Author rights: Common misperceptions

MIT Libraries

I can already share my work through my web page.

Some publishers don’t allow authors to post their work on any web site. Examples include the American Chemical Society, the American Medical Association, the American Physiological Society, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, and Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins.

Many publishers allow authors to ‘self-archive’ – to post their work on a web page, or in an open repository of some kind – but they restrict what version can be mounted where, and when. The differences between publishers can be confusing and limiting. (Publisher policies as posted on their web pages may also vary from what is contained the actual agreement authors are asked to sign.)

  • Elsevier, for example, allows a preprint to be mounted in a discipline archive and a “revised personal version” that reflects peer review changes to be posted on an institutional web site (not a subject-based repository), as long as there is a link to the published journal’s home page.
  • The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, the publisher of Science) does not allow posting in an institutional repository like DSpace@MIT or to a subject-based repository, but does allow authors to post the accepted version prior to copy editing, on their own personal web sites, after publication of the article.
  • Nature Publishing Group allows posting on the author’s server or an institutional server (like DSpace@MIT), but it must be the unedited author’s version (pre-refereeing) that is posted, the author must wait six months after publication, and posting to a subject-based repository is not allowed.

I can already reuse my work for teaching without publishers coming after me.

Here at MIT, a faculty member learned that he could not offer his textbook through OCW, along with his course notes. The publisher had refused to allow any use in OCW when contacted by OCW permissions staff. Then, after extensive negotiation by the author himself, the publisher agreed to allow for some images to be included, but only those identified up front at the time of the negotiation. The faculty member characterizes the struggle involved in obtaining permission to use his own work, even in such a limited and restrictive manner, as a “lousy system.”

Many other faculty have come up against similar barriers to reusing their own work, including journal articles, hand-drawn maps, original figures, and problem sets. These barriers have been pervasive and impermeable: based on a success rate of zero during the first year and a half of operation, OCW has suspended active pursuit of permission for content from books or journals from all commercial publishers, unless they have information that the publisher is particularly ‘open-friendly.’

In a print-based scholarly publishing world, there was little an author could do with his or her work that would be questioned by a publisher, regardless of what agreement had been signed.

In today’s digital, networked world, new uses have emerged and will continue to do so. Authors, their institutions, and their colleagues have new opportunities for more widely sharing and distributing their work, increasing readership, impact, and the advancement of science. Publishers can and do try to prevent such uses unless rights have been retained in the publisher agreement.

My scholarly society publishes much of my work, and I trust it to fulfill its obligation to support and disseminate research in my field.

Here at MIT, we are in the process of working with a scholarly society that has suddenly implemented extremely restrictive access terms for all its customers, including MIT. Their digital library is newly redesigned to deliver papers to a desktop for printing, but will no longer allow for an electronic version to be stored, emailed, or shared.

Many societies have come to rely on their publications as revenue streams to support a range of activities. Some societies, in an effort to maintain or increase revenues, institute restrictive policies that impede access, rather than promoting the widest possible use of the research entrusted to them.

Everyone who needs to see my work is already reading it in the published journal.

A faculty member at a neighboring institution was amazed to learn that unless he used the library’s subscription of a journal, he could not see his own work. He had no rights of access to his own article online.

The internet affords the possibility of cheap, wide distribution of research. Yet fewer libraries can subscribe to the full range of journals that are of interest to their faculty and researchers, because of escalating costs, and the developing world has never had wide access to research. Fulfilling the promise of our networked world requires that research articles are available without unnecessary barriers.

What could anyone want to do with my article that’s not already accounted for?

MIT faculty have already found that they cannot use their own work in OCW, an outlet for research that did not exist just a few years ago. ScienceCommons, supported and housed here at MIT, has a vision of an interoperable network of scientific data and research, which should yield as yet unimagined new tools, ideas, and productivity, taking the sharing and use of research to new levels. Yet realizing this vision has been delayed by the permission barriers that exist in searching, indexing, and mining the research literature. Traditional publishers own most of the world’s research, and they do not allow it to be systematically searched or mined. (In 2003, it was reported that just three commercial publishers – Reed Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, and Springer — controlled 60 percent of the articles indexed in the Web of Science. Our cultural legacy, a vast corpus of research that is intended to advance science and support humanity, is locked behind permission barriers and is accessible only on terms meted out by publishers in license agreements to libraries.