Open access, copyright andCreative Commons

• Open access – what is it?• Open access and copyright• Creative Commons licences

What is open access?

¯\_(ツ )_/¯“Open access means peer-reviewed academic research work that is free to read online and

that anybody may redistribute and reuse, with some restrictions”

Open access and the humanities by Martin Eve

Motivations• OA as a grassroots researcher led movement

intended to:– Increase and widen access to research– Stimulate collaboration– Take advantage of technological developments

• OA as a top-down funder/government led initiative intended to:- Get better value for money from research spending- Provide access for businesses and stimulate

innovation

How do you make your work openly accessible?

There are two routes to open access:

GOLD GREEN

Gold open access

• Available immediately upon publication• Available at the source of publication (usually the

journal website)• No charge at point of access for users• Typically paid for with APCs (article processing

charges) though there are other business models• Typically made available under a Creative Commons

licence

Article processing charges

• Fees charged to authors by journals to recover the costs of publication

• Average price around £1800 but can vary between £200 and £4000+ per article

Green open access (or self-archiving)

• Subject to journal enforced embargo periods• Available from a secondary source, such as a subject

or institutional repository• Author accepted manuscript rather than formatted

publisher version - deposited by authors themselves• Check rchive.it for journals’ Green OA policies

Where does copyright come in?

• Copyright belongs to the authors of a research article**

• When publishing in a traditional subscription model journal, authors often transfer the copyright to the publisher

• Fair dealing applies to the publication but any other activities must receive permission from the copyright holder (aka the publisher)

Copyright transfer agreement

Gold open access

• Available immediately upon publication• Available at the source of publication (usually the

journal website)• No charge at point of access for users• Typically paid for with APCs (article processing

charges) though there are other business models• Typically made available under a Creative Commons

licence

Creative CommonsCC-BY: lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. This is the most accommodating of licences offered.

CC-BY-SA: lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms. All new works based on yours will carry the same licence, so any derivatives will also allow commercial use.

Creative CommonsCC-BY-NC: allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit to you.

CC-BY-NC-SA: lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.

CC-BY-NC-ND: only allows others to download your works and share them with others as long as they credit you, but they can’t change them in any way or use them commercially (the most restrictive)

CC licences in OA policies

• RCUK and Wellcome Trust’s open access policies require the use of a CC-BY licence where their money has been used to pay a Gold open access fee

• The University of Liverpool’s institutional open access fund has the same requirement

Creative Commons licences

• Allow researchers to take back control of their work, enabling them to modify the copyright terms to best suit their needs (or their funder’s needs)

• CC licences make activities like translation and text mining much easier (no need to ask permission from every copyright holder)

Questions about CC licences

• What about third party content?• What about plagiarism? Can people just steal

my work and pass it off as their own?• How is peer review affected?• Do Creative Commons licences replace

standard copyright?

CC-licenced resources

Creative Commons search: images, music, videoFlickr: imagesGoogle Images: imagesJorum: open educational resources (retiring at the end of September)

Credits

All background images by Stephen Carlton, available under a CC0 licence. Do whatever you like with them.

Links

Open access and the humanities by Martin EveOAPEN-UK guide to Creative Commons for humanities and social sciences monograph authorsOpen Access Workflows in Academic Libraries guide