Copyright Issues in Open Access Research Journals

Abstract

This article presents results of a survey undertaken as part of a series of work packages under a joint initiative by JISC and SURF to explore the attitudes of authors in the UK and the Netherlands towards Open Access. The Open Access environment has created a number of entirely new copyright models, which stand in contrast to the traditional academic journals in which the copyright has to be transferred from the author(s) to the journal publisher. The following emerging copyright models in OA journals were identified: a model in which the author keeps the copyright: this was preferred by nearly half of the respondents two models in which the author shares the copyright (with Creative Commons licences): these were preferred by nearly a third of the respondents a model in which the author transfers only the exploitation rights to the journal publisher: this was preferred by a small minority. These and other results seem to reflect a desire on the part of academics to change the balance of rights within copyright between authors and publishers in scholarly communication journals. Libraries and academic institutes are already taking part in the scholarly communication copyright debate and could use these results to align their positions with the academics' views.