july08b.indd


scholarly communication 
Karla L. Hahn 

Two new policies widen the path 
to balanced copyright management 
Developments
on
author
rights



Alight bulb is going off that is casting the issue of author rights management into 
new relief. On January 11, 2008, the National 
Institutes of Health (NIH) announced a revi­
sion of its Public Access Policy. Effective April 
7, 2008, the agency requires investigators 
to deposit their articles stemming from NIH 
funding in the NIH online archive, PubMed 
Central. Librarians have been looking forward 
to such an announcement, especially since 
studies found that the voluntary version of 
the policy was achieving deposit rates of af­
fected articles on the order of a few percent­
age points, making it impossible to achieve 
the policy’s goals for broadening access to 
funded research and accelerating the pace 
of research advance.1 

The shift from a request to a requirement 
comes at a propitious time; academic libraries 
already have been building infrastructure to 
work with faculty on both rights management 
and repository deposit. Author rights manage­
ment has been the most common focus of 
faculty outreach on campuses in recent years.2 

The value of digital repositories and preprint 
and postprint deposit has also been broadly 
communicated. The revised policy thus has 
not only found a hospitable environment, 
but it also has effectively catalyzed ongoing 
discussions about the obligations of scholars 
and researchers not merely to publish, but 
to act to achieve the broadest possible dis­
semination of their fi ndings. 

With opportunity, of course, comes re­
sponsibility. It is now apparent that many 
leaders on campus, and many faculty, still 
faced a learning curve as they prepared for 

the change in the policy. On many cam­
puses, librarians have been in a position to 
exercise leadership by reaching out to key 
stakeholders, particularly campus research 
offices, and clarifying the implications of 
the revisions to the policy and enabling the 
rapid development of compliance strategies. 
In the short term, libraries have built new 
and very positive relationships on campus 
as a result of their contributions in support 
of grantees and investigators’ meeting the 
policy’s requirements. 

Libraries have contributed to the success 
of the policy by creating resources, fostering 
the creation of campus tools, and using and 
promoting resources developed by library as­
sociations (see sidebar). As the librarian com­
munity has understood from the outset, one 
of the key transformations the policy initiates 
is a shift in researchers’ management of their 
copyrights of the works they author. With the 
article deposit requirement, researchers can 
no longer simply sign publication agreements 
without careful review and, in some cases, 
modification of the publisher’s proposed 
terms. While this may be perceived as a minor 
annoyance, it calls attention to the value of 
scholarly publications and the necessity to 
consider carefully whether an appropriate 

Contact Joyce L. Ogburn—series editor, cochair of 
the ACRL Scholarly Communications Committee, and 
university librarian at the University of Utah—with 
article ideas, e-mail: joyce.ogburn@utah.edu 

Karla L. Hahn is director of the Office of Scholarly 
Communications at the Association of Research 
Libraries, e-mail: karla@arl.org 
© 2008 Karla L. Hahn 

C&RL News July/August 2008  398 

mailto:karla@arl.org
mailto:joyce.ogburn@utah.edu


balance between author and publisher rights 
and needs is on offer. 

As institutions, as grantees, become re­
sponsible for ensuring that funded authors 
retain the rights they need to meet the NIH 
public Access Policy requirements, there is a 
new incentive for campus leaders to recon­
sider institutional policies and local practices 
relating to faculty copyrights as assets.3 

In 2000, the “Tempe Principles for Emerging 
Systems of Scholarly Publishing“ promulgated 
by library and campus leaders, included two 
statements regarding rights management: 

The academic community embraces 
the concepts of copyright and fair use 
and seeks a balance in the interest of 
owners and users in the digital envi­
ronment. Universities, colleges, and 
especially their faculties should man­
age copyright and its limitations and 
exceptions in a manner that assures 
the faculty access to and use of their 
own published works in their research 
and teaching. 

and 

In negotiating publishing agreements, 
faculty should assign the rights to their 
work in a manner that promotes the 
ready use of their work and choose 
journals that support the goal of mak­
ing scholarly publications available at 
reasonable cost.4 

The requirements of the current NIH Pub­
lic Access Policy mark substantial progress in 
implementing these principles and demon­
strate the prescience of these statements. 

The February 2008 vote by the Harvard 
Faculty of Arts and Sciences to grant Harvard 
a limited license to make certain uses of their 
journal articles is another important indica­
tor of an accelerating shift in attitudes about 
author rights management, and also reveals 
the value of taking an institutional approach 
to the issue. At the heart of the policy is the 
idea that faculty and institutions should have 
more control over how work is used and dis­
seminated, and that they have responsibility 
to distribute their scholarship as widely as 
possible. The Harvard Law faculty followed 
suit in the spring.5 

With these two watershed developments, 
libraries have a new opportunity to educate 
and advocate for the development of a new 
generation of institutional policies on author 
rights management, one geared to the op­
portunities of networked digital technolo­
gies and built on the foundations of recent 
developments in rights management tools 
and institutional and disciplinary repositories. 
For librarians considering how best to help 
campus authors promote a healthy culture 
of copyright on campus—one that promotes 
research, teaching, learning, and service to 
society—a recent SPARC/Science Commons 
white paper, “Open Doors and Open Minds: 
What Faculty Authors Can Do to Ensure 

