See esp. Section 2.3.1 (Creating a Common Level Playing Field for Publication Models), Section 2.3.2 (Protecting the Public Domain for Scientific Information and Knowledge), and the answer to OA-related Question 19 on p. 21.
Here's an email summary from the MPI's Sebastian Krujatz, one of the comment co-authors:
(1) At the end-user level, [copyright] limitations most relevant to scientific research should be mandatory, immune towards contractual agreements and technological protection measures, and should be construed as providing a bottom line, which national legislation should not fall below. In return, original rightholders should receive adequate compensation.
(2) At the level of intermediaries, if certain negative effects of copyright protection on the wide dissemination and accessibility cannot be mitigated otherwise, additional legal measures need to be considered. One maybe favorable option could be to restrain the exercise of exclusive rights, subject to negotiations between the primary publisher and further intermediaries. Such negotiations would provide further intermediaries with a license for parallel dissemination under adequate, competition-oriented terms and conditions and would make any mandates redundant. This would both provide for market-oriented compensation for the primary publisher and would prevent single-source situations and excessive pricing for journal articles, securing a wide dissemination and accessibility of scientific information and knowledge in the EU.
The main idea behind this approach may be that the current problems within the scholarly publication follow not only from the distinct, impact-driven publishing system inseparably linked to the reputation of scientific author, but also from the fact that usually there is no truly viable substitute for an individual scholarly work. In many cases, this secures publishers a monopolistic position not only with regards to the scholarly work but also to the actual information contained therein. Although copyright does not provide a monopolistic position by itself, copyright reform can be a tool to mitigate the effects of such a monopolistic position of publishers.
Posted by
Peter Suber at 12/06/2008 03:24:00 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.
