RE: Princeton bans academics from handing all copyright..

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

Dear Kevin

You are a great one for hyperbole.

At least some universities in the UK claim copyright in any work 
done on machines either owned or maintained by the university and 
acceptance of this is now enshrined in staff contracts. I cannot 
see how publishers in this context are thwarting expressions of 
authorial rights. It looks rather to me that it is what 
university employers would like to do. I write as someone in a 
university which does not have any claims of this sort in the 
contract of employment but which has (I am told) got a mandate

Anthony Watkinson
University College London

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
[mailto:owner-liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu] On Behalf Of Kevin Smith
Sent: 29 September 2011 23:47
To: "liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu"@lists.yale.edu
Subject: RE: Princeton bans academics from handing all copyright to journal
publishers

Having looked at the actual language, I think the operative terms 
are essentially the same as Harvard's (and Duke's), although the 
way it is being discussed seems quite different.

In all such policies the university is given a license in the 
works that is prior to any copyright transfer to a publisher. 
Technically, therefore, the rights that are transferred are 
subject to that license; hence the language of "banning" the 
wholesale transfer of copyright used by Princeton. The 
differences amongst universities come in implementation.  Will 
some universities elect to act in a way that is contrary to the 
terms of the publication agreements the authors enter into (by 
posting articles or versions of articles where the publication 
agreement purports not to permit the specific posting)?  Doing so 
would seem to be legally permissible under the claim of a prior 
license, but it could also put the faculty members in a difficult 
position unless they are very careful about what they sign (as 
they should be but seldom are).

An alternative is for the university to exercise the license in a 
more nuanced way, taking into account the various publisher 
policies as much as possible.  That, of course, makes open access 
repositories much more labor-intensive and difficult, especially 
as publishers change their policies to try a thwart these 
expressions of authorial rights.

Kevin L. Smith, M.L.S., J.D.
Director of Scholarly Communications
Duke University, Perkins Library
Durham, NC 27708
kevin.l.smith@duke.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: Ann Okerson [mailto:aokerson@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, September 28, 2011 8:03 PM
To: liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu
Subject: Princeton bans academics from handing all copyright to journal
publishers

This information comes courtesy of the IFLA copyright programme.
Are Princeton's essentially the same terms/conditions as the
Harvard Mandate?  Ann

****