[Open-access] Copyright for papers published by US or Commonwealth employees

Subbiah Arunachalam subbiah.arunachalam at gmail.com
Wed Apr 30 00:28:10 UTC 2014


The (British) Commonwealth includes more than 50 nations, the largest of
them being India. And most research in India is carried out by institutions
under the government (Departments of Atomic Energy, Space, Science &
Technology, Agriculture, Medical Research, Defence Research, etc.). Do
papers published by scientists working in these institutions come under the
ACS definition of Commonwealth realm? I guess the use of the word Crown
restricts it to the few countries which still have a Governor General.

Arun


On Tue, Apr 29, 2014 at 4:14 PM, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk> wrote:

> [posted to Open Definition list as well since they have a lot of
> jurisdiction knowledge]
>
> from a correspondent...
>
> "I have noticed on a few ACS journal papers the following text:
>
> Published by American Chemical Society. Copyright © American Chemical
> Society. However, no copyright claim is made to original U.S. Government
> works, or works produced by employees of any Commonwealth realm Crown
> government in the course of their duties.
>  example :
>
> http://nature.berkeley.edu/ahg/pubs/Chan_etal_JPCC_2014.pdf
>
>
> So it sounds like that there exists no copyright, and therefore the
> ability to freely distribute the text for papers with this statement. The
> odd thing is the inclusion of the Commonwealth in this. Am I interpreting
> things correctly?
>
> Does this include any government worker in the list of authors? For
> example where you have one government employee and four commercial sector.
> Are university employees government, etc?"
>
> PMR: I think this is true for US. I'd welcome the interpretation of
> "Commonwealth" - is this British Commonwealth? Commonwealth of Australia?
> Canada? or all common wealths? and does it apply to (say) Germany? Max
> Planck?
>
> It would be very useful to have a list of territories where this was in
> force
>
> P.
>
> --
> Peter Murray-Rust
> Reader in Molecular Informatics
> Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry
> University of Cambridge
> CB2 1EW, UK
> +44-1223-763069
>
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