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Scholarly Publishing
For the 2006 draft, click here.
Draft of October 21, 2009:
Scholarly Publishing: Authors and Readers
The Context
1.Authors and readers of scholarly journals, monographs, books and textbooks have a common interest in the broad dissemination and wide sharing of works.
2.Authors and readers both face many challenges and opportunties regarding the traditional methods and practices of publishing scholarly works.
Challenges
3.The concentration of ownership of scholarly publishing presents risks and dangers to authors and readers, through high prices, lack of diversity of content, inflexible contracts with authors and buyers and undue influence on discourse involving scientific, cultural, professional and political life.
4.Some published material is difficult or impossible to access, use or reuse, in the present and will be in the future, due to technological protection measures, obsolete formats and software, lack of interoperability of data formats or enabling technologies, or poor documentation, indexing or organization of data.
5.For some works, it is difficult or impossible to identify or locate right-owners,or negotiate rights from copyright owners.
6.Individuals and institutions lack the organization or incentives to collectively pool resources to finance projects that have the scale to effectively invest in the creation and dissemination of knowledge as a public good.
7.Some incentive mechanisms to stimulate investments in research and development encourage secrecy, and discourage the sharing of access of knowledge, materials and technology.
8.The suppression of scholarship that is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient to governments, large corporations or other interests can inhibit and retard scholarship, as do restrictions on the travel and participation of scientists and scholars in conferences, workshops and meetings.
9.Conflicts of interest in scholarship presents risks of misconduct, that harms both consumers and scholarship itself.
Opportunities
10.The rapid and continual development of new information technologies creates opportunities to explore and exploit new modes of research, scholarship and collaboration that enhance the productivity of scholarship, and expand access to works.
11.[There are potential economies and cost savings in organizing the publishing of information as a public good, than to collectively support the publishing of scholarly works under business models that restrict access to paid subscribers. ]
12.There is growing interest among the public, policy makers and scholars to experiment, develop and implement new approaches to collective action, including the pooling of resources to effectively invest in the provisioning of knowledge as a public good.
13.Scholarly text and data can be interlinked into a network of information, providing a dynamic foundation for knowledge dissemination and discovery.
Agreements between Authors and Readers
We agree with [the relevant elements of] the Agreement on Journalism and Books, including those addressing intellectual property rights, [http://www.tacd-ip.org/blog/the-paris-accord/books-journalism/] and the need to consider and support new approaches to the publishing of scholarly works. We also provide the following elaborations and additions:
Pricing of Scholarly Works
14.Authors rarely benefit from excessive prices for scholarly and scientific works. Readers never benefit from excessive prices.
Censorship
15.We oppose government imposed censorship and other restrictions on the freedom of opinion and expression; including the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Licensing of Rights
16.In licensing the rights to works for publication, authors should retain sufficient rights to use works in a variety of ways, including to provide access to scholarly works from their own personal web page, or in digital repositories, to make copies of articles for uses in the classes they teach, to use in compilations or derivative works, and the right to authorize others to make certain uses of the Article in cases where the author receives credit as author and the journal in which the article has been published is cited as the source of first publication, and the right to republish the work when a work is out of print. In some cases, these rights may come into effect at a period of time after the first publication of a work, or be limited as the geographic area or the commercial or non-commercial nature of the use. [Authors should use these rights to expand access to works for all users[, for example, under appropriate creative commons licenses.]]
Terms of Exclusive Rights
17.The public interest will be served by shorter terms of exclusive rights for scholarly works. This can be accomplished by limiting the terms of statutory rights under copyright, or through licensing practices. For many non-scholarly works, the argument for a long copyright term is based upon the expectation that authors will receive royalties to support their families. For many scholarly works, including most scholarly journals, royalties to authors are zero or negligible, and the returns to the publishers decline rapidly in time. For such works, exclusive rights that last for many years are not appropriate, and harm scholarship and society.
Out of Print or Orphaned Works
18.As noted in the agreement on Books and Journalism, copyright laws should allow authors to authorize the republishing of works that are out of print, or the republishing of works where copyright owners cannot be located. This is particularly important for scholarly works, where authors publish with the expectation that their works will be widely disseminated, recognized, cited and used, where remuneration to authors is seldom the driving interest of authors, and where scholarship suffers from limited or incomplete access to older works.
Access for Persons with Reading Disabilities
19.Scholarly works are essential for education and professional development, and it is therefore particularly important that such works are available in formats that are accessible for persons with reading disabilities.
Control of Anti-Competitive Practices
20.Authors and readers agree to oppose mergers that lead to excessive concentration in the area of publishing, and agree that governments and institutions that buy scholarly works should undertake measures to curb excessive pricing of scholarly works.
Collective Action to Encourage, Stimulate and Support the Archiving and Publishing of Scholarly Works as Public Goods
21.The benefits of free access to scholarly works are well documented, appreciated and frequently experienced. There are a proliferation of promising models to support open access publishing. There is also considerable under-investment in open access publishing, compared to the social benefits. This under investment is due in part to the failure of those who benefit from open access publishing to collectively pool resources to finance projects that have the scale to effectively invest in the creation and dissemination of knowledge as a public good.
22.It is essential that authors, readers, governments, universities, libraries, funders and other institutions build strong collaborative mechanisms to support open access publishing and archiving for scholarly works.
23.Governments, philanthropic donors, and other entities that fund research should require authors to publish in open access platforms, or place works in open archives soon after the date of initial publication.
