1.2. The OAK Law Project Report No. 1, Creating a Legal Framework for Copyright Management of Open Access Within the Australian Academic and Research Sector (“OAK Law Project – Legal Framework Report”) emphasized the importance of actively managing copyright in academic publications if open access is to be effectively achieved in the academic and research sector....
1.3. A staged approach has been adopted in implementing the actions proposed in the Legal Framework Report. The five implementation stages...are as follows:
Phase 1: Collect and review a sample of publishing agreements used by the major publishers of Australian academic and research materials....
Phase 2: Conduct a survey of academic journal publishers to obtain information about their policies and practices relating to open access....
Phase 3: Conduct a survey of academic authors....
Phase 4: Develop the OAK List, based on the findings of the review of publishing agreements (Phase 1) and the survey of academic journal publishers (Phase 2). The OAK List is an online, web-based, searchable database of information about publishing agreements and publishers’ open access policies and practices which can be accessed by authors, copyright administrators and repository managers in Australia and overseas. [PS: OAKlist was launched on February 6.]
Phase 5: Develop...a set of model publishing agreements..., a set of standard clauses to be used by authors and publishers, in conjunction with standard publishing agreements..., lists of the rights held by authors and publishers respectively in open access systems....[and] a web-based copyright toolkit designed for use as a practical tool for the management of copyright in materials produced by Australian academic authors....
1.4. This report deals with Phases 1 and 2....
9.2. In Phase 1...[t]he analysis of publishing agreements found that they predominantly:
seek to assign copyright from the author to the publisher; and
do not expressly authorize authors to archive their academic publications in a digital repository or a personal web site.
9.3. ...[I]n Phase 2...[t]he review of publishers’ open access policies and practices found that:
the majority of publishers did not have a formal open access policy;
only four of the total sample of 64 publishers surveyed had a formal open access policy;
62.5% of the publishers were able to provide sufficient information to enable them to be “colour classified” using the SHERPA/RoMEO colour classification system to denote levels of open access;
using the SHERPA/RoMEO colour classifications:
25% of the surveyed publishers were “green” (permitting archiving of the pre-print and post-print versions of published articles);
4.7% were “blue” (permitting archiving of the post-print version);
6.25$ were “yellow” (permitting archiving of the pre-print version);
26.6% were “white” (archiving not formally supported)....
Posted by
Peter Suber at 2/08/2008 12:49:00 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.
