Statement on Retention of Author Rights in License to Publish Agreements

"At its June 28 meeting, the Academic Council unanimously endorsed the attached statement from the University Committee on Library and Scholarly Communication (UCOLASC). The statement draws attention to the fact that some publishers are either requiring authors to relinquish all rights held in copyright as a condition for publishing an open access article, or presenting to authors confusing options that imply they need to do so.

In 2013, the Senate passed an open access (OA) policy1 that grants the University a nonexclusive license to make faculty-published scholarship freely available in the California Digital Library’s open access online repository. The policy is designed to support UC’s public mission and allow UC authors to retain control over the copyrights in their work. Since then, UC has been implementing open access agreements through negotiations with publishers. Recently, however, we have learned that many publishers are requiring UC authors to sign misleading License to Publish agreements, which undermine the spirit and intent of the Senate’s OA policy and the UC Presidential Policy on Open Access (2015),2 by transferring all rights to publishers and restricting the ability of authors to re-use their own works. These agreements essentially turn faculty authors into readers, as opposed to creators and owners of their own work.

Council joins UCOLASC in urging the UC Project Transform Negotiating Team to push back by negotiating OA agreements that stipulate UC authors grant only “limited” or “non-exclusive” licenses to publishers. This position has been endorsed by institutions and delegations from 38 nations across six continents.3 In the meantime, we strongly encourage UC faculty authors to use the liberal Creative Commons attribution license known as “CC BY” which is most aligned with the public mission of UC and the goals of open access...."