Charles Oppenheim

RoMEO Studies 1 : the impact of copyright ownership on academic author self-archiving

This is the first of a series of studies emanating from the UK JISC‐funded RoMEO Project (Rights Metadata for Open‐archiving) which investigated the IPR issues relating to academic author self‐archiving of research papers. It considers the claims for copyright ownership in research papers by universities, academics, and publishers by drawing on the literature, a survey of 542 academic authors and an analysis of 80 journal publisher copyright transfer agreements. The paper concludes that self‐archiving is not best supported by copyright transfer to publishers. It recommends that universities assert their interest in copyright ownership in the long term, that academics retain rights in the short term, and that publishers consider new ways of protecting the value they add through journal publishing.

RoMEO Studies 2: How Academics Want to Protect their Open-Access Research Papers

This paper is the second in a series of studies (see E. Gadd, C. Oppenheim and S. Probets. RoMEO studies 1: the impact of copyright ownership on author-self-archiving, Journal of Documentation 59(3) (2003) 243-277) emanating from the UK JISC-funded RoMEO Project (Rights Metadata for Open-archiving). It considers the protection for research papers afforded by UK copyright law, and by e-journal licences. It compares this with the protection required by academic authors for open-access research papers as discovered by the RoMEO academic author survey. The survey used the Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) as a framework for collecting views from 542 academics as to the permissions, restrictions and conditions they wanted to assert over their works. Responses from self-archivers and non-archivers are compared. The paper concludes that most academic authors are primarily interested in preserving their moral rights, and that the protection offered research papers by copyright law is way in excess of that required by most academics. It also raises concerns about the level of protection enforced by e-journal licence agreements.

RoMEO Studies 3: How academics expect to use open-access research papers

This paper is the third in a series of studies emanating from the UK JISC- funded RoMEO Project (Rights Metadata for Open-archiving). It considers previous studies of the usage of electronic journal articles through a literature survey. It then reports on the results of a survey of 542 academic authors as to how they expected to use open-access research papers. This data is compared with results from the second of the RoMEO Studies series as to how academics wished to protect their open-access research papers. The ways in which academics expect to use open-access works (including activities, restrictions and conditions) are described. It concludes that academics-as-users do not expect to perform all the activities with openaccess research papers that academics-as-authors would allow. Thus the rights metadata proposed by the RoMEO Project would appear to meet the usage requirements of most academics.

RoMEO Studies 4: An analysis of Journal Publishers' Copyright Agreements

This article is the fourth in a series of six emanating from the UK JISC‐funded RoMEO Project (Rights Metadata for Open archiving). It describes an analysis of 80 scholarly journal publishers copyright agreements with a particular view to their effect on author self‐archiving: 90% of agreements asked for copyright transfer and 69% asked for it prior to refereeing the paper; 75% asked authors to warrant that their work had not been previously published although only two explicitly stated that they viewed self‐archiving as prior publication; 28.5% of agreements provided authors with no usage rights over their own paper. Although 42.5% allowed self‐archiving in some format, there was no consensus on the conditions under which self‐archiving could take place. The article concludes that author–publisher copyright agreements should be reconsidered by a working party representing the needs of both parties.

RoMEO Studies 6: Rights metadata for open archiving

This is the final study in a series of six emanating from the UK JISC‐funded RoMEO Project (rights metadata for open‐archiving), which investigated the intellectual property rights issues relating to academic author self‐archiving of research papers. It reports the results of a survey of 542 academic authors, showing the level of protection required for their open access research papers. It then describes the selection of an appropriate means of expressing those rights through metadata and the resulting choice of Creative Commons licences. Finally, it outlines proposals for communicating rights metadata via the Open Archives Initiative’s Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI‐PMH).

RoMEO studies 5: IPR issues facing OAI data and service providers

This paper is the fifth in a series of studies emanating from the UK Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)‐funded RoMEO Project (rights metadata for open‐archiving). The paper reports the results of two surveys of OAI data providers (DPs) and service providers (SPs) with regards to the rights issues they face. It finds that very few DPs have rights agreements with depositing authors and that there is no standard approach to the creation of rights metadata. The paper considers the rights protection afforded individual and collections of metadata records under UK law and contrasts this with DPs and SPs views on the rights status of metadata and how they wish to protect it. The majority of DPs and SPs believe that a standard way of describing both the rights status of documents and of metadata would be useful.

RoMEO Studies 8: Self-Archiving: The Logic behind the Colour-Coding Used in the Copyright Knowledge Bank

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to show how the self-archiving of journal papers is a major step towards providing open access to research. However, copyright transfer agreements (CTAs) that are signed by an author prior to publication often indicate whether, and in what form, self-archiving is allowed. The SHERPA/RoMEO database enables easy access to publishers policies in this area and uses a colour-coding scheme to classify publishers according to their self-archiving status. The database is currently being redeveloped and renamed the Copyright Knowledge Bank. However, it will still assign a colour to individual publishers indicating whether pre-prints can be self-archived (yellow), post-prints can be self-archived (blue), both pre-print and post-print can be archived (green) or neither (white). The nature of CTAs means that these decisions are rarely as straightforward as they may seem, and this paper describes the thinking and considerations that were used in assigning these colours in the light of the underlying principles and definitions of open access. nApproach – Detailed analysis of a large number of CTAs led to the development of controlled vocabulary of terms which was carefully analysed to determine how these terms equate to the definition and “spirit” of open access. nFindings – The paper reports on how conditions outlined by publishers in their CTAs, such as how or where a paper can be self-archived, affect the assignment of a self-archiving colour to the publisher. nValue – The colour assignment is widely used by authors and repository administrators in determining whether academic papers can be self-archived. This paper provides a starting-point for further discussion and development of publisher classification in the open access environment.

RoMEO studies 7: creation of a controlled vocabulary to analyse copyright transfer agreements

This paper describes the process of creating a controlled vocabulary which can be used to systematically analyse the copyright transfer agreements (CTAs) of journal publishers with regard to self-archiving. The analysis formed the basis of the newly created Copyright Knowledge Bank of publishers self-archiving policies. Self-archiving terms appearing in publishers CTAs were identified and classified, then simplified, merged, and discarded to form a definitive list. The controlled vocabulary consists of three categories describing `what can be self-archived, the `conditions and the `restrictions of self-archiving. Condition terms include specifications such as `where an article can be self-archived; restriction terms include specifications such as `when the article can be self-archived. Additional information on any of these terms appears in `free-text fields. Although this controlled vocabulary provides an effective way of analysing CTAs, it will need continual review and updating in light of any major new additions to the terms used in publishers copyright and self-archiving policies.