Copyright and licensing

DOAJ’s Basic criteria – updated and rewritten in plain English

We are rewriting our website in plain English so that it is easy for our users, especially publishers, to understand what is required for a good quality and complete application.

These are first steps to us:

  1. becoming even more open and transparent;
  2. offering a greatly improved user experience for a new application form; 
  3. starting a localisation project to offer elements of the website in languages other than English.

Today the basic criteria are mixed with the advanced criteria on a very wordy page and in our application form. It is hard to tell which is which. The advanced criteria are only required for a journal wishing to get the DOAJ Seal.

This leads many to believe that a journal has to have the Seal to be indexed in DOAJ. This is not true.

So here are our basic criteria – rewritten, updated and offered in simple, clear language. These will soon be available on our website as part of our new ‘Guide to applying’.

Let us know what you think.

The type of journal that can apply

Open access journals published in any language may apply.

  • The journal must be actively publishing scholarly research
    • All research subject areas are accepted
    • Should publish at least 5 research articles per year 
  • The primary target audience should be researchers or practitioners

The type of open access

  • DOAJ only accepts open access journals. 
  • We define these as journals where the copyright holder of a scholarly work grants usage rights to others using an open license (Creative Commons or equivalent) allowing for immediate free access to the work and permitting any user to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose.
  • The journal must display an open access statement indicating that it fulfils the DOAJ definition of open access.
  • The full text of all content must be available for free and open access without delay
    • No embargo period
    • Requiring users to register to read content is not accepted
    • A charge for the print version of a journal is permitted

The journal website

  • The journal must have its own dedicated URL and homepage that is accessible from any location
  • The website must be clear and easy to navigate
  • The journal  should adhere to the guidelines described in the Principles of Transparency and Best Practice in Scholarly Publishing
  • Each article must be available as an individual, full-text article
    • one unique URL per article
    • HTML or PDF, as a minimum

The following information must be available online, and easily accessible from the journal homepage: 

  • Open access policy
  • Aims and scope
  • Editorial board (including institutional affiliations of all members)
  • Instructions for authors
  • Editorial process (peer review)
  • Licensing terms
  • Copyright terms
  • Author charges
    • If a journal doesn’t have any charges then this must be stated
    • Must include all fees that may be charged to the author, from submission to publication, including:
      • submission fees
      • editorial processing charges
      • article processing charges (APCs)
      • page charges
      • colour charges
  • Contact details
    • The contact details must include a real name and the journal’s dedicated email address
    • The country in the application and on the journal website must be the country where the publisher is registered and carries out its business activities

ISSN

  • A journal must have at least one ISSN (International Standard Serial Number) which is registered and confirmed at issn.org.
  • The ISSN(s) must be displayed on the website.
  • The name of the journal in the application and on the website must match what is shown at issn.org.

Editorial process

  • A journal must have an editor and an editorial board. 
    • The editorial board must be listed on the website.
    • The name and affiliation of all editors and board members must be included.
    • If the journal is run by a student body, it must have an advisory board of which at least two members have a PhD or equivalent.
  • All articles must pass through a quality control system (peer review) before publication.
    • The type and details of the peer review process must be stated clearly on the website.

Licensing

  • The licensing terms for use and re-use of the published content must be clearly stated on the website.
  • DOAJ recommends the use of Creative Commons licenses for this purpose. 
  • If Creative Commons licensing is not used, similar terms and conditions should be applied.
    • Extra care must be taken to state these terms clearly. 

Copyright

  • The copyright terms applied to the published content must be clearly stated and separate from the copyright terms applied to the website.
  • Copyright terms must not contradict the licensing terms or the terms of the open access policy.
    • “All rights reserved” is never appropriate for open access content.

Footnote

Applications that contain information that is inaccurate or wrong, or that have answers missing, are automatically rejected.

Journals that are rejected must wait 6 months from the date of rejection before applying again unless otherwise advised by DOAJ.

El DOAJ, independencia y la importancia de la imparcialidad

El DOAJ recibe regularmente preguntas y, a veces, quejas de bibliotecas, consorcios de bibliotecas y otras instituciones académicas sobre el papel que desempeñan en el DOAJ las editoriales académicas tradicionales. Un error común es que el DOAJ es propiedad de estas organizaciones, o está totalmente subvencionado por ellas, y que el DOAJ sólo beneficia a estas organizaciones. Si usted mirara la página de inicio del DOAJ hace dos años, podríamos entender esta suposición: casi todos nuestros patrocinadores eran editoriales y estaban en nuestra página de inicio. Parecía que el DOAJ era propiedad de estas editoriales.

(Evitar esa idea errónea es también la razón por la cual el DOAJ es muy cuidadoso sobre con quién se asocia). Las organizaciones con las que nos asociamos deben compartir los mismos valores que el DOAJ, tener la misma visión y al menos tener la intención de proporcionar servicios a la comunidad. El DOAJ se enorgullece de asociarse con organizaciones como Redalyc, SciELO, ISSN y COPE.

La suposición de que el DOAJ es propiedad de las editoriales o está totalmente subvencionado por ellas es, por supuesto, incorrecta. Las editoriales desempeñan un importante papel financiero en el apoyo de los servicios que el DOAJ proporciona a todas las partes interesadas. Algunas editoriales nos donan un patrocinio anual; algunas de ellas son miembros de DOAJ como editorial. Estas contribuciones permiten al DOAJ proporcionar servicios continuos, y mejoras a estos servicios. En 2017, las contribuciones de las editoriales representaban el 40% de los ingresos, mientras que las contribuciones de las instituciones del sector público representaban el resto (60%). En 2018, los ingresos de las instituciones del sector público representarán el 70%. Todas las contribuciones al DOAJ son voluntarias; todos los servicios proporcionados por el DOAJ, incluyendo la evaluación de revistas, son gratuitos.

