[Open-access] scholarly articles still not in OA. What could we do?

Fri Jan 31 20:13:46 UTC 2014

That's wonderful!
In Polish copyright law, there has been always the concept of "fields of 
exploitation" of a creative work. For the transfer of copyright to be 
legally correct and binding, all intended fields of exploitation must be 
explicitly named in the contract between author and publisher. If a 
given field is not specified, copyright is not transfered for this field 
of use. Moreover, it's not allowed to use general statements like "all 
fields of exploitation" or "all future fields of exploitation" - this is 
incorrect and has no legal effect. For a reference, see: 
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Polish_Copyright_Law (Article 41, p. 2 & 
4) or http://www.artserwis.pl/index.php?f=1&fgid=1&fqid=23 (in Polish).

Now, internet and digital distribution is a new, separate field of 
exploitation. But in contracts signed before internet era, say until 
90s, this field couldn't have been specified, so all those contracts are 
valid only for traditional forms of use of the work and not for the web. 
Thus, for internet use, copyright to these publications still belongs to 
respective authors and not to publishers. :)

That's how it works in Poland. It can be different in other countries.

Marcin

On 01/31/2014 04:46 PM, Tom Olijhoek wrote:
> Isn't it the case that for everything published before 1999 the 
> copyright does not apply to any electronic version?
>
> Tom
>
> On Friday, January 31, 2014, Mike Taylor <mike at indexdata.com 
> <mailto:mike at indexdata.com>> wrote:
>
>     Between you and me ... (c) is rife in the world of vertebrate
>     palaeontology, where large collections of old but not-out-of-copyright
>     papers routinely circulate.
>
>     -- Mike.
>
>
>     On 31 January 2014 14:43, Peter Murray-Rust <pm286 at cam.ac.uk
>     <javascript:;>> wrote:
>     > I fully understand. It's not just in HSS. Chemical papers 100
>     years old are
>     > still useful. And certainly i observational biology.
>     >
>     > It's worth using the OAButton - if only to reduce your blood
>     pressure. It
>     > may also highlight the problem - if OAButton can count the ages
>     of the
>     > papers that might show your problem was common.
>     >
>     > The forces for change could be (a) legislation. (b) a change in the
>     > publishing market. Neither are fast. (c) Civil disobedience
>     would also work.
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     > On Fri, Jan 31, 2014 at 2:17 PM, Bjoern Brembs
>     <b.brembs at gmail.com <javascript:;>> wrote:
>     >>
>     >> On Friday, January 31, 2014, 3:03:56 PM, you wrote:
>     >>
>     >> > But I am under the impression that this fight tends to forget
>     >> > former journals, old papers, etc. some of which are, at
>     >> > least in social sciences, still relevant and useful. Could
>     >> > we launch a sort of a campaign "OA for now, but also OA to
>     >> > the past", in order to entice researchers to put all their
>     >> > old papers in OA? Or support libraries that could do it
>     >> > with their old collections or older series? Maybe this is
>     >> > already in the make and I am not aware of it?
>     >>
>     >> This is something that I think should be solvable in principle.
>     >> Copyright expires after a number of years. Depending on several
>     factors,
>     >> this can be 28 years, 70 years, 95 years or 120 years. So in
>     most cases, a
>     >> 1994 article is still protected by copyright and is just as
>     difficult to
>     >> make OA as any other copyrighted, more recent article.
>     >>
>     >> But I agree with you that libraries should try and harvest
>     everything,
>     >> independent of its protection and make available everything
>     that is legal to
>     >> make available.
>     >> I would really like to see how one would apply copyright law to
>     determine
>     >> which articles in the scholarly literature could be seen as
>     publicly
>     >> accessible at this point in time and what percentage of the
>     scholarly
>     >> literature this would be.
>     >> Does anybody know someone who could answer this question,
>     ideally in paper
>     >> form for our special issue? :-)
>     >>
>     >> Cheers,
>     >>
>     >> Bjoern
>     >>
>     >>
>     >>
>     >>
>     >> --
>     >> Björn Brembs
>     >> ---------------------------------------------
>     >> http://brembs.net
>     >> Neurogenetics
>     >> Universität Regensburg
>     >> Germany
>     >>
>     >> _______________________________________________
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>     >
>     >
>     >
>     >
>     > --
>     > 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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>
>
> -- 
> Tom Olijhoek
> Codex Consult
> www.codexconsult.eu <http://www.codexconsult.eu>
> coordinator @ccess open access working group  at OKF
> DOAJ  member of Advisory Board
> freelance advisor for the WorldBank Publishing Group
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Marcin Wojnarski, Founder and CEO, TunedIT
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