Intellectual Property Policy | Open Society Foundations - OSF

The Open Society Foundations (OSF) (formerly the Open Society Institute, OSI) adopted a policy encouraging grantees to make their funded work libre OA. Excerpt: "OSF’s policy is to ensure that both its own Work Product and that of its grantees furthers its mission and charitable purposes and that it benefits the public. To that end, OSF has granted a Creative Commons license to virtually all of its own Work Product. Under the terms of these licenses, anyone may copy and widely distribute OSF’s Work Product without charge for non-commercial purposes, provided that they do not alter it, that they credit OSF as the creator, and that they provide a link to OSF’s website. We believe that OSF’s mission is enhanced when our grantees’ Work Product is also made widely available to the public, with appropriate protection of legitimate interests. To that end, OSF is introducing a new clause into its grant agreements, whereby our grantees must advise OSF whether or not they will broadly license all Work Product created with OSF funds using a Creative Commons license, or otherwise. OSF recognizes there may be circumstances where limited or delayed dissemination of grantee Work Product or limited access to data may be appropriate to protect legitimate interests of the grantee, other funders, principal investigators or participants in research studies. For such situations, OSF’s grant letter provides grantees with the option to choose not to grant any such license to exploit their Work Product. Though OSF believes that, in most cases, intellectual property rights should not limit or deny access to grantees’ Work Product, grantees remain free to determine their own policies on such matters. A grantee’s decision whether or not to grant a Creative Commons license to their Work Product will not affect grant decisions by OSF...."