El DOAJ es útil para bibliotecarios, para editores, para investigadores, para estudiantes, para propietarios de revistas, para todos. Más del 50% de nuestro consejo asesor proviene de la comunidad de bibliotecas y consorcios. El DOAJ es global y no está atado a fronteras geográficas. Somos una organización virtual que emplea a personas de todo el mundo y que cuenta con nuestros propios embajadores que fomentan las mejores prácticas en sus territorios de origen. El DOAJ es 100% independiente. El DOAJ es 100% imparcial. La compañía holding del DOAJ, IS4OA C.I.C., está registrada de una manera que hace imposible que el DOAJ sea comprado, adquirido o vendido.

La imparcialidad juega un papel importante en el progreso que el DOAJ ha hecho en los últimos 5 años y el equipo del DOAJ trabaja duro para asegurar que la imparcialidad sea lo más importante en todo lo que hacemos. Esta es una de las razones por las que el DOAJ se adhiere y alienta a otros a adherirse a la transparencia y las buenas prácticas; mejores prácticas que se desarrollan, adoptan y reconocen a nivel internacional. También reconocemos que la aplicación de estas normas y el funcionamiento dentro de ellas puede ser un reto, por lo que tenemos que mantener cierta flexibilidad. Un buen ejemplo sería la concesión de licencias.

licensing

Ejemplo de información sobre licencias de una revista capturada en DOAJ.

A veces nos preguntan: ¿por qué el DOAJ acepta las licencias más restrictivas cuando la definción BOAI (definición a la que el DOAJ se adhiere como uno de sus principios) es muy clara sobre lo que significa “abierto”?

Cuando el DOAJ elaboró su formulario de solicitud ampliado en 2013, vimos muy claro que el DOAJ tenía que aceptar las 6 variaciones de las licencias CCBY, con sus distintos grados de apertura para asegurarnos que el mayor número posible de revistas pudieran solicitar el ingreso en el DOAJ. Al usuario típico del DOAJ se le deben presentar opciones y se le debe permitir tomar una decisión informada basada en la información que mostramos sobre las políticas de licencias y derechos de autor de una revista.

Sin embargo, el DOAJ considera el uso de las licencias CC, en particular el uso de las licencias más abiertas, como una de las mejores prácticas y las promueve como uno de los criterios para el Sello DOAJ.

En 2017 el DOAJ fue el noveno en una lista mundial de plataformas que apoyan el uso de licencias Creative Commons. Creemos que esto es el resultado directo de nuestra preferencia por las licencias CC y la influencia del Sello DOAJ.

Para que una iniciativa como el DOAJ funcione, debe seguir siendo lo más relevante posible en todo el mundo. Debe seguir siendo imparcial e independiente.

 

DOAJ, Independence and the Importance of Impartiality

DOAJ receives regularly questions and, sometimes, complaints from libraries, library consortia and other academic institutions about the role which publishers—by “publishers” I mean the traditional publishing organisations in academic publishing—play in DOAJ. A common misconception is that DOAJ is owned by, or wholly subsidised by these organisations and that DOAJ is only of benefit to these organisations. If you looked at the DOAJ homepage two years ago, you’d be forgiven for making that assumption: nearly all of our sponsors were publishing organisations and they were all on our homepage. It looked like DOAJ was owned by publishers.

(Avoiding that misconception is also why DOAJ is very careful about who it goes into partnership with. The organisations we partner with must share the same values as DOAJ, have the same vision and at least be intent on providing services to the community. DOAJ is proud to call organisations like Redalyc, SciELO, ISSN and COPE partners.)

The assumption that DOAJ is owned by, or wholly subsidised by publishers is of course incorrect. Publishers play an important financial role in supporting the services which DOAJ provides to all stakeholders. Some publishers donate an annual sponsorship to us; some of them are publisher members. These contributions enable DOAJ to provide continuous services, and improvements to these services, for everyone but any direct influence on DOAJ stops there. In 2017 contributions from publishers accounted for 40% of the income, whereas contributions from public sector institutions accounted for the rest (60%). In 2018 income from public sector institutions will account for 70%. All contributions to DOAJ are made voluntarily; all services provided by DOAJ, including the evaluation of journals, are free.

DOAJ is for librarians, for publishers, for researchers, for students, for journal owners, for everyone. More than 50% of our advisory board is from the library and consortia community. DOAJ is global and isn’t tied down to geographic borders. We are a virtual organisation, employing people from all over the world and with our own Ambassadors encouraging best practice in their home territories. DOAJ is 100% independent. DOAJ is 100% impartial. DOAJ’s holding company, IS4OA C.I.C., is registered in a way that makes it impossible for DOAJ to be purchased, acquired or sold.

Impartiality plays a huge role in the progress that DOAJ has made over the last 5 years and the DOAJ Team works hard to ensure that impartiality is foremost in everything we do. This is one of the reasons that DOAJ adheres to, and encourages other to adhere to, transparency, best practice and standards; best practices and standards which are internationally grown, adopted and recognised. We also recognise that applying those standards and operating within them can be challenging so we have to retain a certain amount of flexibility. A good example here would be licensing.

licensing

Example of the licensing information captured by DOAJ about a journal’s policies.

People often ask: why does DOAJ accept some of the more closed licenses when the BOAI definition [that DOAJ follows as a principle] is clear about what open means? When DOAJ put together its extended application form in 2013, it was clear that DOAJ needed to allow 6 variations on the CC BY license, with varying degrees of openness, to ensure that as many titles as possible could apply to be indexed. The typical DOAJ user should be presented with options and they should be allowed to make an informed choice based on the information we display about a journal’s licensing and copyright policies. However, DOAJ considers the use of CC licenses, particularly use of the most open licenses, as Best Practice and we promote that as one of the criteria for the DOAJ Seal.

In 2017 DOAJ was 9th in a worldwide list of platforms supporting the use of Creative Commons licenses. We believe this to be a direct result of our  preference for CC licenses and the influence of the DOAJ Seal.

For an initiative like DOAJ to work, it must remain as relevant as possible around the world. It must remain impartial and it must remain independent.

