Most useful textbook and academic posts of the week: October 25, 2019

As we come to the close of Open Access Week 2019, having been faced with the challenge of considering this year’s theme, “Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge”, the words of Carl Sagan seem even more appropriate. “Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time ― proof that humans can work magic.”

This week’s collection of articles from around the web begins with some relevant discussions on open access including an MIT-developed framework for negotiating contracts with scholarly publishers, the future of open access business models, discussion about ownership of research, and the first 100 books from Johns Hopkins University Project. We’ve also included some other hot topics for academic authors on grant writing, being an older student, and being a minority in academia.

Wherever your writing takes you this week, whether publishing open access or traditional, consider the audience you can reach and the shackles of time you can break as a result of your efforts. Happy writing!

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New year welcomes thousands of copyrighted works into the public domain

This year marks the first in two decades that a significant body of copyrighted work has lost its U.S. copyright protection and fallen into the public domain. Why is that…and what does it mean for scholars and educators?

Prior to 1978, the term of copyright protection for a work in the United States was measured from its date of first publication in the U.S. Under the first U.S. copyright act in 1790, U.S. works enjoyed an initial term of 14 years of protection, with an optional second term of another 14 years.

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Member Alert Update: TAA joins coalition opposing ‘Controlled Digital Lending’

TAA has joined nearly 40 national and international organizations in an appeal to librarians and readers to discontinue a practice called “Controlled Digital Lending (CDL)”, an initiative started by the Internet Archive that supports libraries in making unauthorized digital copies of print books to distribute to readers online.

The joint statement, released by the groups on February 13, calls CDL “a flagrant violation of copyright and authors’ rights”, and appeals “for a dialogue among writers, authors, publishers, and librarians on how to enable and create the digital libraries we all want, in ways that fully respect authors’ rights.”

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Copyright basics: Another layer of rules for scholars

In a recent TAA webinar, Stephen E. Gillen, a lawyer with more than 40 years of experience in and around the publishing business, and author of the book, Guide to Rights Clearance and Permissions in Scholarly, Educational, and Trade Publishing, shared critical information about copyright law, rights clearance, and permissions.

During the session, Gillen introduced an additional layer of rules for scholars, specifically focused on academic integrity.

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Understanding Creative Commons licensing

Whether you are publishing open access articles, working on open textbooks, or simply securing images for use in your manuscripts, chances are you will encounter the Creative Commons licensing model at some point.

Creative Commons (CC) licensing is a set of copyright options that allow for the retention of rights without maintaining the “all rights reserved” approach to traditional copyright protections. There are six forms of CC licenses, each with varying restrictions, and all requiring attribution to the original creator: CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-ND, CC BY-NC, CC BY-NC-SA, and CC BY-NC-ND.

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