At pp. 76-77, the government says it will re-evaluate a 2006 proposal for a secondary exploitation right for authors (Zweitverwertungsrecht für Urheber) of scientific research articles based on publicly-funded research. The proposal is based on an excellent idea of Gerd Hansen's which I wrote about in SOAN for June 2006:
The Upper House of Germany's Parliament (Bundesrat) is considering a bill to permit author self-archiving of journal articles six months after publication regardless of the terms in a copyright transfer agreement the author might have signed....
The government rejected the idea in 2006 and German law does not currently incorporate it. The government is not promising to support it this time, but its willingness to re-evaluate it has to count as good news.
(Thanks to Sebastian Krujatz for help in understanding the government's position.)
Posted by
Peter Suber at 1/15/2009 03:03:00 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.
