OAK Law Project

The Open Access to Knowledge Law Project

The Open Access to Knowledge Law (OAK Law) Project (the “OAK Project”) was funded by the Australian Government at the Queensland University of Technology with the aim of facilitating open access to a range of publicly funded materials. It ran from 2005 until the end of 2009.

More broadly, the OAK Project’s central aim was to facilitate seamless access to knowledge in order to improve the social, economic and cultural outcomes from public sector investments in Education and research. It focused on how Legal Rights (especially copyright) can be best managed to facilitate greater access to and dissemination of research and knowledge outcomes such as journal articles, conference papers and monographs. The OAK Law project worked closely with academic authors, publishers and university librarians on issues relating to intellectual property management, publishing contracts and open access repositories.

The OAK Law Project produced several reports, guides and publications that were circulated internationally and which continue to be relevant and useful to researchers, authors, librarians and publishers who are grappling with open access legal and policy issues. All publications were available under Creative Commons licences.

Background

Copyright law can pose a major obstacle to achieving a seamless model of open access. Extraordinary technical advances in our capacity to disseminate and share the results and outputs of publicly funded research have not always been matched by the required changes in legal and contractual arrangements.

Now a model has emerged to facilitate open access. This model aims to enable copyright owners to provide permission in advance so it can be relied on at the instant of downloading. At the same time, this permission would work to outline the conditions upon which the material may be used. The key issue for the future is to establish legal protocols or licences that simplify the accessing, downloading and further communication of publicly funded research.

This requires at least two steps. Firstly, it requires the development of generic nationally and internationally recognised protocols that may be employed/affixed by the copyright owner and that are easy for the user to understand, such as the Creative Commons licences originated at Stanford University (for which QUT is the lead agency in Australia). Secondly, it requires content that can be accessed. In order to achieve seamless download and communication of research in an open access model we need copyright owners (in some cases this may be the researchers and in others the publishers) who are willing or required as part of their publicly funded grant to allow open access to their output.

Not all copyright material will, or should, be available for open access; however, we believe that copyright material that has been generated by public funding has a democratic heritage and as such should be open access in some broad or limited way.

Providing seamless or open access to publicly funded research does not mean that copyright as a concept is rejected or made redundant. Open access can be obtained by copyright owners relinquishing their rights to the public (the legal process for this is a little unclear) but more commonly it will be achieved by the owners retaining copyright and merely providing conditions of use that facilitate open access. In fact, in most instances open access models rely on copyright to leverage open access downstream. For instance, you can write an article and provide access by posting it on your website and as an E-Print within the QUT repository, while still retaining copyright and simply conditioning further reproduction or communication in a manner that provides for continuing open access.

Our immediate challenge is to understand how these new approaches to providing access to copyright materials can be used within Australian research, Education and legal systems. We believe copyright can be used as a tool to build open access as well as allow commercial rewards. The key is to re-think how copyright might facilitate both objectives. Domestically and internationally such a re-think is now being demanded.

Developments

In July 2008, the Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project, together with the U.S. Library of Congress National Digital Information, Infrastructure and Preservation Program, the U.K. Joint Information Systems Committee and the SURFfoundation in The Netherlands, released their International Study on the Impact of Copyright Law on Digital Preservation at the WIPO International Workshop on Digital Preservation and Copyright in Geneva, Switzerland.

This study focused on the copyright and related laws of Australia, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States of America and the impact of those laws on digital preservation of copyrighted works. It also addressed proposals for legislative reform and efforts to develop non-legislative solutions to the challenges that copyright law presents for digital preservation.

In 2009, the OAK Law Project were involved in the conference “Copyright Future, Copyright Freedom”.

Guides produced by the OAK Law Project

  • A Guide to Developing Open Access Through Your Digital Repository

    This guide examines and explains the copyright issues involved in depositing and accessing material in digital repositories. The guide focuses on effective management and promotion of digital repositories and in doing so, examines the relationships between the parties involved in the deposit and access process. Licensing requirements and options are also considered in detail. Finally, the guide touches on more technical considerations, such as software and metadata.

  • Copyright Guide for Research Students: What you need to know about copyright before depositing your electronic thesis in an online repository

    This guide is designed to assist research students in managing copyright issues which they may encounter in writing and depositing their electronic thesis in an online repository. The guide provides a broad overview of copyright law and importantly addresses critical issues relating to the inclusion of third party copyright material in a students thesis. The guide aims to simplify these issues through the inclusion of two model third party copyright permission requests, which students can use to obtain permission from the copyright owner before including third party material.

  • Understanding Open Access in the Academic Environment: A Guide for Authors

    This guide aims to provide practical guidance for academic authors interested in making their work more openly accessible to readers and other researchers. The guide provides authors with an overview of the concept of and rationale for open access to research outputs and how they may be involved in its implementation and with what effect. In doing so it considers the central role of copyright law and publishing agreements in structuring an open access framework as well as the increasing involvement of funders and academic institutions. The guide also explains different methods available to authors for making their outputs openly accessible, such as publishing in an open access journal or depositing work into an open access repository. Importantly, the guide addresses how open access goals can affect an author’s relationship with their commercial publisher and provides guidance on how to negotiate a proper allocation of copyright interests between an author and publisher. A Copyright Toolkit is provided to further assist authors in managing their copyright.

  • Practical Data Management: A Legal and Policy Guide


    This guide is based on recommendations made in Chapter 10 of the OAK Law Project and Legal Framework for e-Research Project joint report, Building the Infrastructure for Data Access and Reuse in Collaborative Research: An Analysis of the Legal Context (2007). The guide considers, in a practical way, how copyright law, contract, privacy, the law of confidentiality and patent law can apply to datasets and databases. It then explains how research projects and organisations can strategically manage their data within this legal environment through the use of data management policies and principles, data management plans and data management toolkits. Model provisions for a data management plan are provided, as is a model data management toolkit for researchers. Finally, Appendix A to the guide is a sample repository deposit licence for research data that is being included in an open access repository or database.

Further Reading

  • https://www.oaklaw.qut.edu.au/
  • “The OAK Law Project: An Overview”. Fitzgerald, Brian; Fitzgerald, Anne; Pappalardo, Kylie. The key aims and objectives of the Open Access to Knowledge (OAK) Law Project are discussed. Incite. Volume 30 Issue 11 (Nov 2009)

Source: the OAK Law Project

Conclusion

Notes

See Also

References and Further Reading

About the Author/s and Reviewer/s

Author: international

Mentioned in these Entries

Education, Legal Rights.


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