The global university publications licence: Digital transformations in libraries and the challenges of open scholarship

Abstract

Universities are committed to producing and disseminating high quality research outputs to global audiences. The problem: universities do not retain rights to the research publications created at the university; libraries cannot make all publications open to a global audience through the university; and, almost every day, authors at universities assign coperight to external organisations. The opportunity: a non-exclusive, bilingual Global University Publications Licence for rights retention; authors support the licence on a voluntary basis before rights are assigned or licenced.

This paper investigates the emergence of university licencing in Europe. The challenges for librarians include understanding and communicating research funder and government mandates for openness, while applying publisher policies for different types of research outputs (Johnson & Copyright Clearance Center, 2015). The development of a UK Scholarly Communication Licence started at Imperial College London (Banks, 2016; Reimer, 2017). Some have argued the licence policy is "inappropriate, unworkable and undesirable" to certain stakeholders (Wulf & Newman, 2017). Research has also highlighted the circumstances within which gave rise to the initiative and the difficulties in delivering disruptive change (Baldwin & Pinfield, 2018).

The paper examines the further complexity of aligning with multiple, overlapping national and international policy initiatives at global university campus. Copyright law in People's Republic of China gives universities a priority right to exploit works within the scope of its professional activities (World Intellectual Property Organization, 2010). Moreover, some have argued that contract and intellectual property laws must be balanced to ensure economic benefits are shared (Peters & Jandric, 2018). The Global University Publications Licence was introduced in China on 1 August 2019. The Licence (1.0 August 2019) is available online in English and Chinese (University of Nottingham Ningbo China, 2019). It is based on the Harvard Model Licence (Shieber, 2015). Libraries have a role in advocating global change.