Re: New US Bill re. Copyright/Federal Funding

["Anthony Watkinson" <anthony.watkinson@btinternet.com>]

This is what many British research councils do but (as far as I 
know) they do not allow public access to the reports. In the case 
of one council at least the reports (as well as the original 
grant proposals) are specifically asked to be in language which 
is comprehensible to the lay person.  They do insist on such 
reports.

Anthony

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sally Morris (Morris Associates)" <sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk>
To: <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, October 01, 2008 12:47 AM
Subject: RE: New US Bill re. Copyright/Federal Funding

> Isn't what Sandy suggests, exactly what the NSF does?  See
> http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/gc1_607.pdf (Page 12)
>
> Sally Morris
> Consultant, Morris Associates (Publishing Consultancy)
> South House, The Street
> Clapham, Worthing, West Sussex BN13 3UU, UK
> Email:  sally@morris-assocs.demon.co.uk
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> [mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Sandy Thatcher
> Sent: 22 September 2008 01:53
> To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
> Subject: RE: New US Bill re. Copyright/Federal Funding
>
> I don't question the right of the federal government to make use
> of the research it funds for the benefit of the public. But why,
> then, don't government agencies simply insist that any
> researchers they support provide a report at the end of the grant
> period that lays out the results of the research in a form that
> the agencies will find most useful for their purposes?  It seems
> to me that such a report serves a different function from an
> article published in a professional journal. This would mean that
> the researcher would need to prepare both a report and an
> article. But there would no doubt be some significant overlap in
> content, though the article could differ sufficiently in its
> expression to ground a claim of copyright that would serve to
> protect the publisher's investment in supporting the peer-review
> process and providing other value added. The federal agency could
> conduct its own type of quality control (i.e., its own form of
> "peer review") to ensure that the report met its own standards
> and satisfied the requirements of the grant. Once this review was
> completed, it could post the report online immediately for free
> access to the public (in contrast with the delayed release that
> the NIH policy mandates), thus serving the needs of the public
> for free and timely access to the information contained in the
> report. The publication of the article would follow its own
> separate process and time-line, conforming to the requirements of
> the publisher and the needs of the academic community. In short,
> it seems to me that there is a way to cut this Gordian knot that
> the NIH policy seems to have become, owing to the tensions it
> embodies between the public interest in rapid dissemination of
> government-funded research and the private interest in asserting
> copyright to protect a significant financial investment beyond
> what the government funds directly.
>
> Sandy Thatcher
> Penn State University Press
>
> P.S. There is an analogy, perhaps, with the difference between
> the dissertation and a book based on it. The dissertation has a
> specific, limited purpose. The book has a quite different,
> broader purpose. The audiences for the two are rather different.
> At present, many dissertations are released OA through the NDLTD
> and thus made available widely. Publishers who invest time and
> money in the process of publishing a book based on a dissertation
> may reasonably expect copyright to function as protection for
> that investment.