Copyright and Licensing – Part 4

This is the fourth post in a series, by our Editor-in-Chief Tom Olijhoek, which focusses on the details of copyright and licensing, how they are applied to works and which options and best practices DOAJ recommends. You can read all 4 installments in this series here. We also have a help page dedicated to Copyright and Licensing.

___________________________________________

In open access publishing, copyright and licensing issues are often not well understood by many and are not clearly described on journal websites. Some publishers we speak to think that they have to pay a fee to establish Creative Commons licensing on their site. Just as DOAJ is a free service, Creative Commons licenses from CreativeCommons.org are also free.

At DOAJ we require open access publishers to use licenses for publications, and we recommend Creative Commons licenses as the best practice because these are free licenses tailor-made to meet the needs of open access. Publishers are also allowed to describe their own licenses as long as these comply and match Creative Commons licensing terms.

We recommend that publishers leave the copyright with the authors. Although this is not a requirement for inclusion in DOAJ nor for using Creative commons licenses, we think that authors should retain their rights, including their copyright for their work. Copyright is part of the larger framework of intellectual property rights that encompasses publishing rights, reproduction in the form of video or audio, patents trademark, research data and more.

All Rights Reserved

A number of publishers use the term ALL RIGHTS RESERVED incorrectly in the context of open access publishing and often in direct opposition to the “open access” state of the content. The us of this term is always wrong in the setting of open access because some rights will always be shared depending on the open access license used.

Copyright Retained by the Author

If authors retain the copyright of their work and publish open access then they can claim copyright and full intellectual property rights with some rights reserved. Under these conditions publishers can then claim rights of first publication and this does not conflict with the copyright remaining with the authors.

For instance, when you publish using CC-BY-NC and retain your copyright, you also reserve the commercial rights exclusively for yourself, unless you sign an agreement with a publisher that transfers commercial rights (some rights reserved).

Copyright Retained by the Author but Author rights restrained

Sometimes publishers seem to think that open access licensing conditions apply only to readers and not to authors. This is wrong. Consider the following case:

 

The copyright is retained by the author but [publisher]
‘allows authors the use of the final published version of an article (publisher pdf) for self-archiving (author’s personal website) and/or archiving in an institutional repository (on a non-profit server) after an embargo period of 12 months after publication.The published source must be acknowledged and a link to the journal home page or article’s DOI must be set. The author MAY NOT self-archive the articles in public and/or commercial subject based repositories.’
According to the website of the publisher, for works published under a CC BY-NC-ND license:‘users can read, copy and distribute the work in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes, provided the authors and the journal/book are appropriately credited. Under this license, users are not allowed to remix, transform or build upon the published material.’

The policy on author archiving from this publisher is clearly in conflict both with the licensing conditions and with the copyright policy. Even without the embargo clause this policy is wrong, especially since authors who retain the copyright are not bound by the conditions of the license at all: they can do whatever they want with their work (unless they have transferred their commercial rights to the publisher which is not the case here.)

Copyright Transferred to the Publisher

If on the other hand the copyright is transferred to the publisher, the publisher can claim copyright but never ALL RIGHTS RESERVED since all the other (intellectual property) rights remain with the author.

Sometimes the publishers will put a copyright clause in the website, with the intention that this means they claim copyright for the layout and design of the site. This is OK as long as the copyright clause explains this. If site simply states ‘Copyright Society of Physical Sciences’, or something similar, this is not acceptable as it is unclear what the copyright statement applies to.

Copyright Transfer Agreement in conflict with Open Access

In some cases publisher use a copyright transfer agreement that conflicts with open access licensing.

For instance let us regard this case where a CC BY-NC license is used on a site:

‘‘ [you] hereby transfer your copyright to us (the publisher). In particular, this means that you grant us the exclusive right, for the full term of copyright and any renewals/extensions thereof, both to reproduce and distribute your article (including the abstract) ourselves throughout the world in printed, electronic or any other medium”

There is clearly a conflict here since all users under a Creative Commons License have the right to reproduce, distribute etc, so the right of the publishers cannot be exclusive or all rights reserved. The transfer agreement should be corrected by replacing ‘exclusive right’ with ‘non-exclusive right.

Commercial Rights Transferred to the Publisher

If only commercial rights are transferred to the publisher, the author retains (part of) the copyright in addition to  all other intellectual property rights. In this case the publisher cannot claim copyright or ‘all rights reserved.’

Example:

‘Authors sign an exclusive license agreement, where authors have copyright but license exclusive rights in their article to the publisher**.

**This includes the right for the publisher to make and authorize commercial use,…

In this particular case, the journal also had a copyright statement that stated that all rights were reserved in the publisher’s favour.

This post is by no means complete The different examples shown are just a number of often encountered cases where copyright and licensing conditions do not match. Other cases with less obvious inconsistencies undoubtedly exist. We invite the reader of this blog post to alert us to such cases.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Copyright and Licensing – Part 3

In 2016, we published 2 blog posts on copyright and licensing: Part1 and Part 2. In these posts we explained and illustrated that copyright and licensing are two different things linked by the fact that licenses can only be granted by copyright holders. Here is Part 3, a guest post by our Editor-in-Chief, Tom Olijhoek.

————————-

In this post I want to discuss the practice by some open access publishers of not using Creative Commons licenses but using their own constructions for publisher specific licenses. A reason for this may be, for example, that the government of the country of the publisher does not recognise the (American company derived) Creative Commons licensing.

DOAJ accepts journals that do not use CC licensing ONLY if the specifics of the publisher licenses match the conditions of Creative Commons licenses. That is to say that licenses need to be compliant with the BOAI conditions of Open Access and need to allow for immediate access to all materials, with implicit permission to download , share, distribute and use the material for lawful purposes.

To better explain what DOAJ will and will not accept, I want to highlight some real life examples.

Example 1:  Copyright transfer agreement in conflict with open access

Let’s have a look at a case where the publishers use a copyright transfer agreement conflicting with the conditions of the Creative Commons License applied to the same work.

Publisher [x] has a copyright transfer agreement (CTA) saying:

The Author(s) agree that all copies of the Work made under any of the above rights shall prominently include the following copyright notice: “© XXXX [year] X. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modifications of the content of this paper are prohibited.”

