SPARC Introduces Author Rights

Recent developments in the federal legislative arena have drawn attention from the academic community, the media, and the public toward the critical issue of author rights.

The topic has come to the fore with the NIH Public Access Policy (which may be made mandatory in 2007); the Federal Research Public Access Act of 2006 (which expands public access into education, the environment, physics, and countless other fields); the call for access by taxpayers; the emergence of open archives such as PubMed Central, arXiv.org, and hundreds of institutional repositories; and with awareness of the legal complexities of sharing one’s own work with colleagues and students in the digital environment.

• Can authors post their articles on their course Web sites or in institutional repositories?
• Can an author share his work freely after assigning exclusive copyright to a publisher?
• Is it okay for an author to post her work in NIH’s PubMed Central?

These and other questions are heard more and more frequently on campuses. That’s why SPARC has developed Author Rights – an educational initiative that informs faculty across all disciplines about how to use the SPARC Author Addendum to secure their rights as authors of journal articles.

The SPARC Author Addendum is a legal instrument that authors may use to modify their publisher agreements, enabling them to keep selected key rights to their articles, such as:

• Distributing copies in the course of teaching and research,
• Posting the article on a personal or institutional Web site, or
• Creating derivative works.

SPARC’s Author Rights brochure identifies the rights faculty have as copyright holders and encourages them to retain the rights they need to ensure the broadest practical access to their articles. It explains how to use the SPARC Author Addendum and even gives tips on what to do if the publisher rejects the Addendum. It also offers specific language authors can insert in a publisher agreement when their article will be deposited in NIH’s PubMed Central.

Please take advantage of this new resource to inform your campus about the key issue of author rights. Here’s how:

• A full color brochure and Author Rights poster are available for use at your institution. Display the poster in your library. Offer it to faculty members. Distribute the brochure in your library, through faculty mailboxes, or at liaison meetings.
  
  You can order from our Web site at http://www.arl.org/sparc/pubs/ ($15.00 for 50 copies of the brochure and $2.50 for each poster). The poster and brochure are also available online and for free download at http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/.

• A podcast of the SPARC-ACRL forum on “Authors and Authority: Perspectives and Negotiating Licenses and Copyright” (January 2006) is now available on our Web site, http://www.arl.org/sparc/meetings/ala06mw/index.html. The forum offers perspectives on copyright from a librarian, publisher, and an attorney – and is a great introduction to the issue. Add a link to your Web page or email the different files to faculty, depending on where their understanding is. Michael Carroll’s talk from the attorney perspective, for example, makes clear that “as soon as the author’s finished typing, federal law showers down upon the author a set of exclusive rights…the author does not transfer any exclusive rights until the author signs a document.”
• SPARC has available a letter introducing the topic of Author Rights to faculty. Please contact us for a copy and adapt as you see fit.
• SPARC staff members are available to visit your campus and meet with members of the library, administration, faculty, and students as you deem necessary. Simply email Julia Blixrud, Assistant Director for Public Programs, to discuss (jblix@arl.org).

We welcome your suggestions for how any of SPARC’s resources might be leveraged, improved, or adapted for your needs. Questions are also welcome. Contact us anytime.

We are strongly encouraged by the many recent developments in the move to improve access to research – including changes in federal policy, but also by increasing pressure from researchers and librarians to create change on a system-wide level. The education and advocacy efforts of librarians like you have played a key role. We hope that the SPARC Author Addendum and Author Rights campaign give you one more tool to reach your faculty and administration. 

Thank you, as always, for your role in bringing research and scholarship to more readers.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Heffelfinger
Director of Communications
jennifer@arl.org

P.S. – Consider linking from your library home page or scholarly communications page to the SPARC Author Rights Web page at http://www.arl.org/sparc/author/.