UC open access fight exposes publishing rip-off: Charging exorbitant fees for journal articles isn’t in the best interests of scientific research, Mercury News, March 6, 2019

MERCURY NEWS & EAST BAY TIMES EDITORIAL BOARDS; Editorial: UC open access fight exposes publishing rip-off

Charging exorbitant fees for journal articles isn’t in the best interests of scientific research

"The scholarly research publishing industry is a rip-off that hinders scientific advances and piles unnecessary costs onto taxpayers who already fund much of the academic work.

It’s ridiculous that, in this age of the internet, researchers are paying huge fees for access to academic papers and for publication of their own work. That made sense in the days when scholarly works were printed in bound volumes. Today, academic work, especially public- and foundation-funded research, should be open for all. It shouldn’t cost $35 to $40 for each article, effectively freezing out those without the means to pay...

The University of California’s mission statement reads: “The distinctive mission of the university is to serve society as a center of higher learning, providing long-term societal benefits through transmitting advanced knowledge, discovering new knowledge, and functioning as an active working repository of organized knowledge.”

UC’s commitment to open access helps fulfill that goal and advances scientific enterprise for the benefit of all."

How copyright law hides work like Zora Neale Hurston’s new book from the public; The Washington Post, May 7, 2018

Ted Genoways, The Washington Post; How copyright law hides work like Zora Neale Hurston’s new book from the public

"Now, according to the Vulture introduction, the Zora Neale Hurston Trust has new representation, interested in getting unpublished works into print and monetizing those archives. That’s great, from a reader’s perspective, but it also reveals a larger problem where scholarship of literature between World War I and II is concerned. It’s mostly due to the Walt Disney Co.’s efforts to protect ownership of a certain cartoon mouse. Over the years, the company has successfully worked to extend copyright restrictions far beyond the limits ever intended by the original authors of America’s intellectual property laws. Under the original Copyright Act of 1790, a work could be protected for 14 years, renewable for another 14-year term if the work’s author was still alive. In time, the maximum copyright grew from 28 years to 56 years and then to 75 years. In 1998, Sonny Bono championed an extension that would protect works created after 1978 for 70 years after the death of the author and the copyright of works created after 1922 to as long as 120 years.


This worked out great for Disney — which, not coincidentally, was founded in 1923 — but less so for the reputations of authors who produced important work between the 1920s and 1950s. Because copyright law became such a tangle, many of these works have truly languished. Here, Hurston is the rule rather than the exception. I have a file that I’ve kept over the years of significant unpublished works by well-known writers from the era: William Faulkner, Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson and Weldon Kees, among others. The works aren’t really “lost,” of course, but they are tied up in a legal limbo. Because of the literary reputations of those writers, their unpublished works will eventually see the light of day — whenever their heirs decide that the royalties are spreading a little too thin and there’s money to be made from new works. But other important writers who are little-known or unknown will remain so because they don’t have easily identifiable heirs — or, worse, because self-interested, or even uninterested executors, control their estates."

Open Access Week 2013: The Time for Reform Is Now; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), 10/21/13

Adi Kamdar, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); Open Access Week 2013: The Time for Reform Is Now: "Today kicks off the sixth annual global Open Access Week. Open Access Week is at once a celebration and a call to action. Universities, libraries, organizations, and companies are hosting events all around the world to promote the ideals of open access: free, online availability of and unfettered access to scholarly works... On the national level, the most movement recently has occurred in the Executive Branch, where over twenty federal agencies have submitted open access plans to the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) in order to implement the White House's public access directive... While we are encouraged by the progress that has been made on the part of the agencies, we are concerned that the publishers are pushing an alternative plan—known as CHORUS—that would seriously cripple public access. In this scenario, the publishers themselves would be in charge of providing the nation public access to scholarly works according to their own rules... We've put our weight behind the Fair Access to Science & Technology Research Act (FASTR), which would open up a host of important and potentially life-saving research to the world at large. Although not perfect, the bill reduces the "embargo" period on papers to six months, meaning such papers must be freely available no later than half a year after publication."

In Higher Ed Some Intellectual Property Counts More Than Others; Library Journal, 10/16/13

Steven Bell, Library Journal; In Higher Ed Some Intellectual Property Counts More Than Others: "The new AAUP Draft Intellectual Property Statement has nothing to say about works of scholarly publication. Are they not intellectual property? Or does some property count more than others? Faculty have always created content for their institutions. In the pre-digital world, there was far less tension between institutions and their faculty over who owned syllabi or course notes. The opportunity for mass distribution and potential profit beyond the institution was rare. Fast-forward to an age where online course content is widely produced by faculty, as well as marketable inventions that might offer big returns to universities. To maintain peace on campus, it’s critical for institutions to develop ownership policies that guide how faculty content and patentable inventions are managed and shared. This is particularly important as higher education increasingly goes online, and faculty seek clear rights to their video lectures and other content that is easily distributed and offered by other faculty at the same or other institutions. As higher education monetizes its intellectual goods, why are some scholarly assets being ignored?"