Copyright Clearance Center Launches Open Access Solutions
abernard102@gmail.com 2012-10-28
Summary:
On Oct. 11, 2012, the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) debuted its Open Access Solutions, a set of services aimed at supporting publishers in managing their journal content through the CCC’s RightsLink platform. While the services are labeled as open access (OA), content in journals using Open Access Solutions is not necessarily OA. Instead, RightsLink provides publishers with the ability to set licenses, permissions, and access criteria at the article level rather than by journal title or by publishing organization. This more granular approach to OA has the potential to assist publishers in complying with research funders’ policies and in experimenting with different pricing structures for author processing charges, but a more granular approach to OA also has the potential to add confusion to the already murky landscape, particularly for authors and readers. In recent years, traditional publishers and new OA publishers alike have been testing various possibilities to see which models work the best to meet demand for free and openly licensed content while still bringing in revenue. Article processing fees (APCs) and hybrid closed/open journals—along with various permutations of each—are the current frontrunners.... Fees range from nominal amounts to several thousand dollars, depending on the journal and other publisher-specified criteria such as association affiliation or membership status. Hybrid journals are OA at the article level rather than by journal title; such journals include a mix of open and closed articles, depending on whether authors have paid the specified fees or requested certain permissions. Publishers are just beginning to figure out what models they prefer for each journal and how to administer the processes needed to collect payment from authors, assign appropriate licenses, and maintain payment and license information on a per-article basis. The tasks can be cumbersome. The CCC’s Open Access Solutions is geared at publishers grappling with these issues. Services are offered via its RightsLink platform to support workflows by giving publishers the ability to have granular, article-level control over their pricing structures and rights. As Roy S. Kaufman, CCC managing director of new ventures, explained, 'Until price and rights variation starts, you won’t have a truly robust Open Access [business] model.' Kaufman explained that the tools provided through RightsLink are designed to let publishers 'try everything simultaneously'—for example, a publisher could create a scenario in which a single journal could apply a Creative Commons attribution license (CC BY) to some articles, a Creative Commons attribution/noncommercial (CC BY-NC) license to other articles, and a Creative Commons attribution/no-derivatives (CC BY-ND) license to still others. Reuse rights vary widely among these three licenses... While these distinctions may seem small, they are becoming important to research funders. In recent months, the Wellcome Trust, a major funder of scientific research, updated its OA policy. Beginning April 2013, all articles produced in connection with their funding that have incurred an OA publication fee must be released under a Creative Commons attribution license (CC BY), which includes full rights for anyone to freely use, adapt, or create derivative works—including for commercial purposes—as long as credit for the original is properly attributed... The CCC has adapted RightsLink for the OA environment by applying it to select third-party repositories such as PubMed Central (PMC). Much of the content in PMC is subject to traditional copyright restrictions; only a small subset of materials are included in the OA subset. For publisher-specified materials carrying traditional copyright or Creative Commons licenses with restrictions (CC BY-NC or CC BY-ND), publishers using RightsLink can charge for additional permissions or usage rights, such as reprints for their materials deposited in PMC. Kaufman noted that 'getting RightsLink on content in PubMed Central allows publishers a new way to monetize.'"