Who owns our work? : “Much turmoil in t…

Who owns our work? :
“Much turmoil in the scholarly-communication ecosystem appears to revolve around simple ownership of intellectual property. Unpacking that notion, however, produces a fascinating tangle of stakeholders, desires, products and struggles. Some products of the research process, especially novel ones, are difficult to fit into legal concepts of ownership. As collaborative research burgeons, traditional ownership and authorship criteria are stretched to their limits and beyond, with many contributors still feeling short of due credit. The desire for access and impact brings institutions and grant funders into the formerly exclusive relationship between authors and publishers. Librarians, stripped of first-sale rights by electronic licensing, wonder about both access and long-term preservation. Emerging solutions to many of these difficulties threaten to cut publishers out of the picture altogether, perhaps a welcome change to those stakeholders who find publishers’ behavior to block progress.”
URL : http://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/45742/SaloSerials.pdf?sequence=1

CODE OF BEST PRACTICES IN FAIR USE FOR S…

CODE OF BEST PRACTICES IN FAIR USE FOR SCHOLARLY RESEARCH IN COMMUNICATION :
This document is a code of best practices that helps U.S. communication scholars to interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use. Fair use is the right to use copyrighted material without permission or payment under some circumstances—especially when the cultural or social benefits of the use are predominant. It is a general right that applies even in situations where the law provides no specific authorization for the use in question.
This guide identifies four situations that represent the current consensus within the
community of communication scholars about acceptable practices for the fair use of
copyrighted materials.

URL : http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/sites/default/files/PRINTABLE_ICA_CODE.pdf

Copyright and education in Africa: Lesso…

Copyright and education in Africa: Lessons on African copyright and access to knowledge
The African Copyright and Access to Knowledge (ACA2K) project is a pan-African research network of academics and researchers from law, economics and the information sciences, spanning Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda. Research conducted by the project was designed to investigate the extent to which copyright is fulfilling its objective of facilitating access to knowledge, and learning materials in particular, in the study countries. The hypotheses tested
during the course of research were that: (a) the copyright environments in study countries are not maximising access to learning materials, and (b) the copyright environments in study countries can be changed to increase access to learning materials. The hypotheses were tested through both doctrinal legal analysis and qualitative interview-based analysis of practices and perceptions among relevant stakeholders. This paper is a comparative review of some of the key findings across the eight
countries.

URL : http://link.wits.ac.za/journal/AJIC10-Schonwetter.pdf

LiquidPublications and its technical and…

LiquidPublications and its technical and legal challenges :
This paper proposes a new paradigm for dealing with scientific knowledge in general, and publications in particular. The paradigm aims at changing the way in which knowledge is produced, disseminated, evaluated, and consumed. A formal model is proposed and the issues of credit attribution, copyrights and
licensing, which are crucial for the success of any new model, are addressed.

URL : http://www.iiia.csic.es/files/pdfs/epap2010.pdf