A bill to overturn the NIH policy

peter.suber's bookmarks 2017-12-05

Summary:

"In their rhetoric, publishers speak as if they are the copyright holders for these articles, and as if the NIH is blocking their full exercise of these rights or even expropriating them.  But that is uninformed or deceptive.  Because the NIH requires grantees to retain a key right, NIH-funded authors now transfer less than the full bundle of rights to publishers.  Publishers don't like that, and it may be a problem for them, but it's not a legal problem.  Despite their pose, publishers are not the copyright holders in these articles, without qualification, even after authors sign copyright transfer agreements.  The NIH method of avoiding infringement means that there are plural rightsholders and divided rights in these articles:  the authors have retained at least one and publishers have the rest.  Publishers don't acquire the key right which would allow them to deny permission for OA or claim infringement or expropriation.  As for the rights publishers do acquire, the NIH policy does nothing to diminish publisher freedom to hold and exercise them.  

Have publishers forgotten this central feature of the NIH policy?  Have its legal consequences still not sunk in?  I find that theory hard to believe.  It would entail that they haven't read, haven't remembered, or haven't understood the policy on which they have focused so much animus and lawyer time.  And it doesn't square with their justified reluctance to claim actual infringement.  But if they do understand this aspect of the policy, then we're only left with another cynical theory:  that publishers deliberately stretch the truth by speaking without qualification as if they were the copyright holders for these articles.  But strong or weak, the theory would explain a lot.  If publishers did receive full copyright from authors, or if they believed they did, or if they had some reason to say they did, then their public rhetoric would make start to make sense.  In that world, it would make sense to say that OA through PMC, against their wishes, would violate, diminish, or nullify one of their rights.  

The snag, of course, is that the rhetoric is false, no matter what explains it.  NIH-funded authors retain the key right and don't transfer full copyright to publishers.  This is what I meant when I said (in SOAN for February 2008) that "publishers cannot complain that [the NIH policy] infringes a right they possess, only that it would infringe a right they wished they possessed." ..."

Link:

https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/4322592

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » peter.suber's bookmarks

Tags:

oa.nih oa.usa oa.mandates oa.lobbying oa.conyers oa.copyright oa.negative oa.misunderstandings oa.legislation oa.policies

Date tagged:

12/05/2017, 15:37

Date published:

12/05/2017, 10:37