Running head: LIBR 281 Paper
Open Access and Copyright
Shannon Meaney
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Abstract
As a result of rising license subscription costs, and economic pressures, Open Access to
online literature that users may access for free is inevitable. Increasing technology and
decreasing knowledge access costs are what drives the Open Access movement. Economic
growth is driven by the expansion of knowledge, sustainable growth that is based on knowledge
and productivity. Open Access allows users to obtain free access to knowledge without
restrictions. This paper will introduce readers to Open Access, types of Open Access, its
copyright and legal implications, as well as its benefits and future.
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Open Access and how it affects Copyright
What is Open Access?
Open Access (OA) consists of online literature that users may access for free, that is
scholarly, royalty free, and can be used with minimal restrictions, removing price and permission
barriers. Authors and copyright holders grant to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, and
perpetual right to access the OA works. In addition, users can copy, use, distribute, and make
derivative works, as long as proper attribution of authorship is given. An important aspect of the
principles also dictates that a copy of the work is deposited immediately upon publication in at
least one public online repository. OA is free of most copyright and licensing restrictions
creating free access to everyone. (Weill Cornell Medical College , 2010)
There are two approaches to OA:
1) Publishing articles in open access journals; and
2) Depositing copies of articles and manuscripts by the authors in open access archives
or institutional repositories. (Muswelanto, Van Der Merwe, & Van Deventer, 2009).
Both approaches are currently used within the library environments and both are assets to any
library and its users.
Types of Open Access
Journals/Books
OA journals provide free access to all articles and of licensing that puts minimal
restrictions on the use of articles, such as the Creative Commons or Attribution License.
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OA journals provide the same quality as conventional journals, such as editorial
oversight, peer review, and copyediting. Electronic-only publication offers some
meaningful cost savings, since physical reproduction, storage, distribution, and
claiming costs are eliminated. They are freely available, with no licensing, no judgment
calls made by the librarians and all fees are paid by the publications authors.
To achieve open access to scholarly journal literature, there are two complementary
strategies.
I. Self-Archiving: First, scholars need the tools and assistance to deposit their refereed
journal articles in open electronic archives, a practice commonly called, self-archiving.
When these archives conform to standards created by the Open Archives Initiative, then
search engines and other tools can treat the separate archives as one. Users then need not
know which archives exist or where they are located in order to find and make use of
their contents.
II. Open-access Journals: Scholars need the means to launch a new generation of journals
committed to open access, and to help existing journals that elect to make the transition to
open access. Because journal articles should be disseminated as widely as possible, these
new journals will no longer invoke copyright to restrict access to and use of the material
they publish. Instead they will use copyright and other tools to ensure permanent open
access to all the articles they publish. Because price is a barrier to access, these new
journals will not charge subscription or access fees, and will turn to other methods for
covering their expenses.
To find a directory of open access journals got to http://www.doaj.org/ .
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(Suber, 2010)
These journals provide free access to all articles and utilize a form of licensing
that puts restrictions on the use of articles, such as the Creative Commons Attribution
License.
Archived information/collections/repositories
Libraries deploy repositories to support open access; but also to collect, preserve and
provide access to a broad range of content produced by the university community. Libraries can
choose from a variety of open source or platforms, or contract with a company to manage the
repository for them. Building a repository is a fairly simple process involving mainly staffing to
maintain the software and promote the repository on campus. (Swan, 2009)
These repositories make their content freely available and searchable through engines
such as Google Scholar and OAIster. In addition to journal articles, repositories may also contain
items such as conference proceedings, images, maps, datasets, newsletters, and other "grey
literature" that is scholarly in nature. They are easy to launch, require no investment, and use
open source software. (Texas A&M Univeristy Libraries, 2010)
Repositories can include preprints and post prints of journal articles, theses and
dissertations, course materials, departmental databases, data files, audio and video files,
institutional records, or digitized special collections from the library. Estimates of the costs of
running a repository depend critically on how many different functions they take on. If the
average cost of an institutional repository is now high, it's because the average institutional
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repository now does much more than merely provide OA to deposited articles.
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
Benefits/Threats
There are many benefits to OA. Some include no cost, faster and wider dissemination of
research to users, better long term preservation of scholarly works, open exchange of ideas to
facilitate the development of new knowledge, resistance to publishing skyrocketing prices,
increases the ease of journalists and bloggers that link to articles. It also resolves copyright
restrictions associated with e-reserves, class web pages and course sites.
Copyright
Librarians would not have to be the protector of copyright. They would not have to worry about
infringing or breaking copyright laws. Users could use the information freely without fear of
consequences. There will no policing done by librarians and staff to uphold copyright laws and
restrictions.
Financial impact
OA is free. There are no financial impacts to the library; authors are responsible for any
fees associated to with their works. This elevates eliminates the outrageous subscriptions and
license fees that are currently associated with online resources. This allows dissemination of
