Adopt Fair Copyright Policies

"[The] issues are best addressed through friendly and cooperative copyright practices that balance interest among diverse stakeholders." From the Zwolle group principles.

As authors, editors, and society members, University of California faculty wield enormous influence.

Use that influence:

• As editors, open discussions about your journal’s practices and consider how to optimize them as "scholarship friendly."
• As society members, join your publication’s board or petition it to examine the copyright policies of your society’s publications.
• Among your colleagues, raise copyright ownership as a topic of discussion.
• In faculty governance forums, consider how to create and endorse positions on copyright policies that are scholarship friendly. University policies that recommend or require faculty to retain the copyright of their scholarship may assist in individual faculty negotiations with publishers about copyright transfer.

For more information:

• The University of Maryland’s "Copyown" web site includes information about the copyright policies of AAU institutions
• The SURF network and Zwolle group in the Netherlands provide a great deal of analysis and evidence about balanced copyright approaches for achieving optimal access to scholarly information.