If you recall, authors of works published in Germany before 1995 have about one year to tell their publishers that they wish to retain electronic rights to those works. If they do, the rights are theirs and they may use them to authorize OA. If they don't, the rights will vest in the publishers. These are the terms a German copyright reform to take effect on January 1, 2008.
By email, Klaus adds some extra detail. According to Eric Steinhauer, authors needn't write to their publishers during 2008 if they transfer non-exclusive rights to an OA repository before the law takes effect in January. The rector of the University of Stuttgart has written a letter to the Stuttgart faculty (in German) urging them to transfer non-exclusive rights to the Stuttgart institutional repository. Also see the letter (in German and English) from the Helmholtz OA project to German researchers, suggesting language for transferring "ein einfaches Nutzungsrecht" or "a simple right of use" to their IR. Scholars everywhere who want to take advantage of this option have just a bit more than one month to act.
Please spread the word to authors who might be affected, and if your rights might be affected, please read the German law itself, not just my imperfect paraphrase.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 11/23/2007 04:43:00 PM.
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.
