13. Is the U of MN Author's Addendum a threat to the viability of non-profit scholarly society journals?
No, probably not. There is as yet no evidence that publishing revenues are declining or at risk, even with the rapidly growing number of open access policies and amount of publicly available scholarship. Further, the policy contains a key provision that protects journals and the peer review process: for those journals that do not already allow open access to articles within six months of publication, the policy assumes, and faculty may specifically request, a delay of up to six months after publication and before the university places any articles in a public repository. Immediate access continues to be through the published journal.
In some disciplines, freely accessible online archives have proven to be a supplement to journal readership, not a replacement for it. In physics, for example, where nearly 100% of new articles are freely available from birth in the arXiv open-access repository, subscription-based journals have continued to thrive. The American Physical Society and the Institute of Physics Publishing are unable to identify any subscriptions lost as a result of arXiv in more than a decade of its existence [see Swan, A. (2005) Open access self-archiving: An Introduction. Technical Report, JISC, HEFCE.].
14. Is there anywhere I can share my work where I would always retain all rights to reuse it?
The University of Minnesota Digital Conservancy provides long-term preservation and access services for the intellectual and creative output of the University's academic, research, and administrative communities. Authors retain copyright to their submissions and are free to reuse their works elsewhere. Contributing works to the Conservancy does not transfer intellectual property rights. For more information, see the UDC's Copyright Policy and Deposit Agreements page.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 6/19/2007 10:42:00 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.
