Open Access News

SURF and JISC today published a model agreement that will help authors make appropriate arrangements with publishers for the publication of a journal article. This "Licence to Publish" is the result of several years of international consultation and aims to establish a balance of rights and interests in the emerging scholarly communications environment.

The rise of digital channels of communication has meant that the process of publishing research material has been undergoing major changes over the last few years. SURF and JISC ­ two organisations that promote the innovative use of ICT in higher education in the Netherlands and the UK, respectively ­ have pressed for some years for carefully thought-out arrangements to be made regarding copyright, with the interests of all parties being maximised. The overarching principle behind their activities in this field is that the results of publicly funded research should be made freely and openly available, and as quickly as possible, to all who want to access them.

The main features of the Licence to Publish are that:

• copyright in the published work remains with the author;
• the author grants the publisher a licence to publish the work;
• the licence takes effect as soon as the publisher has indicated that it wishes to publish the work;
• once the article has been published, the author can make it publicly accessible ­ in the form in which it was published by the publisher ­ by making it available as part of a digital scientific collection (a "repository").
• if the publisher so requests, the start of such public accessibility can be delayed for a maximum of six months.

The new model agreement will be particularly useful where articles are published in the traditional way, with publications being made available only to subscribers. The agreement is available in both Dutch and English and can be used for publications involving more than one author.

Use of the Licence to Publish is supported by the Wellcome Trust, a charity and the UK's largest non-governmental funder of biomedical research....

Here's an excerpt from the English version of the license itself:

The Author retains all other rights with respect to the Article not granted to the Publisher and in particular he can exercise the following rights: ...

To upload the Article or to grant to the Author’s own institution (or another appropriate organisation) the authorisation to upload the Article, immediately from the date of publication of the journal in which the Article is published (unless that the Author and the Publisher have agreed in writing to a short embargo period, with a maximum of six (6) months): a) onto the institution’s closed network (e.g. intranet system); and/or b) onto publicly accessible institutional and/or centrally organised repositories (such as PubMed Central and other PubMed Central International repositories), provided that a link is inserted to the Article on the Publisher’s website....

To grant to end users of the Author’s own institution or (or another appropriate organisation), the authorisation to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works....

Comments.

1. I applaud JISC, SURF, and the Wellcome Trust for this work.  Authors who use the license will have the rights they need for OA archiving. 
2. This is much like the author addenda already produced (in chronological order) by SPARC, MIT, Science Commons, OhioLink, and the University of North Carolina.  The chief difference is that it's an entire license, replacing the publisher's own, not just an addendum to modify it.
3. I have only two quibbles with the legal details.  (1) The agreement transfers to publishers "a sole license" to do  many things including "reproduce the Article in whole or in part, and to communicate the Article to the public in print and/or digital form...."  If "sole" is interpreted to mean "exclusive", then this section of the agreement negates the section on the author's retained rights.  The English should be less ambiguous.  (2) The right of end users to "copy, use, distribute" and so on should apply to all users as such, not just to users from the "Author's own institution (or another appropriate institution)".
4. About 70% of surveyed journals already give authors blanket permission to self-archive their postprints.  Authors publishing in these journals should understand that they don't need to negotiate a different agreement.  On the other hand, about 30% of journals are not yet consenting and some of the 70% are retreating from their original consent (for example, adding embargoes or fees).  This license or the equivalent can help finish changing the landscape and secure what we've gained. 
5. It's exciting to think about how JISC, SURF, and the Wellcome Trust could use their combined weight to make this license a new standard.  But so far we don't know their plans.  I have no problem with that:  it makes sense to separate the crafting of the license from policies on how to use it.  But I hope we can hear from them soon about their policies.  In particular, will they require it for their grantees?  If they need a critical mass of authors before non-cooperating journals start to cooperate, can they get it if they merely recommend the license?