Science Commons and SPARC Announce New Tools for Scholarly Publishing

In a press release (17 May, 2007) Science Commons and SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) provide details of new online tools to assist authors retain significant intellectual property rights over their scholarly articles, including the rights to resuse them and and to deposit them in online repositories:

The new tools include the Scholar’s Copyright Addendum Engine, an online tool created by Science Commons to simplify the process of choosing and implementing an addendum to retain scholarly rights. By selecting from among four addenda offered, any author can fill in a form to generate and print a completed amendment that can be attached to a publisher’s copyright assignment agreement to retain critical rights to reuse and offer their works online.

The Scholar’s Copyright Addendum Engine will be offered through the Science Commons, SPARC, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and the Carnegie Mellon University Web sites, and it will be freely available to other institutions that wish to host it. It may be accessed on the Science Commons Web site at http://scholars.sciencecommons.org.

Also available for the first time is a new addendum from Science Commons and SPARC, named “Access-Reuse,” that represents a collaboration to simplify choices for scholars by combining two existing addenda, the SPARC Author Addendum and the Science Commons Open Access-Creative Commons Addendum. This new addendum will ensure that authors not only retain the rights to reuse their own work and post them on online depositories, but also to grant a non-exclusive license, such as the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial license, to the public to reuse and distribute the work. In addition, Science Commons will be offering two other addenda, called “Immediate Access” and “Delayed Access”, representing alternative arrangements that authors can choose.

“The Scholar’s Copyright Addendum Engine will enable authors to maximize the reach of their work,” said Heather Joseph, Executive Director of SPARC. “It’s a significant leap forward in making it easier for authors to effectively manage their publication rights.” . . . . MORE