Abstract: This is a preprint version of a paper submitted to the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. A study of ISI ranked Library and Information Science (LIS) journals (n=52) is reported. The study examined the stances of publishers as expressed in the Copyright Transfer Agreements (CTAs) of the journals towards self-archiving, the practice of depositing digital copies of one's works, preferably in an OAI-compliant open access repository. Results show that 62 % (32) do not make their CTAs available on the open web; 38 % (20) do. Of the 38 % that have CTAs available, two are open access journals. Even among the 20 journal CTAs publicly available a high level of ambiguity exists. Of the 62 % that do not have a public CTA, 40 % are silent about self-archiving. Closer examination augmented by publisher policy documents on copyright, self-archiving, and author instructions, reveals that only five, 10% of the ISI-ranked LIS journals, actually prohibit self-archiving by publisher rule. Copyright transfer agreements are a moving target and publishers appear to be acknowledging that copyright and open access can co-exist in the scholarly journal publishing arena. Given the ambivalence of journal publishers, the communities might be better off by self-archiving in open access archives and strategically building an LIS information commons through a society-led global scholarly communication consortium. The aggregation of OAI-compliant archives and development of disciplinary-specific library services for an LIS commons has the potential to increase the field's research impact and visibility besides ameliorating its own scholarly communication and publishing systems, and serving as a model for others.
Comment. This is an illuminating study. It would very useful to replicate it in other fields --and then, as long as someone was reading every journal policy and copyright transfer agreement, make any needed additions or corrections to the SHERPA and Eprints databases of journal access policies.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/24/2006 08:41:00 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.
