U Texas System Expands Copyright Clearance License -- Campus Technology

 U Texas System Expands Copyright Clearance License -- Campus Technology

U Texas System Expands Copyright Clearance License

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 06/11/09

The University of Texas (UT) System has expanded its adoption of Copyright Clearance Center's annual copyright license from its Austin campus, which it announced in September 2008, to the entire UT System. The nine academic campuses and six health institutions that the UT System comprises make it one of the largest higher education systems in the United States.

The annual copyright license makes it easy for faculty and staff to license published materials for use in coursepacks, e-reserves, course management systems, and research collaboration. For a single annual fee, the license provides librarians, faculty, copy shop staff, and others with pre-approved permission to use and share content from millions of books, scholarly journals, newspapers, magazine, and e-books.

"An annual comprehensive license from the Copyright Clearance Center will allow all 15 campuses of the UT System to improve operational efficiency in this area and will position the UT System at the forefront of copyright use and compliance management," said Barry Burgdorf, vice chancellor and general counsel of the UT System. "We are pleased to deliver the campuses of one of the largest public university systems in the nation into this cost efficient arrangement, which will benefit our faculty, students and staff by providing easy, compliant access to a large and expanding library of academic works,"

"At UT Austin, we strive to make course materials available to students and faculty with minimal difficulties, and CCC's annual copyright license helps us do just that," added Georgia Harper, scholarly communications advisor with the UT at Austin Libraries. "With the annual copyright license, faculty and staff can focus on the business of teaching, while demonstrating the importance of respecting the intellectual and creative property of others."

The list of institutions that have adopted CCC's annual license includes the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Middlebury College in Vermont, and Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, WI.

U Texas System Expands Copyright Clearance License -- Campus Technology

Law Librarian Blog

Law Librarian Blog 

Open Access Marches On

Signatories to Open Access Statement

The statement is signed by the directors of the University Press of Florida, University of Akron Press, University Press of New England, Athabasca University Press, Wayne State University Press, University of Calgary Press, University of Michigan Press, Rockefeller University Press, Penn State University Press, and University of Massachusetts Press.

Mike Rossner of Rockefeller University Press said that the press directors issued the statement as they wanted "to align ourselves with the stances taken by many universities -- by faculties and administrators -- on scholarly communication." Quoted in Inside Higher Ed.

Open Access News blog reported on June 4th that ten university press directors signed a position statement in support of free access to scientific, technical, and medical journal articles no later than twelve months after publication. The statement is further discussed on the Chronicle of Higher Education news blog. This announcement should remind you of the November 7, 2008 Durham Statement on Open Access to Legal Scholarship that was signed by many law library directors and called for elimination of printed law journals and adoption of a stable, open access model for law journals.

The Press Directors’ position statement is somewhat contrary to the position of the American Association of University Presses, their 112-member national organization. Executive Director Charles Lowery’s nine page PDF explains the AAUP position which is argued with the assumption that the reason academic law libraries support open access is to help meet shrinking budget lines. I do not think this is the only reason why academic library directors support open access, but the essay is worth reading to review different approaches to journal deselection choices such as combining a cost-per-page with a cost-per-use strategy.

AAUP filed a letter of support for the Fair Copyright in Research Works bill (H.R. 6845) which was reintroduced into Congress this past September (and seems to have died in the Judiciary Committee) prohibiting federal agencies from requiring fund recipients to give up their copyright in order to receive federal monies.

The American Association of Publishers also supports bills like H.R. 6845. At the site of their affiliate, Professional Scholarly Publishing, you can find key talking points surrounding the Fair Copyright in Research Works bill, and reposted statements from other organizations concerning retention of copyright in funded scientific works. The AAP also lobbied President Obama on the same. You can find their letter to him and Vice President Biden at this site.

At least one of the signatories to the position statement, Rockefeller University Press Director Mike Rossner, already makes Rockefeller journals available six months after publication. He has not found this practice of delayed free posting contrary to their business model. This position diffuses much of the discussion levied against open access. Hopefully, we will see more concrete support of an open access model that will result in more collections such as the Directory of Open Access Journals and BioMed Central, or direct access to journals via their own web sites.

