Authors today have an increasing desire to openly share their scholarship with others, but there is often confusion or misunderstanding about what they are allowed to do with their published materials. Many university libraries are attempting to help authors tackle these sharing hurdles through programs like mediated deposit to their institutional repositories (IRs). Mediated deposit often involves library employees checking permissions on the authors’ behalf and, based on those findings, posting appropriate versions to their IR. Authors can then share those links more widely and across different platforms. Through these programs, libraries are building services and workflows to ensure greater compliance with publishers’ sharing policies and reuse requirements.
In reviewing publishers’ policies, however, institutions often run into difficulties and ambiguity in navigating sharing policies: there is no standardized language for versions across publishers, for example, or clarity on where the article may be shared. Thus, if the IR mediated deposit teams are having problems untangling these policies, most faculty are likely not going to be able to understand their sharing capabilities either. This presentation by representatives of institutions and publishers aims to offer greater clarity for all involved and to spark discussion about how we might be able to work as a community to address these ambiguities. The goal should be to encourage collaboration in creating some guidelines and best practices that would make it easier for IR managers to comply with sharing policies, which may also help faculty better understand sharing policies as well and (potentially) curb rampant copyright violations on various well-known websites.
Moderator:
- Jason Pointe, Publishing Director, IARS
Speakers:
- Kenny Whitebloom, Digital Scholarly Publishing Librarian, Penn Libraries
- Andrew Wible, Sr. Mgr. Rights & Partnerships, Wolters Kluwer