July/August 2008  399 C&RL News 

Resources for institutional author rights policy management approaches 
• SPARC: www.arl.org/sparc/advo­

cacy/nih/index.shtml 
• NIH Public Access Policy: Guide for 

Research Universities: www.arl.org/sc 
/implement/nih/guide/index.shtml 

• Webcast Archive: Institutional Com­
pliance with the NIH Public Access Policy: 
www.arl.org/sc/implement/nih/webcast 
/index.shtml 

• Complying with the National Institutes of 
Health Public Access Policy: Copyright Con­
siderations and Options: www.arl.org/sparc 
advocacy/nih/copyright.shtml 

• Managing Copyright for NIH Public 
Access: Strategies to Ensure Compliance: 
www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br258. 
shtml 

• Open Doors and Open Minds: 
What Faculty Authors Can Do To En­
s u r e  O p e n  A c c e s s  To  T h e i r  Wo r k  
Through Their Institution: www.arl.org 
/sparc/publications/guides/opendoors 
_v1.shtml 

• Office for Scholarly Communication, 
Harvard University Library: hul.harvard. 
edu/osc.html 



Open Access to Their Work Through Their 
Institution,” discusses several action strategies 
promoting the development of institutional 
policies.6 

Norms are always more difficult to change 
than technologies. We are now witnessing a 
key shift in norms for sharing scholarly work 
that promises a giant step forward in lever­
aging the potential of network technologies 
and digital scholarship to advance research, 
teaching, policy development, professional 
practice, and technology transfer. Librarians 
need to seek and promote today’s burgeon­
ing opportunities to accelerate these positive 
changes toward openness. The next impor­
tant strategy to pursue is developing institu­
tional policies that ensure institutions receive 
limited distribution rights. 

Notes
1. Ray English and Heather Joseph, “The 

NIH mandate: An open access landmark.” 
C&RL News, Vol. 69, No. 2. February 2008, 
www.acrl.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews 
/backissues2008/february08/nihupdate.cfm 

2. Kathleen A. Newman, Deborah D. Ble­
cic, and Kimberly L. Armstrong, “Scholarly 
Communication Education Initiatives,” SPEC 
Kit 299. Washington, D.C.: Association of Re­

search Libraries (2007), www.arl.org/bm~doc 
/spec299book.pdf.zip (accessed May 2008). 

3. Michael Carroll, “Complying with the 
National Institutes of Health Public Access 
Policy: Copyright Considerations and Op­
tions” (February 2008), www.arl.org/sparc 
/advocacy/nih/copyright.html (accessed 
May 2008); and Kevin L. Smith, “Managing 
Copyright for NIH Public Access,” ARL: A 
Bimonthly Report. no. 258 (June 2008), www. 
arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br258.shtml (ac­
cessed May 2008). 

4. Tempe Principles for Emerging Systems 
of Scholarly Publishing available at www.arl.org 
/bm~doc/tempe1.pdf (accessed May 2008). 

5. “Harvard To Collect, Disseminate Schol­
arly Articles For Faculty,” www.fas.harvard. 
edu/home/news_and_events/releases 
/scholarly_02122008.html (accessed June 
2008); and “Harvard Law Faculty Votes 
for ‘Open Access’” to Scholarly Articles,” 
www.law.harvard.edu/news/2008/05/07 
_openaccess.php (accessed June 2008). 

6. Thinh Nguyen, “Open Doors and Open 
Minds: What faculty authors can do to en­
sure open access to their work through their 
institution” (April 2008), www.arl.org/sparc 
/publications/guides/opendoors_v1.shtml (ac­
cessed May 2008). 

(“A different kind of fellowship” continued from page 394) 

during the implementation of the fellowship 
program. These include teaching proper inter­
view skills, communicating what is required 
of the fellow’s supervisors, and making pro­
fessional mentoring available. The task force 
has discussed these concerns with both the 
current SPA fellow and other library faculty 
and staff, and will take measures to provide 
future fellows and fellowship applicants with 
the needed advice and assistance. 

Despite these challenges, everyone in­
volved in the process agrees that the SPA 
Fellowship Program is a worthwhile endeavor 
that holds enormous promise for both sup­
port staff wishing to transition to professional 
librarianship and Joyner Library as an institu­
tion. Obviously it is still too early to tell if the 
program is successful. The ultimate test will 

come once we have library fellows who have 
completed the program and pursue full­time 
professional positions. That is when we will 
find out if the program is truly working as we 
intended. At this point, the feedback from both 
the inaugural library fellow and her co­work­
ers and supervisors has been overwhelmingly 
positive. While there are still lessons to be 
learned and issues to be addressed, the fel­
lowship program has worked out well so far 
and will certainly be continued. 

Notes
1. For information on the NCSU Librar­

ies Fellows Program, see www.lib.ncsu.edu 
/fellows/. 

2. Available atwww.ecu.edu/cs­lib/SPA 
/Fellow_Com/Index.cfm. 

C&RL News July/August 2008  400 

http:www.lib.ncsu.edu
www.arl.org/sparc
www.law.harvard.edu/news/2008/05/07
www.fas.harvard
http:www.arl.org
www.arl.org/sparc
www.arl.org/bm~doc
www.acrl.org/ala/acrl/acrlpubs/crlnews