Document - Grey Literature supporting the right to knowledge

Abstract:  CLAKP (Copyright Law and Access to Knowledge Policies Group) is a research group aiming to strengthen the right to knowledge as essential for education, innovation, and cultural access. The research group was born to achieve the above-mentioned goal by supporting copyright reform to benefit library users and researchers. CLAKP's topics are authors' Rights Retention, e-books and controlled digital lending, safeguarding of exceptions and limitations to copyright from technological protection measures and contractual override, and the aspects concerning secondary publishing rights and the application of open norms. CLAKP comprises the CNR-IGSG Research Group, the Italian representative for the Knowledge Rights 21 Programme (KR21), the Creative Commons Italian Chapter and the Libraries of the CNR Research Areas of Pisa and Bologna. The Library of the CNR Area in Pisa is particularly interested in authors' Rights Retention. Indeed, the staff regularly supports the personnel in the publication process, from choosing the publication venue to depositing their products in the institutional archive, finding that many researchers are unaware of their rights and how to retain them. For this reason, the library staff keeps abreast of the strategies authors can adopt to maintain their rights. In this perspective, the contribution to the CLAKP group mainly regards collecting policies, strategies, and experiences in the field of Rights Retention. So far, a series of videos on the main topics of CLAKP have been realised. As for the one about Rights Retention, a preliminary study has been conducted on grey literature regarding this subject and how it is approached in some European countries. Therefore, we aim to deepen this further investigation and produce information material of various kinds that may help authors for a fair publication.