Aberdeen's University Librarian @simonjbains announced our new rights retention policy today!
Seems niche, but is super important for fighting the supervillains in for-profit publishing.
Uni staff can no longer be made to sign over copyright to publish. All work will be made freely available to all in the university repository.
We have an amazing Open Research Team at the library 📚 🦸♀️ 🏆. Thank you!
Full details:
https://www.abdn.ac.uk/library/documents/Research%20Publications%20Policy%202023.pdf
@JessButler @simonjbains I wonder how long that will last, if the most 'prestigious' journals refuse to publish without an assignment?
@ejoftheweb @JessButler @simonjbains I’m also curious about this - if a paper is accepted in a Nature group journal they will ask you to sign an agreement that you won’t post the author accepted manuscript until after an embargo period. That’s even if you’ve included the rights-retention language with the original submission! If you sign it you’re breaking your grant conditions. Wondering if anyone has reached this stage and refused to sign?
@ejoftheweb @rbeagrie @JessButler @simonjbains @CharlesO One of the main reasons why open access is taking decades to make small steps is, at least in my view, that the scientific world has not been able to shake off its dependence on CADs, Career Advancing Devices, otherwise known as journals.
@ejoftheweb @rbeagrie @JessButler @simonjbains @CharlesO
Plan U (https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.3000273) may offer a realistic way out. I'm not holding my breath, though.
@rbeagrie @ejoftheweb @simonjbains
A good question, have put the bat signal up for Simon, who's still migrating over from Twitter
@JessButler @rbeagrie @ejoftheweb @simonjbains Someone is going to have to walk me through exactly what I need to do next time I submit! (I'm almost bound to screw up....)
@ProfLouiseL @JessButler @rbeagrie @ejoftheweb
I've been reassuring over on Twitter, but lots of help will be on offer ahead of making the policy live. If you're at Aberdeen, you should have access to what I said to Senate.
@rbeagrie @ejoftheweb @JessButler I'm certainly told that authors are choosing not to publish if publishers will not be reasonable. The prior rights retention takes precedence over any subsequent assertion of copyright. We and others have taken legal advice on this. The larger risk is non-compliance.
@simonjbains @rbeagrie @ejoftheweb
I hadn't thought of that - the biggest danger being people needless giving up their own copyright.
I can imagine people feeling intimidated by a journal to sign it away, but also likely to sign rights away out of ignorance or habit.
But to clarify - let's say I tick the box when submitting a manuscript and give the journal copyright. Does the uni's new default policy mean my manuscript already has prior rights retention that takes precedence?
@JessButler @simonjbains @rbeagrie It all has rather a groundhog day feel to me. I'm sure I sat through workshops at UKSG in the '90s going over the same ground. Citation metrics and journal rankings affecting both career outcomes and institutional funding. Good luck with it, but the big STM publishers, as well as many learned societies have been fighting this sort of thing for decades.
@JessButler @simonjbains I was interested to know that too. If the author (after retaining their rights) can then choose to assign those rights to a journal anyway? Not that I would recommend them to!
It's an important topic and glad it's being tackled. Interested to know more about how it works in practice
@rbeagrie @JessButler @simonjbains I've no idea. I've been out of the business for nearly 20 years but this whole thing was a big issue back then (Ginsparg was archiving preprints at Los Alamos, Harnad was promoting White/Gold/Green distinctions) and these things come up on my TL and we're still going round in circles @CharlesO @villavelius