situation of their
> published work,” she said.
> 
> “What will be most telling will be the publishers' response over the
> next year or so. If they start providing amended agreements to
> Princeton academics then the door will be open for other universities
> to follow this lead. I suspect however they will not, as generally the
> trend seems for publishers to make the open access path a complex and
> difficult one.”