In these times of uncertainty, it is common to experience confusion, seek knowledge, and wish for better days ahead, but as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said, “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Wishing is not enough; we must do.”
This week’s collection of articles from around the web includes information on copyright and creative commons, online methods of research, social media streaming, finding a flow in a COVID infected world, building an academic community, and collecting qualitative data online. Perhaps one or more of these have been things you knew about or wished to learn more about.
But knowing and wishing is not enough. What you do with these and other ideas in our changing world is what determines the future you will create. Happy writing! [Read more…]
Did you know that over 1 billion works — including scholarly articles and a growing number of academic textbooks — have been licensed with a Creative Commons (CC) license? Though widely adopted, these continually-updated, legally-enforceable tools remain a mystery to academic writers. Many authors are unaware of the permissions afforded to them through the CC licenses, and many are unaware of permissions afforded to users when a specific CC license is applied to their work by an open-access publisher.
As we come to the close of 
Are you wondering what the recently announced merger between textbook giants McGraw-Hill and Cengage could mean for authors? Join publishing attorney Steve Gillen and textbook author and Monroe College professor Karen Morris for their session at 
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?
Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) is an effort to provide broader access to works held in libraries by creating a digital copy and then lending it out on terms that are ostensibly analogous to the ways that physical copies of books are lent from the library. The practice was initiated last year by the Internet Archive (IA) through its Open Libraries project. CDL.org now appears to be incorporated as a separate entity from the Internet Archive, though IA continues to promote it. 
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, 
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.
Your contract provided by your publisher will probably put the burden of securing permission for the use of third party material solely on you. How much of this is negotiable? What are the possible compromises? And regardless of whether you end up doing it or the publisher does it, under what circumstances do you need permission and how do you best go about getting it? Get answers to these questions from Stephen E. Gillen, a lawyer with more than 40 years of experience in and around the publishing business, and author of 