This is in clear conflict with the conditions of BOAI Open Access and also with the use of the CC BY-NC license used by the very same journal.

After discussions with the publisher, two passages in the CTA now read:

[x] shall make the final, published version of the article freely available on the [x] Publishing platform without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full text of the article, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the Author(s). This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access
Copyright Notice The Author(s) agree that all copies of the Work made under any of the above rights shall prominently include the following copyright notice© XXXX [year] [x] Users may use, reuse, and build upon the article, or use the article for text or data mining, so long as such uses are for non-commercial purposes and appropriate attribution is maintained. All other rights are reserved.

I also want elaborate on the point that publishers often demand a copyright transfer agreement with a range of arguments like:

[x] needs copyright for an article because, as publisher, [x] is in the best position to defend the article legally. In addition, transfer of copyright assures [x] that the work in question is entirely the author’s own. Once again, the purpose of transfer of copyright is not to prevent the author from reuse of his or her own work, as long as this doesn’t involve republication in a competing journal or other competing resource.

DOAJ holds the policy that leaving the copyright with the author is best practice. The publisher will only need publishing rights. For this reason journals of publishers who leave the copyright with the author are eligible for the DOAJ Seal.

Example 2: Copyright statement in conflict with open access:

© Copyrights of all the papers published in Journal of XXX are with its publisher, [x] [Country]. Users have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles in the journal, and that users can use and reuse material in the journal as long as attribution is given when appropriate or necessary. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Example 3: License in conflict with open access:

You may read, download, print, copy, search, link to the full text, or use them for any lawful purpose not otherwise prohibited here. You may not modify, create derivative works from, participate in the transfer or sale of, post on the World Wide Web, or in any way exploit the Site or any portion thereof for any public or commercial use without the express written permission of [x]

Example 4: License  in conflict with open access:

Reproduction, posting, transmission or other distribution or use of the article or any material therein, requires credit to the article author as copyright holder. Permission does not need to be obtained for downloading, printing, or linking to [Repository] content. Individuals have the right to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles in the Journal XXX and to use them for any other lawful purpose…

/// same document:
Libraries interested in printing a paper from Journal of XXX for their permanent collection should contact the journal editors responsible for posting the paper. The requesting library can then gain copyright clearance from the paper’s author(s). People seeking an exception, or who have questions about use, should contact the editors.

It may be evident from the statements above that the use of non-Creative Commons licenses and the use of copyright transfer agreements make the evaluation of open access  journals on acceptable copyright and licensing conditions difficult and time consuming. At the same time the different conditions created by publishers in these cases make it very confusing for authors and users to know their rights.  I realise that the issue of copyright and licensing ranks among one of the most difficult issues of open access publishing. Therefore I strongly recommend that publishers make use of the excellent Creative Commons licensing schemes and also leave copyright for published works with the authors. Again, these conditions are the key requirements for obtaining the DOAJ Seal of Excellence in open access publishing.

I sincerely hope that the number of DOAJ Seal journals in DOAJ will continue to rise!

Tom Olijhoek
Editor-in-Chief

(Copyright and licensing information specific to completing an application is also available.)

CHALLENGES OF THE LATIN AMERICAN OPEN ACCESS PUBLISHING MODEL

This is a guest post by Ivonne Lujano, DOAJ Ambassador, Latin America

ivonne

 

A current search in the DOAJ database reveals that there are 916 journals from Latin America and the Caribbean that have been accepted after the implementation of stricter DOAJ criteria in March 2014. This represents approximately 16% of the journals that have gone through an evaluation process led by the DOAJ team. As it is stated in DOAJ policy, the criteria implemented emphasize the transparency of information presented by the journals to their users, which aims to improve quality and visibility of the scientific output published in peer reviewed journals.

Latin America has an extensive  background in open access journals publishing and, consequently, journals assessment policies are well developed. Different criteria for reviewing the quality of journals have been developed in the region by mainly two types of agencies: 1) national systems of evaluation (in Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, etc.), with different levels of complexity and implementation according to the purposes of assessment, for instance, to allocate funds to the journals; and 2) regional systems of scientific information, i.e. Latindex, SciELO and Redalyc, which have similar indexing criteria (de Oliveira Amorim et al., 2015). Because of these evaluation systems there has been a significant growth of quality in Latin American journals according to international publishing standards in the last few years.

However, there are still some challenges to push forward the Latin American OA model, specially in two key aspects that are related to the level of openness: transparency on charges for authors and copyright & permission policies.

The Latin American non APC model

One of the main characteristics of the predominant journals publishing model in Latin America is that articles are published without costs to authors. This non APC model is possible because of the public funds that journals receive from national or institutional budgets, resources to be managed by, mostly, scholarly publishers such as university presses. Different stakeholders in the region support the idea of staying as a non-commercial OA model despite some trends of charging different fees to authors and their institutions. Vessuri, Guédon & Cetto (2014) have raised awareness that in a context of competition, commercial publishers are seeing the potential of Latin American journals as an opportunity to make a profit from offering publishing services, which eventually could shift the non-commercial model. According to DOAJ data, only 8% of journals included from Latin America have APCs, which range from $4 up to $1400 US. These journals are edited in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Peru, and 62.6% of them are managed by associations and societies. Most journals edited by universities and research centres have no charges; however, there are some journals funded by public federal and state-level universities that charge minimal amounts to authors in order to cover some services, for instance, the cost of the DOI assigned for the article published. In any case, DOAJ strongly encourages editors to give transparent information on this topic because is still common to see journals with a lack of details on the charges levied.

