Nicholas R. Cozzarelli et al, Liberalization of PNAS copyright policy: Noncommercial use freely allowed, PNAS Early Edition, August 17, 2004. (Access restricted to subscribers.) An editorial describes the rights of PNAS authors (posting .pdf articles, reuse of work in other compilations, etc.,) while justifying PNAS' insistence on copyright transfer, which, Cozzarelli and colleagues argue, enable the publisher to transfer journal material to new and evolving storage formats, "remove the administrative burden of rights and permissions management from authors; and to provide protection from copyright abuse." Interestingly, PNAS initiated this policy in 1993, and when they wanted to include material prior to this date in PubMedCentral, they would have needed to get permission from the authors of the original articles.
In the end we proceeded without explicit permission from the original authors or their heirs. We accept the risk in doing so because we believe it is clearly in everyone's best interest. If a copyright holder objects, however, we will immediately remove the article from our online collection.
Posted by
Garrett at 8/17/2004 11:37:00 AM.
The open access movement:
Putting peer-reviewed scientific and scholarly literature
on the internet. Making it available free of charge and
free of most copyright and licensing restrictions.
Removing the barriers to serious research.
I recommend the OA tracking project (OATP) as the best way to stay on top of new OA developments. You can read the OATP feed on a blog-like web page or subscribe to it by RSS, email, or Twitter. You can also help build the feed by tagging new developments you encounter.
