Cornell's Copyright Advice: Guide for the Perplexed Self-Archiver

[Stevan Harnad <harnad@ecs.soton.ac.uk>]

                ** Apologies for Cross-Posting **

     GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED CORNELL WOULD-BE SELF-ARCHIVER

Cornell's copyright pages

http://www.copyright.cornell.edu/index.htm

are numerous and confusing because they take a scatter-shot 
approach to everything, from Cornell user rights for the use of 
other people's work to the negotiation of rights for Cornell 
authors' own work.

In all of this, it is next to impossible for a would-be 
self-archiving author to figure out what Cornell's legal experts 
advise regarding depositing their peer-reviewed articles in 
Cornell's Institutional Repository (IR).

http://archives.eprints.org/?action=search&query=cornell&submit=Search

(If anyone has managed to pinpoint Cornell's position on that, 
within that copious Cornell copyloquy, I would be grateful if 
they would excerpt it for us. Otherwise, all I find is advice 
that I should retain as many rights as possible, which is fine, 
but does not answer the question of a would-be self-archiver, 
trying to decide whether I have the right to self-archive *this* 
paper, *now*.)

Fortunately, the answer to that question is available even 
without having to find one's way through Cornell's cornucopia, 
and it is this (the "Immediate Deposit, Optional Access" policy, 
ID/OA):

     http://openaccess.eprints.org/index.php?/archives/71-guid.html

     (1) Deposit all your final, peer-reviewed, accepted drafts (postprints)
     in Cornell's IR immediately upon acceptance for publication.

     (2) Set access to the postprint as Open Access immediately if it is
     published in one of the 69% of journals that are already green on
     postprint self-archiving.
         http://romeo.eprints.org/stats.php

     (3) Otherwise provisionally set access to the postprint as Closed
     Access and notify the journal that you will set access as Open
     Access on [Date, one month from today] if you do not hear anything
     to the contrary.

     (4) During any Closed Access interval, make sure Cornell's
     IR has the EMAIL EPRINT REQUEST button to handle any
     individual requests for a single email copy -- Fair Use
     -- from would-be users who see the postprint's openly
     accessible metadata:
         http://wiki.dspace.org/RequestCopy
         http://www.eprints.org/news/features/request_button.php

Now go ahead and deposit, without any further hesitation, immediately. And
negotiate copyright retention, or postprint-self-archiving rights whenever
you can.

Stevan Harnad

On Tue, 19 Sep 2006, Ann Okerson wrote:

> Of possible interest to readers of this list.
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
>
> ONLINE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
>
> Tuesday, September 19, 2006
>
> Cornell U. Creates Guidelines on Electronic Reserves to Avoid Copyright
> Problems
>
> By JEFFREY R. YOUNG
>
> To avoid potential legal action by the Association of American Publishers,
> Cornell University issued guidelines for professors this month on how to
> place materials on electronic reserve without violating copyright law.
>
> The guidelines were jointly written with officials from the publishing
> group in a process that began in April, after the group sent a letter to
> the university complaining that it suspected widespread copyright
> violations on the campus.
>
> "The university has sought to resolve this matter in a manner that
> protects the faculty's legitimate interests while averting the threat of
> litigation," the university's provost, Biddy Martin, wrote in a memorandum
> to academic deans. The letter, dated September 6, asks the deans to
> distribute the guidelines to professors.
>
> [SNIP]
>
> Cornell posted the guidelines and the fair-use checklist on its Web
> site, www.copyright.cornell.edu
>
> Copyright 2006, The Chronicle of Higher Education