Copyright and permissions in Latin American journals

Despite the success of the open access publishing model in Latin America, there are still some important challenges in this region in terms of permissions to use, reuse, adapt and remix the contents. Based on DOAJ data, 89% of indexed Latin American journals have adopted Creative Commons licenses to distribute their articles. Nevertheless, only half of these journals (49.1%) use the CC-BY license, which allows others to use the materials for any lawful purpose with the only requirement being the correct attribution of authorship and source of publication. One third of the Brazilian journals indexed in DOAJ use this license; only 14% of Colombian journals have the same policy. One of the major concerns among editors in Latin America is still commercial use: 45.8% of journals allow readers to use the articles only for non-commercial purposes. The use of the CC-BY-NC license represents 23.9% of Latin American journals listed in DOAJ, followed by 14.9% of journals using the CC-BY-NC-ND license and 6.9% that have adopted the CC-BY-NC-SA license.

The use of the most open license (CC-BY) is still controversial in Latin America because publishers mistrust the terms of this license, which represents a big challenge for open access advocacy. The Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) recommends this license as it assures a wider reuse and distribution of content, e.g. the use in education practices. DOAJ accepts journals that use any CC license, but also encourages the adoption of the more unrestricted licenses. In order to achieve the DOAJ Seal for best practice in open access publishing, a journal cannot apply the most restrictive CC licenses for sharing scientific articles, i.e. CC BY-ND or CC BY-NC-ND.   

Conclusions

The Latin American open access publishing model is going through a period full challenges, especially when some governments have serious budgetary difficulties in Science & Technology and Higher Education systems.

In spite of that, there are many advantages of this model. One of them is the level of cohesion of editors that have worked in collaboration for the improvement of quality. Author charges and copyright policies are still important concerns in Latin America, and DOAJ is committed to collaborate with publishers of this region in order to improve best practice, as well as openness for readers and for authors.

References

De Oliveira Amorim et al. (2015) Evaluation Systems of Scientific Journals in Latin America, in: Alperin, J. and Fischman, G. (eds.) Made in Latin America : open access, scholarly journals, and regional innovations Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires: CLACSO.

Vessuri, H., Guédon, J.C., Cetto, A.M. (2014) Excellence or quality? Impact of the current competition regime on science and scientific publishing in Latin America and its implications for development, Current Sociology, Vol. 62(5) 647 –665, DOI: 10.1177/0011392113512839

 

OPEN ACCESS JOURNALS IN SPAIN

This is a guest post by Miguel Navas, member of AccesoAbierto research group and Librarian at the Catalan Government in Barcelona, Spain.

According to Ulrich’s data 1, Spain is in tenth position in scholarly journal production, with  2.5% of the titles worldwide. The United States alone accounts for 21%, and nearly one third of journals are published by countries with fewer contributions than Spain.

However, when talking about Open Access journals, the output is quite different: according to both Ulrich’s and DOAJ2, Spain is currently country number four in the world with 5.5%,  after Brazil, UK and USA. Yet, what is the level of adoption of OA in Spanish journals?

According to Ulrich’s, 34% of active scholarly journals published in Spain are OA, but this proportion is higher when consulting Dulcinea3, the most comprehensive, up-to-date and accurate source for Spanish journals. A current search shows that 76% of the journals are freely available online, 10.2% operate under an embargo, and only 1.5% are hybrid. The remaining 12.3% of  journals are restricted to subscribers.

Nevertheless, free access does not necessarily imply Open Access. Thus, that 76% should be correlated with re-use rights in order to get the exact amount of OA journals.

Figure4

dulcinea1

A recent study5 has revealed that most of the Spanish journals indexed in Web of Science or Scopus are Open Access (56.9%). The extent of OA adoption varied by subject area; it represented 68% of the Social Sciences and Humanities titles, and 55% of Science, Technology and Medicine journals. It also depended on the publisher type; OA models were adopted by 81% of the journals published by universities and research centers, 71% of the titles published by associations and societies, and only 30% of journals belonging to commercial publishers. APC-funded OA journals, both full OA and hybrid, were very few.

Open Access in Spain is driven by the online presses of academic institutions, based mostly in OJS platforms at both individual and collective level. The Spanish Center for Advanced Studies (CSIC), Complutense University of Madrid, University of Barcelona and Catalan Open Access Journals (RACO) are good examples of that.

There are 507 Spanish journals indexed in DOAJ6, while the current total number of Spanish free-access journals is 1,3547 . This fact suggests that only about one third (37.4%) of the free-access Spanish journals appear in DOAJ as OA titles. Opposedly,  196 of the 253 Spanish OA journals indexed either in Wos or Scopus are included in DOAJ as well, showing a much higher rate for this specific group (77.5%).  Thus, there is a lot of work to do in order to index Spanish OA journals in DOAJ, especially those not being covered in WoS or Scopus.

Continue reading →

Policy updates: open access statement and user registration

Open Access Statement

Until recently, DOAJ has insisted that journals state very clearly on their web site a full and detailed open access statement, preferably one that follows closely the Budapest Open Access Initiative definition.

From 8th September, DOAJ will accept a short open access statement—even as short as ‘This journal is open access.’—but ONLY in combination with a Creative Commons licensing statement, or equivalent licensing statement, on the same page and, preferably, in the same paragraph. As always, this statement must be on the journal web site and not held on a different site. If the licensing statement is not on the same page as the open access statement then the extended open access statement complying with BOAI definition will be required.

User Registration

From August 2016, DOAJ no longer accepts journals that require users to register to view the full text. This change was put into effect immediately. As DOAJ reviews journals that are already in DOAJ, as part of their regular update work, they will remove those journals that require registration and notify the publishers.

If you have questions, send email to feedback@doaj.org

New article on DOAJ available at ScienceOpen

We have just published an article in the open access journal ScienceOpen Research, giving an overview of the history and current status of the DOAJ. Please read and share the article! We would welcome your participation in the post-publication peer review of this article and/or any comments.

Criteria for open access and publishing
Authors: Tom Olijhoek, Dominic Mitchell and Lars Bjornshauge
DOI: 10.14293/S2199-1006.1.SOR-EDU.AMHUHV.v1

After a brief historical overview, DOAJ policies regarding open access, intellectual property rights and questionable publishers are explained in detail. The larger part of the article is a much requested explanation on how DOAJ uses its new set of criteria for the evaluation of open access journals and the rationale behind choosing the seven extra criteria that qualify for the DOAJ Seal. A final section is devoted to the extended possibilities that DOAJ offers to scholars and publishers for searching the database and for uploading metadata.

