[GOAL] Re: Questions about the OA offered by Oxford University Press

[Heather Morrison]

The ESA Copyright & Permissions page makes it very clear that authors are required to completely sign over copyright - even if they are paying for OA under a Creative Commons license. I recommend that authors refuse this option. If copyright belongs to the organization, not the author, there is nothing to stop the organization (or another organization downstream) from offering for-pay versions of the work. CC licenses do not require free of charge. 

This situation illustrates some of the advantages of OA via self-archiving. Authors are better served by the self-archiving policy for accepted manuscripts, which is pretty good if not ideal due to a 12-month embargo. If authors do pay for CC licensed works, they should self-archive in repositories to make sure the works continue to be made available.

Following is the language on which I base my claim that ESA is requiring full copyright transfer:

"Except for materials prepared as a result of employment by the U.S. Government and Canadian Government, all material published by ESA is copyrighted and protected under U.S. copyright law. Under the Copyright Act of 1976, the term of copyright for materials registered by an organization is 75 years from the date of first publication". 
From: http://www.entsoc.org/pubs/publish/copyright

As an aside, the assumption seems to be that the U.S. and Canadian governments have similar laws with respect to copyright, which is not the case. Works by U.S. federal employees are not under copyright, whereas works by Canadian federal employees fall under Crown Copyright. 

Here is the language from the Author Self-Archiving Policy:

"Accepted Manuscript

The accepted manuscript is defined here as the final draft author manuscript, as accepted for publication by a journal, including modifications based on referees’ suggestions, before it has undergone copyediting and proof correction.

Authors may upload their accepted manuscript PDF to an institutional and/or centrally organized repository, provided that public availability is delayed until 12 months after first online publication in the journal."

from: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/en/access-purchase/rights-and-permissions/self-archiving-policyb.html

best,

Heather Morrison

On 2015-10-12, at 8:04 AM, Walker,Thomas J wrote:

> Some background
>  
> In the early years of OA (1995-1999), as a member of the Entomological Society of America [ESA], I successfully lobbied its Governing Board to sell to authors of articles in ESA journals “unlimited PDF reprints” [eventually renamed “Open Access reprints” ].  The price of this immediate free Web access to PDF files was based on the price of paper reprints.  (During those years, most authors bought 50 or 100 paper reprints and had to deal with the trouble and expense of storing and distributing them.)  In 2000, the price ESA charged for making an article open access was set at 75% of the price of 100 paper reprints—for example, for an 8-page article it was $90.  Selling this form of OA for a price based on that of paper reprints lasted through 2014. [Details of this background can be found athttp://entnemdept.ifas.ufl.edu/walker/esaepub.htm.]
>  
> OUP’s version of open access
>  
> On 1 Jan 2015, Oxford University Press became the publisher of ESA journals, and for most ESA members the price of “OA” for their articles became  $2000 or $2500  per article depending on what license was chosen by the corresponding author at the time the author signed over the copyright of the formatted article to OUP.  The author could buy a  CC-BY license for $2000 or a CC-BY-NC-ND for $2500.
>  
> I hope that some of you already know enough about copyright policies in general (or about OUP’s policies as I have described them) to be able to answer these three questions easily.
>  
> Does this means that the OA is vested only in the Corresponding Author? 
>  
> If so and that author should die, what becomes of those rights? 
> 
> For what reason(s) would a corresponding author choose to buy the more expensive license?
>  
> 
> If you do not already know the details of OUP’s version of OA and are curious about the options it offers, you can find what potential ESA authors are told about OA charges here.  (The overall publishing policies and procedures for ESA authors are explained here.)
>  
> Tom
> ====================================
> Thomas J. Walker
> Department of Entomology & Nematology
> PO Box 110620 (or Natural Area Drive)
> University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0620
> E-mail: tjw at ufl.edu      Phone: 352-273-3920
> Web: http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/walker/
> ====================================
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