Library-Institution Misalignment: One Real-World Example | The Scholarly Kitchen

"The Department of Education (DoE) is proposing a new rule that would 'require all copyrightable intellectual property created with Department grant funds to have an open license.' What does 'open license' mean? In this case, it means the functional equivalent of a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license: 'These proposed regulations would allow the public to access and use copyrightable intellectual property created with direct competitive grant funds for any purpose, provided that the user gives attribution to the designated authors or copyright holders of the intellectual property.' Interestingly, the policy would not apply to 'peer-reviewed research publications that arise from scientific research funded, either fully or partially, from grants awarded by the Institute of Education Sciences (Institute) that are already covered by the Institute’s existing public access policy.' The Institute is the 'statistics, research, and evaluation arm' of the DoE, and the difference between 'public access' and 'openly licensed' is significant: it’s the difference between 'anyone can read the content for free' and 'anyone may reuse the content in any way they wish, including commercially, without having to ask the copyright holder’s permission, as long as they attribute the original version to the original author.' Also interesting are the range of public responses to the proposed policy—147 were submitted before the commenting period closed in December—and the way those responses are distributed by type of organization ..."