Copyright and Licensing – Part 2

Two weeks ago, I published Part 1 in our copyright and licensing series. Here is Part 2, a guest post by our Editor-in-Chief, Tom Olijhoek.

[Both of these posts are now available in Croatian, thanks to the fantastic translation efforts of Lovorka Caja, librarian at Rudjer Boskovic Institute and Jadranka Stojanovski, Assistant Professor at University of Zadar.]

The first part of the post covers 9 different scenarios that have different copyright and licensing conditions. Each scenario illustrates the most common set of conditions that we see for an author’s published work. Each scenario is followed by the two questions from the Copyright and Permissions section of the DOAJ Application form, illustrating how those questions should be answered: does the author hold the copyright without restriction; does the author retain publishing rights without restriction? There is a level of complexity in trying to illustrate this issue because there are 3 main variables that come into play:

  • has the author transferred copyright?
  • has a Creative Commons license being applied to the work and if so, which type?
  • has a separate publishing agreement been signed with the publisher?

The second part is a list of examples from publishers who have open access programs. We will update this list with more examples as we find them, particularly those that have unique characteristics.

The last part is for those readers who want to get into more detail on this subject and is a list of recommended reading on this topic. Let us know if you have more!

Tom wrote this piece with the intention that it be used as a point of reference for open access copyright issues.  We hope that it will clear the way for authors trying to navigate different publishers copyright and licensing conditions; and for publishers who want to make sure that they publish the most open and accessible content.

As always, we welcome your feedback!

A) Applying a License

A person who wants to publish his / her work can choose to do so under the conditions of a public license. The most common of these is a Creative Commons license and this license is nothing more than a permission from the “rights-holder”, or licensor, to another person to use the work in ways described by the license. (The rights-holder is the entity that may grant rights to others.) It is important to understand that the licensor is not subject to the conditions of the license, except when the given license is exclusive. In this case, the licensee receives an exclusive right to use the work in the ways described in the terms of the license and the licensor can no longer use the work, as detailed in the terms of the license. (There can be other situations where the rights-holder or licensor is subjected to the conditions in the license.)

B) Applying Copyright

When applying copyright, there are really only two states: where the author retains copyright—the author remains the rights-holder—and where the author transfers copyright to a publisher and the publisher becomes the rights-holder.

The Author Retains Copyright…
…and Publishes Using a CC BY License

If the author retains copyright and wants to publish the work with a CC BY license, everyone is granted the right to use the work as described by the CC BY license. In addition the author must grant the publisher the right to publish the work. This can be a contract for exclusive or non-exclusive publishing rights. Exclusive publishing rights do not match the conditions of a CC BY license so in principle it should not be possible for this combination to exist. However, in reality this combination does exist and the author loses the publishing rights to his / her work. Even though there is a conflict with the conditions of the CC license, the contract is legally valid. So, with a CC BY license and exclusive publishing rights transferred to the publisher:

Does the author(s) hold the copyright without restrictions? No
Does the author(s) retain publishing rights without restrictions? No

If the author has signed a contract with the publisher about non-exclusive publishing rights, the author keeps the publishing rights. So with a CC BY license and non-exclusive publishing rights granted to the publisher:

Does the author(s) hold the copyright without restrictions? Yes
Does the author(s) retain publishing rights without restrictions? Yes
…and Publishes Using Another CC License

If the author retains copyright and the work is published with a more restrictive license—for example a CC BY-NC license—AND an exclusive publishing contract has been signed with a single publisher, both copyright and publishing rights are restricted…

Does the author(s) hold the copyright without restrictions? No
Does the author(s) retain publishing rights without restrictions? No

… but in cases where the author has a non-exclusive publishing contract with a publisher and the work is published with a more restrictive license, the author retains all the rights to publish the work elsewhere, including commercially, because she / he is not subject to the conditions of her / his own license, regardless of the type of CC license chosen.

Does the author(s) hold the copyright without restrictions? Yes
Does the author(s) retain publishing rights without restrictions? Yes
…but the Publisher retains Commercial Rights

If the author retains copyright but has signed an agreement with the publisher to transfer all commercial rights and / or grant the publisher exclusive publishing rights of the work, then the author has restricted copyright and has restricted publishing rights.

Does the author(s) hold the copyright without restrictions? No
Does the author(s) retain publishing rights without restrictions? No
The Author Transfers Copyright…
…To the Publisher Who Publishes the Work Under a CC BY License

If the author transfers copyright to a publisher, the publisher may decide to publish the work using a CC BY license. In this case, the author is bound by the conditions of the CC BY license since s/he is no longer the rights-holder. By transferring copyright, publishing rights are also transferred, …

Does the author(s) hold the copyright without restrictions? No
Does the author(s) retain publishing rights without restrictions? No

*this blog post was updated on 20th August 2019 to remove a margin case illustrating a No/Yes combination to these two questions.

…To the Publisher Who Publishes the Work Under Another CC License

If the author transfers copyright to a publisher and the publisher publishes the work using another CC license, for example a CC BY-NC license, then the author can no longer use the work commercially because s/he is subject to the conditions of the license granted by the copyright owner. The copyright owner is the rights-holder, the publisher. The author has the right to publish the work elsewhere but only non-commercially.

Does the author(s) hold the copyright without restrictions? No
Does the author(s) retain publishing rights without restrictions? No

In the case of an exclusive publishing agreement the author has no right to publish the work elsewhere, either commercially or non-commercially.

Does the author(s) hold the copyright without restrictions? No
Does the author(s) retain publishing rights without restrictions? No

 

C) Examples of copyright statement

The copyright statements from the following publishers were taken from their web sites and are correct at the time of writing. Where NO has been recorded against ‘unrestricted copyright’, these are cases where authors supposedly retain copyright but the publishers retain the rights to all commercial uses of the work and / or exclusive publishing rights.

