by Pat McNees
Who owns (or is assumed to own) the copyright in an interview seems to vary among professions (say, journalists and oral historians) and sometimes those doing the interviewing seem to be taking too much advantage of the people they are interviewing. Read More
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Who owns an interview? Who controls the right to use it?
May 18, 2016
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Revolution in academia: Copyright and open access
November 29, 2015
(updated 10-15-2020)
In academia a wide-ranging discussion about open access is weakening academic journals' monopoly on profiting from publishing research findings. Different interest groups view this differently, of course. Meanwhile, as the publishing landscape changes, are academic authors, who have long abandoned claims to copyright on many of their scholarly articles (in the "public or perish" world of university faculty-making), less docile about publishing rights, with tenured faculty positions scarcer and scarcer? This round-up of relevant pieces starts with a possible break in the pattern:
• New PLOS pricing test could signal end of scientists paying to publish free papers (Jeffrey Brainard, Science, 10-15-2020) "PLOS, the nonprofit publisher that in 2003 pioneered the open-access business model of charging authors to publish scientific articles so they are immediately free to all, this week rolled out an alternative model that could herald the end of the author-pays era. One of the new options shifts the cost of publishing open-access (OA) articles in its two most selective journals to institutions, charging them a fixed annual fee; any researcher at that institution could then publish in the PLOS journals at no additional charge."
• Want to know if an article is freely available? To check for open access, see
---PLOS
---PLOS ONE (covers primary research from any discipline within science and medicine)
---PLOS Medicine
---PLOS Biology
---BioMed Central
---CORE (UK)
---Paperity (the first multidisciplinary aggregator of Open Access journals and papers)
---Google Scholar
• A New Kind of ‘Big Deal’ for Elsevier (Lindsay McKenzie, Inside Higher Ed, 11-22-19) Carnegie Mellon University has signed an open-access deal with Elsevier -- the first of its kind for the publisher in the U.S. Elsevier struck a similar deal with a consortium of Norwegian research institutions earlier this year.
• Elsevier Mutiny: Cracks Are Widening in the Fortress of Academic Publishing (Mathew Ingram, Forbes, 11-2-15) "All six editors and the entire editorial board of the well-respected linguistics journal Lingua have resigned to protest the company’s failure to embrace open access. Read More
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Bad Behavior: Rights bandits on the Wild Web
January 18, 2013
In this space (updated occasionally) I'm posting links to stories about egregious violations of creators' rights (rights of writers, photographers, artists, or other original creators of original works). On this week's Bad Behavior' Roundup:
• BuzzFeed announces $19.3m Read More
• BuzzFeed announces $19.3m Read More
How long does copyright last?
April 24, 2011
When someone asks if she can reprint a biography of her long-dead relative first published (probably self-published) in 1960. Among other things, the underlying question is, How long does copyright protection last? One person suggested "life plus fifty years," which used to be true but no longer is
Read MoreThe Magic Article Rewriter (not a person)
December 13, 2010
My mouth is still open after reading The Best Spinner vs. the Magic Article Rewriter. What can you deduce from the following copy: "almost 100% of every content about anything has already been written or said at least once somewhere around the web. That Read More
Freelancers Suffer Unintended Consequences of Independent Contractor Law
June 30, 2010
The Massachusetts Independent Contractor Law was created to prevent worker exploitation, writes Andrea Shea for WBUR radio, and employers who "get busted classifying incorrectly — say, giving a worker a 1099 form at tax time rather than a W-2 — [will] face hefty fines." But writers and artists in Massachusetts are victims of Read More
"How Can Creators Get a Fair Deal in the Digital World?"
June 6, 2010
Edward Hasbrouck's blog The Practical Nomad provides links to a trail of fascinating discussions about the role or rights of creators, readers, and publishers in the current huge many-faceted struggle going on about rights in the new digital environment. He writes that Readers' interests lie with writers, not with publishers Read More
Should a freelance writer sign a work-for-hire agreement?
April 3, 2009
The terms “work for hire” or “work made for hire” (WFH) should give writers pause. Much corporate work is done as WFH — which means the organization that pays you to do a project owns the material, period, and you have no rights beyond those to which you have mutually agreed in your contract. But not all corporate work is work for hire. Read More