Report: IPR policy for research

[Use the link above to access the report produced by the Knowledge Exchange (KE).] KE is “founded on an agreement between four partner organisations, to collaborate for a period of three years (2008 – 2011), in an effort to improve the digital infrastructure for information and communication technology as it relates to the research and university library sectors... The four Knowledge Exchange partner organisations are: [1] Denmark’s Electronic Research Library (DEFF) in Denmark  [2] German Research Foundation (DFG) in Germany  [3] Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) in the United Kingdom [4]SURF in the Netherlands”] The following overview describes the report. “The report provides recommendations to policy makers in science and scholarly research regarding IPR policy to increase the impact of research and make the outcomes more available. The report argues that the impact of publicly-funded research outputs can be increased through a fairer balance between private and public interest in copyright legislation. This will allow for wider access to and easier re-use of published research reports. The common practice of authors being required to assign all rights to a publisher restricts the impact of research outputs and should be replaced by wider use of a non-exclusive licence. Full access and re-use rights to research data should be encouraged through use of a research-friendly licence. Examples of good practices ... The report ‘IPR policy and scientific research; Knowledge Exchange report for scientific policy makers’ offers several examples of good practices using licensing. These examples are not restricted to publications but also the licensing of other research outputs, including research data. Examples are mentioned of possible licences and approaches research funders could take. The report ‘IPR Policy and Scientific Research: Knowledge Exchange report for scientific policy makers' was commissioned by Knowledge Exchange and was written by Fred Friend. The full report is available for download here.