Report on Open Access in Europe: Publishers’ Copyright and Licensing Policies
SPARC Europe is releasing an anticipated new report: Open Access: An Analysis of Publisher Copyright and Licensing Policies in Europe, 2020. This analysis, which presents the results of a research study that was completed in the summer of 2020, explores copyright and licensing practices amongst prominent journal publishers and OA publishers in DOAJ in Europe.
The work offers new insights around what has been one of the most challenging barriers to advancing open: copyright. The study investigates copyright retention policy among publishers, self-archiving policies and records publisher policies on open licensing, also as relates to the Plan S requirements on rights and licensing. In the report, the authors go several steps beyond simply reporting on what they found; to help guide efforts aimed at more immediate OA, they also provide policy development guidance aimed at funders, institutions, publishers and their authors.
Though the past decade has seen a great deal of movement around establishing and advancing OA policies — including Plan S and its Rights Retention Strategy; this report provides an account of where actual copyright policies and practices stand today. It shows how, in spite of recent years’ policy shifts, publishers have yet to align.