24.Public libraries and universities should be resourced by governments to spend a fraction of their budgets to support open access scholarly publishing.
25.Public libraries and universities should be resourced to spend a fraction of library and publication budgets to acquire the rights to publish electronic versions of out-of-print books and journals or other scholarly works on the Internet.
26.Trade agreements should include chapters on the global supply of public goods, including agreements to provide financial support for open access publishing, and to require open access to government funded research.
Technology, Peer Review and Transparency
27.We note the profound impact of the Internet on the conduct of scientific research and the benefits of research being shared as widely as possible. We also note the complexities of managing information resources.
Standards
28.Authors and publishers should support, use and contribute to the development of open and interoperable standards for the storage and documentation of data, including both text and numeric data.
Peer Review and Transparency
29.Publishers should provide greater transparency of policies about the peer review process, and consider greater use of non-anonymous reviewers of articles, and provide greater opportunities for other scholars to comment and annotate articles.
30.[Authors and readers agree with the code of conduct recommended by the Committee on Publication Ethics - http://publicationethics.org/]
31.Potential conflicts of interest are important, and should be disclosed by publications.
Open Source Dividends
32.There are promising proposals by several countries and scholars to set aside a faction of the rewards for successful medical R&D, as an open source dividend, to encourage the sharing of scientific and technology knowledge, including through scholarly publishing.
33.For example, in some proposals, this would including setting aside a fraction of innovation inducement prizes rewards, to be given to persons who openly share access to knowledge, materials and technology, including by publishing articles in open journals or open archives, and also to the publishers of those articles, on the condition that the journal made the article available for free immediately upon publication.
Access to Works in Developing Countries
34.Everyone benefits from expanded access to scholarly works in developing countries. Such access is necessarily to promote development, and to ensure that researchers in developing countries have the opportunities to contribute to and benefit from scholarship in all fields. Measures that expand access in developing countries include investments to improve and ensure access to computer networks, and free or concessionary pricing for subscriber journals and other scholarly works.
Supported Norm-Setting Declarations
35.Authors, researchers and readers of scientific works express their support for the following:
a)Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication, August 28,2003, http://www.ala.org
b)Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, June 20, 2003, http://www.earlham.edu/~peters
c)Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, October 22, 2003, http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin
d)The Budapest Open Access Initiative,, http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
e)Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Declaration on Access to Research Data From Public Funding, January 30, 2004, http://www.oecd.org
f)The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Statement on Open Access to Scholarly Literature and Research Documentation, February 24, 2004. http://www.ifla.org
g)The Salvador Declaration on Open Access: The Developing World Perspective, Salvador, Bahia, Brazil, September 20-23, 2005, http://www.icml9.org/meetings/openaccess/public/documents/declaration.htm
h)The Bangalore National Open Access Policy for Developing Countries, Bangalore, India November 22, 2006, https://mx2.arl.org/Lists/SPARC-OAForum/Message/3479.html
i)The Cape Town Open Education Declaration, Cape Town, South Africa, January 22, 2008, http://www.capetowndeclaration.org/
j)The Student Statement on the Right to Research, Washington, DC May 22, 2009, http://www.righttoresearch.org/students/statement.shtml
1.Authors and readers of scholarly and scientific works have a common interest in the broad dissemination and wide sharing of works.
2.Concentration of ownership of scholarly and scientific publishing presents risks and dangers to authors and readers, in terms of high prices, lack of diversity of content, and undue influence on \discourse involving scientific, cultural, professional and political life.
3.Authors and readers of scholarly and scientific works oppose government imposed censorship and other restrictions on the freedom of opinion and expression; including the freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
4.Authors and readers are are harmed by excessive prices for scholarly and scientific works.
5.Acknowledging the profound impact the Internet has on the conduct of scientific research and the benefits of research being shared as widely as possible, authors and readers of scholarly and scientific works and consumers agree that:
6.Authors should retain the right to make their work available in a non-commercial open digital archive on the World Wide Web [such as the National Institutes of Health's PubMed Central or an institution's open digital archive] or to make copies of their article for use in the classes they teach.
7.Authors should retain:
8.The rights to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform,and publicly display the Article in any medium for non-commercial purposes;
9.the right to prepare derivative works from the Article; and
10.the right to authorize others to make any non-commercial use of the Article so long as the author receives credit as author and the journal in which the Article has been published is cited as the source of first publication of the Article.
11.Authors/Researchers funded by governments should submit an electronic version of their final, peer-reviewed manuscript to a publicly available online archive upon acceptance for publication in a journal.
12.Authors, researchers and readers of scientific works express their support for the following:
a.Association of College & Research Libraries (ACRL) Principles and Strategies for the Reform of Scholarly Communication, August 28,2003, http://www.ala.org
b.Bethesda Statement on Open Access Publishing, June 20, 2003, http://www.earlham.edu/~peters
c.Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities, October 22, 2003, http://www.zim.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin
d.The Budapest Open Access Initiative,, http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
e.Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Declaration on Access to Research Data From Public Funding, January 30, 2004, http://www.oecd.org
f.The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) Statement on Open Access to Scholarly Literature and Research Documentation, February 24, 2004. http://www.ifla.org
13.Authors, researchers and readers of scholarly and scientific works call upon governments, professional societies, publishers and others to explore new business models, public subsidies and private incentives to support professional editing and publishing services that do not rely upon high prices for access to works.
