News
-
Newly revised UC Copyright and Fair Use Policy and UC Copyright website better support students and staff
The University of California has issued a revised systemwide policy on Copyright and Fair Use, replacing the 1986 Policy on the Reproduction of Copyrighted Materials for Teaching and Research and its accompanying guidelines. The revised policy, which became effective July 9, 2015, is a clear statement by the University in support of copyright law, including the principle of fair use. The UC Copyright website, which has more detailed information about copyright and fair use for members of the UC community, has also been revised.
-
UC Launches Robust Publication Management System in Support of Open Access Policy
By fall of 2015, all UC Senate faculty will have access to a new publication management system that searches scholarly databases for faculty article records, emails authors when new articles are found, and supports easy deposit of those articles into eScholarship, UC’s open access repository and publishing platform. This “harvesting” system is currently being implemented across the UC campuses in response to the Academic Senate’s call for an efficient mechanism for facilitating faculty participation in the UC Open Access policy. While the initial focus has been on supporting the Open Access Policy, the system also has the ability to connect to […]
-
Celebrate Fair Use Week 2015
Members of the UC community rely on the “fair use” provision of US copyright law every day when sharing articles or images with their students, or when quoting or excerpting others’ works to create their own scholarship. Fair use allows for limited copying of copyrighted works without the permission of the copyright owner. Under certain conditions, copyrighted works may be used for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship or research. Colleges and universities across the country began celebrating “Fair Use Week” in 2014 in order to explain, celebrate, and promote fair […]
-
Proposed Presidential Policy on Open Access Would Reach All Non-Senate UC Authors
[Editor’s note: this post is kept as an archive, but since the policy is no longer under review, some of the links go to pages that do not exist. For current UC policies, visit policy.ucop.edu.] Academic Senate faculty are currently the only University of California authors covered by a UC open access policy, but that may soon change. Provost Aimée Dorr recently distributed a draft proposal for a broader open access policy that would cover all other UC employees. Comments on the proposed policy are due by January 15, 2015. The text of the policy and its accompanying documents can be […]
-
UC Libraries Celebrate Open Access Week 2014
October 20-26, 2014 is international Open Access Week. This year’s theme is “Generation Open,” which was chosen to “highlight the importance of students and early career researchers as advocates for change in the short-term, through institutional and governmental policy, and as the future of the Academy upon whom the ultimate success of the Open Access movement depends.” The University of California Libraries have a planned a variety of events in order to explore and celebrate issues related to open access.
-
Royal Society of Chemistry Vouchers
Some scholarly publishers charge authors fees, often called “article processing charges” or APCs, in order to make their articles open access. University of California authors are eligible for discounts on these fees with some publishers based on UC arrangements with those publishers. Most of these arrangements give authors a percentage off the standard APC, UC’s program with the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), functions differently.
-
Experts on Open Educational Resources Visiting Five UC Campuses
The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC) is an international alliance of academic and research libraries working to create a more open system of scholarly communication. Two of SPARC’s prominent experts, Nicole Allen and Nick Shockey, will be visiting five UC campuses in whirlwind California tour this May.
-
ASCE Takedown Notices
The University of California recently received a takedown notice for 9 articles that had been uploaded by UC authors to eScholarship, UC’s open access repository. All 9 articles were published by the American Society for Civil Engineers (ASCE). None were recent articles covered by the new UC Open Access Policy. They were all uploaded between 2004 and 2008. All of them appeared to be the publisher-formatted PDFs. Authors signing ASCE’s unmodified publication agreement agree to only post an author’s version “after peer review and prior to copyediting or other ASCE production activities” to a repository. Additionally, authors posting their own […]
-
New Public Access Requirements Passed as Part of Appropriations Bill
The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014 – the $1.1 billion spending bill passed in January, which is hundreds of pages long – included provisions for public access to published research articles. Section 527 of the legislation directs a number of federal agencies to develop public access policies.
-
Elsevier Takedown Notices for Faculty Articles on UC Sites
Elsevier recently sent DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown notices to some UC campuses, claiming that the availability of certain Elsevier journal articles posted on university websites infringes Elsevier copyrights. UC faculty might be wondering, what does this mean for me? Am I at risk of receiving a takedown notice and, if so, what should I do? At this point, the takedown action only applies to local campus web pages like department sites, faculty profiles, or lab pages. This action does not currently apply to any content you may have posted to UC’s eScholarship Repository. Read a recent article in […]