To inform yourselves more fully on the benefits of open access, I highly recommend the

SPARC pages on this issue. (VS)

Law Librarian Blog

Library Intelligencer » Introducing Copyright: A Plain Language Guide to Copyright in the 21st Century

Library Intelligencer » Introducing Copyright: A Plain Language Guide to Copyright in the 21st Century 

Introducing Copyright: A Plain Language Guide to Copyright in the 21st Century

http://www.col.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/Introducing_Copyright_online_edition.pdf

The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is an intergovernmental organisation created by Commonwealth Heads of Government to
encourage the development and sharing of open learning and distance education knowledge, resources and technologies.
© Julien Hofman and Commonwealth of Learning, 2009

Library Intelligencer » Introducing Copyright: A Plain Language Guide to Copyright in the 21st Century

MDPI.com: peer-reviewed, fully open access scholarly journals since 1996 « Life Sciences Info @ Imperial College London Library

MDPI.com: peer-reviewed, fully open access scholarly journals since 1996 « Life Sciences Info @ Imperial College London Library 

MDPI.com: peer-reviewed, fully open access scholarly journals since 1996

MDPI.com is a platform providing open access to peer-reviewed journals published by Molecular Diversity Preservation International (MDPI). Access is available to material published from 1996 onwards and includes:

• International Journal of Environmental Research & Public Health
• International Journal of Molecular Sciences
• Marine Drugs
• Molecules
• Nutrients
• Remote Sensing (New as of March 2009)
• Sustainability (New as of March 2009)
• Toxins
• Viruses

Visit www.mdpi.com to access these journals and more, and hook up to an RSS feed from the site too.

MDPI.com: peer-reviewed, fully open access scholarly journals since 1996 « Life Sciences Info @ Imperial College London Library

Librarians = Open Access and New Media Advocates : Greg Laden's Blog

Video -- HSM -- Thanks to Librarians = Open Access and New Media Advocates : Greg Laden's Blog

Librarians = Open Access and New Media Advocates

hat tip Bora, where you can find more.

 

Librarians = Open Access and New Media Advocates : Greg Laden's Blog

Major research institute moves publications to open-access system | News | Breaking News | Feedstuffs

 Major research institute moves publications to open-access system | News | Breaking News | Feedstuffs

Major research institute moves publications to open-access system

(5/27/2009)

The spiraling cost of subscriptions to scientific journals is fueling a movement toward web-based open access for papers detailing new scientific findings. The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) formally launched an open-access (OA) system for its scientific publications on May 27.

"ICRISAT has declared the Green OA Mandate in the Institute, thereby making available a digital, web-accessible repository of pre-prints of the scientific and scholarly publications emerging from ICRISAT's research," according to a statement from the institute.

"According to the registry on global OA initiatives maintained by the University of Southampton in the U.K., ICRISAT is among the earliest agricultural research institutes to declare the green mandate," the statement noted. The University of Southampton maintains the database, which is called Roarmap.

ICRISAT noted that critical research information to researchers across the globe has been affected by the costs of the journals, and "even institutions in developed countries find it difficult to meet increasing journal subscription costs."

In recent years, the OA movement has sprung up in many developed countries, ICRISAT reported. "Champions of the OA movement believe that in spite of publisher-mandated copyright restrictions, authors of scientific and scholarly papers have the fullest freedom to share their findings with their peer community," the statement said.

ICRISAT, based in India, has research stations throughout the world in semi-arid tropical regions. It is one of the institutions of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

The OA repository of ICRISAT can be accessed at http://openaccess.icrisat.org. Most of the institute's print publications can be accessed at http://books.icrisat.org.

Major research institute moves publications to open-access system | News | Breaking News | Feedstuffs

Teaching About Copyright and Fair Use for Media Literacy Education - Creative Commons

Teaching About Copyright and Fair Use for Media Literacy Education - Creative Commons 

Teaching About Copyright and Fair Use for Media Literacy Education

Jane Park, May 26th, 2009

Last November, the Center for Social Media at AU released a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Media Literacy Education, which followed on the heels of a Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video. These guides were aimed at clearing up many of the urban myths surrounding copyright, especially when it came to classroom use of copyrighted materials.

Now, the Media Education Lab at Temple University has produced excellent resources based on the original guide to help teachers teach about copyright and fair use in their classrooms. Resources include lesson plans, Powerpoint slides, videos, case studies, podcasts, and FAQs. The lesson plans iterate on topics from the code such as “Understanding Copyright”, “The Cost of Copyright Confusion”, and “Defining and Applying Fair Use”.

What tickles me: that in order to find out just what you can do with these resources, you get to view and use them first—Learning fair use via fair using! To use these resources in your classroom or study group (or for simply personal edification), check them all out here.

Teaching About Copyright and Fair Use for Media Literacy Education - Creative Commons