BioMed Central | Copernicus | Dove Press | Elsevier | Hindawi | Institute Of Slavic Studies Of The Polish Academy Of Sciences | Nature | PAGEPress Publications | PLoS | SAGE

SCORE Author copyright unrestricted / Author publishing rights unrestricted

BioMed Central
SCORE Yes / Yes

Authors publishing with BioMed Central retain the copyright to their work, licensing it under the Creative Commons Attribution License which allows articles to be re-used and re-distributed without restriction, as long as the original work is correctly cited. BioMed Central is owned by Springer Science+Business Media, and also hosts the SpringerOpen platform.

Copernicus Publications
SCORE Yes / Yes
  • Copyright on any article is retained by the author(s). Regarding copyright transfers please see below.
  • Authors grant Copernicus Publications a license to publish the article and identify itself as the original publisher.
  • Authors grant Copernicus Publications commercial rights to produce hardcopy volumes of the journal for sale to libraries and individuals.
  • Authors grant any third party the right to use the article freely as long as its original authors and citation details are identified.
  • The article and any associated published material is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
Dove Press
SCORE No / No

Open Access is a publication model where neither readers nor a reader’s institution are charged for access to articles or other resources. Users are free to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles for any non-commercial purpose. Authors who publish with Dove Medical Press (DMP) retain the copyright and moral rights in their work.

The copyright is retained by the author subject to the grant of the exclusive license to DMP. DMP publish the author’s published material under a Creative Commons attribution-noncommerical license:http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/. Users of the author’s published article are free to use, distribute, reproduce, and create adapted works using the published paper, but only where the use is for non-commercial purposes and the author and Dove are properly attributed. Dove are entitled to manage permissions for commercial use of the author’s published paper.

Elsevier Publishing
SCORE No /No

User Rights
All articles published open access will be immediately and permanently free for everyone to read, download, copy and distribute. Permitted reuse is defined by your choice of one of the following user licenses:

Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY): lets others distribute and copy the article, to create extracts, abstracts, and other revised versions, adaptations or derivative works of or from an article (such as a translation), to include in a collective work (such as an anthology), to text or data mine the article, even for commercial purposes, as long as they credit the author(s), do not represent the author as endorsing their adaptation of the article, and do not modify the article in such a way as to damage the author’s honor or reputation.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND): for non-commercial purposes, lets others distribute and copy the article, and to include in a collective work (such as an anthology), as long as they credit the author(s) and provided they do not alter or modify the article.

Author Rights
For open access publishing this journal uses an exclusive licensing agreement. Authors will retain copyright alongside scholarly usage rights and Elsevier will be granted publishing and distribution rights.

Rights granted to Elsevier
For both subscription and open access articles, published in proprietary title, Elsevier is granted the following rights:

  • The exclusive right to publish and distribute an article, and to grant rights to others, including for commercial purposes.
  • For open access articles, Elsevier will apply the relevant third party user license where Elsevier publishes the article on its online platforms.
  • The right to provide the article in all forms and media so the article can be used on the latest technology even after publication.
  • The authority to enforce the rights in the article, on behalf of an author, against third parties, for example in the case of plagiarism or copyright infringement.
Hindawi
SCORE Yes / Yes

Open Access authors retain the copyrights of their papers, and all open access articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is properly cited. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations.

Institute Of Slavic Studies Of The Polish Academy Of Sciences
SCORE Yes / Yes

The authors, through granting the Institute of the Slavic Studies, Polish Academy of Sciences (the publisher of the journal) the right to publish the work, accept the terms and conditions of the CC BY 3.0 PL license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/pl/); which allows the Institute to reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, create adaptations, and to commercially use the work, if stated by the author. The authors grant the Institute a non-exclusive license to publish the work in paper form; the number of copies shall not exceed 200. The Institute has the sole right to determine all the technical aspects of the publication, including the price and the form of distribution. Furthermore, the authors grant the Institute a non-exclusive license to use the work in the following way:

  1. sell and distribute the work in form other than selling copies, store it in electronic form, distribute parts of or all of the work for the purpose of the promotion of the Institute via computer networks and other digital media; record the work in any form, including digital media, and reproduce it in any form, including digital media;
  2. record the work in the memory of public computers located in the office of the Institute (or rooms used by the Institute);
  3. lend or lease copies of the work;
  4. make the work available, and send it through multi-media networks, esp. the Internet and Intranet, on-line, on demand, including making the work publicly available, in order that anyone can obtain access to the work or its parts wherever and whenever it is convenient for them.
Nature Publishing Group
SCORE No / No

NPG author license policy
This publishers’ policy applies to all journals published by the Nature Publishing Group (NPG), including the Nature journals. Nature Publishing Group’s policies are compatible with all major funders open access and self-archiving mandates. NPG does not require authors of original (primary) research papers to assign copyright of their published contributions. Authors grant NPG an exclusive license to publish, in return for which they can reuse their papers in their future printed work without first requiring permission from the publisher of the journal. For commissioned articles (for example, Reviews, News and Views), copyright is retained by NPG.

Open access articles in NPG journals are licensed under Creative Commons licenses. These provide an industry-standard framework to support easy re-use of open access material. Under Creative Commons, authors retain copyright of their work. All authors are required to complete a license to publish form before publication – this form can be downloaded from the journal’s instructions to authors.

e.g. from American College of Gastroenterology:

LICENSE TO PUBLISH TERMS 1. In consideration of the Society evaluating the Contribution for publication (and publishing the Contribution if the Society so decides) the Author(s) grant to the Society for the full term of copyright and any extensions thereto, subject to clause 2 below, the right and irrevocable license: (a) to edit, adapt, publish, reproduce, distribute, display and store the Contribution in all forms, formats and media whether now known or hereafter developed (including without limitation in print, digital and electronic form) throughout the world; (b) to translate the Contribution into other languages, create adaptations, summaries or extracts of the Contribution or other derivative works based on the Contribution and exercise all of the rights set forth in (a) above in such translations, adaptations, summaries, extracts and derivative works; (c) to license others to do any or all of the above, including but not limited to the right to grant readers the right to use the Contribution under the Creative Commons license selected above; and (d) to re-license article metadata without restriction (including but not limited to author name, title, abstract, citation, references, keywords and any additional information, as determined by the Society). 2. Ownership of the copyright in the Contribution remains with the Author(s). However, the Author(s)’ re-use rights in the Contribution are subject to the rights and restrictions set forth below in this Section, and in clause 3 and 4(a). After the Author(s) have submitted the Contribution to the Society hereunder, the Author(s)’ rights to re-use the Contribution shall be the same as those set forth in the Creative Commons license selected above, with the following additional re-use rights: (a) to reproduce the Contribution in whole or in part in any printed volume (book or thesis) of which they are the Author(s); and (b) to reuse figures or tables created by the Author(s) and contained in the Contribution in oral presentations and other works created by them.