online OA resources to users worldwide. This will close the information gap for low-income
users and allow information to flow freely to users that would not usually have access to the
knowledge that AO provides.
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Legal Implications of OA
OA uses copyright holder consent/copyright expiration that does not require the
infringement of copyright law. Agreeing to OA, authors consent to unrestricted reading,
downloading, copying, sharing, storing, printing, searching reading and linking of full text work.
An easy way for authors to consent to OA is to use a Creative Commons license.
US Government
The United States government has formed considered many bills and laws during the OA
movement. Below is a summary of some of them:
The Sabo Bill
In July 2003, Congressman Martin O. Sabo introduced a bill that would have made
research funded by the American government exempt from copyright (H.R. 2613, 108
th
Congress). This “Public Access to Science Act” would have amended US copyright law to make
all research “substantially funded” by the federal government not liable to copyright, making it
free to the public. The bill sparked controversy and immediate condemnation from publishers.
The bill was referred to the House Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual
Property, where it remains.
The NIH Initiative
Officially called the “Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications
Resulting from NIH-Funded Research,” this initiative began as a recommendation from the U.S.
House Appropriations Committee in the summer of 2004. The Committee recommended that the
NIH develop a policy that would require free Internet access to any articles based on NIHfunded research within six months after publication in a journal. In response, the NIH released a
draft Policy, which changed the Committee’s requirement to a request. After a period of public
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comment on the policy, the Appropriations Bill was eventually passed and signed by the
President on Dec. 8, 2004. In Feb 2005 the NIH released a final version and it took effect on
May 2005 (Funk, 2010).
Librarian’s/ Library Staff’s Role
OA is transforming the library environment. Librarians and library staff will play a significant
role in helping libraries move towards OA. Their roles will establish collection polices for OA,
strategize incorporating materials into appropriate electronic resource finding tools, track OA
resource URL changes and maintain links, and facilitate user access. OA will thrive if librarians
and staff shift their work focus from licensing and subscriptions to fostering access to OA
materials. They will no longer be responsible for copyright policing, or haggling over
subscription and licensing issues. As a result of OA, they will have a more time for research and
instruction, create less hassle for users trying to obtain information and use resources and
completely diminish licensing and access restrictions.
Conclusion
Where open access and copyright stand now
OA has and will continue to transform library policies, procedures and services.
Libraries will have the right to lend digital articles on any terms, offering the same services to
affiliates of their library as non-affiliates. Faculty and others could donate digital literature and
software without violations of license or restrictions on usability. OA will offer fewer
negotiations with consortia, dealing with pricing and copyright clearance fees. Canceling of
subscriptions due to constantly increasing fees will no longer be necessary. Libraries will save
money and be able to reallocate resources to facilities, staffing, programs and services.
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References
Baily, C. W. (2006, January 1). Open Access and Libraries. Retrieved November 4, 2010, from
Weill Cornell Medical College : http://www.digital-scholarship.org/cwb/OALibraries2.pdf
Funk, M. E. (2010). Open Access – A Primer. Retrieved November 2, 2010, from Weill Cornell
Medical College: http://www.mlanet.org/pdf/resources/oa_primer_mfunk.pdf
Muswelanto, S., Van Der Merwe, A., & Van Deventer, M. (2009). Juggling Copyright and Open
Access in the 21st Century. Agriculture Information Worldwide , 137-44.
Suber, P. (2010, November 6). Open Access Overview. Retrieved November 7, 2010, from
http://library.med.cornell.edu/guides/openaccess.html:
http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/overview.htm
Swan, A. a. (2009, October 21). Open Access Repositories . Retrieved November 2, 2010, from
Open Access scholarly Information Sourcebook:
http://www.openoasis.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=137&Itemid=333
Texas A&M Univeristy Libraries. (2010). Digital Repositories . Retrieved November 2, 2010,
from Texas A&M Univeristy Libraries: http://digital.library.tamu.edu/services/scholarlycommunication/open-access/digital-repositories
Weill Cornell Medical College . (2010). Guide to Open Access. Retrieved November 2, 2010,
from Weill Cornell Medical College : http://library.med.cornell.edu/guides/openaccess.html
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Appendix
To find out more about Open Access, please visit the following resources:

SPARC – The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition was developed
by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to promote change toward open access in
scholarly communication.

Create Change – Create Change was developed by SPARC and the Association of
College and Research Libraries (ACRL) to educate faculty and authors about the new
model of scholarly communication.

Open Access Newsletter - Hosted by SPARC, Peter Suber’s monthly open access
newsletter provides timely information about legislative and academic issues regarding
open access. Back issues of the newsletter can be found here.

Open Access Overview - This overview by Peter Suber is a comprehensive look at the
open access model of scholarly communication.

Scholarly Communication Toolkit - The Scholarly Communication Toolkit was put
together by the American Library Association and presents the major issues in scholarly
communication as they relate to libraries, authors and researchers.

Directory of Open Access Journals – The Directory of Open Access Journal lists
thousands of journals in various academic fields that make their content freely available
online.

SHERPA/RoMEO - The SHERPA group has compiled a list of many publishers' policies
towards open access and has used a color-coding scheme to identify them.

OpenDOAR - OpenDOAR is an online directory of academic open access repositories.
Each repository in the directory is visited and verified as scholarly by project staff.
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