Abstract
This article explores the tensions inherent in the ownership and reuse of scholarly works, with a focus on achieving open access (OA) aims via Creative Commons licences. This US initiative has had an enormous impact on the access to, dissemination and reuse of UK-authored scholarly literature since the Finch report of 2012. However, confusion abounds within the funding, publishing and academic communities about the correct uses and long-term implications of using such licences. This has legal consequences, as well as consequences for the author, readers and institutions who have to report compliance regarding OA in order to secure future research funding. Ownership is an important part of this picture. Creative Commons licences are legally binding on licensor and licensee, and only the copyright owner may release their work under such a licence. The complex research funding and sharing ecosystem has resulted in a ‘policy stack’ challenge 1 with authors given little choice about their options. This paper examines some of these challenges through an exploration of current UKRI policy and the copyright licences of one publisher, with a focus on text and data mining.
Highlights
Creative Commons licences have been in existence, in various forms, since 2002
First ownership of academic works is not straightforward to unpick – and in an environment in which authors are expected to behave in certain ways with regards their intellectual outputs, it may become something of a moot point, as is described below
Many publishers have asked for copyright assignation as standard, with authors not necessarily realizing that this results in a transfer of all rights: a 2003 study found that 79% of academics claimed that they owned copyright despite 90% of publishers asking for an assignation.[8]
Summary
In 2001 the Budapest Open Access Initiative held that ‘the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited’.2. Two years later the Berlin Declaration stated that open access (OA) contributions must ‘grant to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, right of access to, and a license to copy ... In this context, the word ‘access’ is something of a misnomer.
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