PAGEPress Publications
SCORE Yes / Yes

PAGEPress has chosen to apply the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 3.0 License (CC BY-NC 3.0) to all manuscripts to be published.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms: 1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal. 2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. 3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.

PLoS
SCORE Yes / Yes

PLOS applies the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license to works we publish (read the human-readable summary or the full license legal code). Under this license, authors retain ownership of the copyright for their content, but allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute and/or copy the content as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers. Appropriate attribution can be provided by simply citing the original article (e.g., Huntingtin Interacting Proteins Are Genetic Modifiers of Neurodegeneration. Kaltenbach LS et al. PLOS Genetics. 2007. 3(5) doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.0030082). For any reuse or redistribution of a work, users must also make clear the license terms under which the work was published. This broad license was developed to facilitate free access to, and unrestricted reuse of, original works of all types. Applying this standard license to your own work will ensure that it is freely and openly available in perpetuity.

SAGE Publications
SCORE No / No

SAGE requires the author as the rights holder to sign a Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement for all articles we publish. SAGE’s Journal Contributor’s Publishing Agreement is a license agreement under which the author retains copyright in the work but grants SAGE the sole and exclusive right and license to publish for the full legal term of copyright. Exceptions may exist where assignment of copyright is required or preferred by a proprietor other than SAGE. In this case, copyright in the work will be transferred from the author to the society.

What are my rights as author?
A – The following SAGE’s Global Journal Author Reuse Policy, effective as of March 20, 2013:

  • You retain copyright in your work.
  • You may do whatever you wish with the version of the article you submitted to the journal (version 1).
  • Once the article has been accepted for publication, you may post the accepted version (version 2) of the article on your own personal website, your department’s website or the repository of your institution without any restrictions.
  • You may not post the accepted version (version 2) of the article in any repository other than those listed above (ie you may not deposit in the repository of another institution or a subject repository) until 12 months after publication of the article in the journal.
  • You may use the published article (version 3) for your own teaching needs or to supply on an individual basis to research colleagues, provided that such supply is not for commercial purposes.
  • You may use the article (version 3) in a book you write or edit any time after publication in the journal.
  • You may not post the published article (version 3) on a website or in a repository without permission from SAGE.
  • When posting or re-using the article please provide a link to the appropriate DOI for the published version of the article on SAGE Journals (http://online.sagepub.com)

All commercial or any other re-use of the published article should be referred to SAGE. More information can be found at: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav.

Recommended reading

  1. Introducing Copyright, Julien Hofman and Commonwealth of Learning, 2009. License CC-BY-NC-ND. ISBN 978-1-894975-32-2.
  2. Owning and Using Scholarship: An IP Handbook for Teachers and Researchers. 2014. Copyright 2014 by Kevin L. Smith, JD. Fair use allowed. ISBN 978-0-8389-8747-6
  3. Open_Content: A_Practical_Guide_to_Using_Creative_Commons_Licenses. 2014. Dr. Till Kreutzer. License: CC-BY. ISBN: 978-3-940785-57-2
  4. Capitalism 3.o. A guide to reclaiming the commons. Copyright © 2006 by Peter Barnes. Electronic version is licensed under the CC-BY-NC-ND 2.5 License (some restrictions apply). ISBN-13: 978-1-57675-361-3
  5. Copyright law for librarians and educators : creative strategies and practical solutions. Kenneth D Crews. 2006. Copyright © 2006 by Kenneth D. Crews. Fair use allowed. ISBN-13: 978-0838909065
  6. Copyright for A level media studies. http://copyrightuser.org/schools/a-level-media-studies/
  7. Digital archive of primary sources on copyright from the invention of the printing press (c. 1450) to the Berne Convention (1886) and beyond. Relaunch March 27, 2015. http://www.copyrighthistory.org/cam/index.php
  8. Think like a commoner. David Bollier. Book 2015. Website: http://www.thinklikeacommoner.com/. License CC-BY-NC-SA. ISBN 978-1-55092-559-3
  9. Access to knowledge in the age of intellectual property. Gaëlle Krikorian and Amy Kapczynski. 2010. Creative Commons BY-NC-ND. ISBN 978-1-890951-97-9
  10. Copyright at Common Law in 1774 . H. Tomás Gómez-Arostegui. CREATe Working Paper Series DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.12467. Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy (CREATe)
  11. The digital public domain, foundations for an open culture. Melanie Dulong de Rosnay and Juan Carlos De Martin. http://www.openbookpublishers.com/product/93. CC-BY 3.0. ISBN (Digital PDF) 978-1-906924-47-8
  12. So what about copyright, What Artists Need to Know About Copyright & Trademarks. David Bollier, Gigi Bradford, Laurie Racine and Gigi B. Sohn. Produced by Public Knowledge. License CC-BY-NC. ISBN: 1-4116-5379-3
  13. Opening Science, the Evolving Guide on How the Web is Changing Research, Collaboration and Scholarly Publishing. 2014. Edited by Sönke Bartling & Sascha Friesike. http://book.openingscience.org/. License CC-BY-NC ISBN 978-3-319-00026-8. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-00026-8
  14. Creative Commons, a user guide. Simone Aliprando. 2011. www.aliprandi.org/cc-user-guide. License CC-BY-SA 3.0. ISBN: 9788895994550