Coalition S for Open Access to Research Publications
Most researchers who wish to publish their work, have to agree to publishers’ stringent conditions that either leave authors with close to no copyright or they set a certain “embargo” period in which their work can only be accessed by publishers’ subscribers who have paid for the subscription. Such access restrictions can have negative effect and can hinder the development of society and technology, which could clearly be seen in the past months, as the world has been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. Coalition S, an initiative of a group of national research funding organisations, recently responded to this issue and adopted the “Rights Retention Strategy” with which it seeks to achieve universal free access to research work.
In July, Coalition S announced the adoption of the “Rights Retention Strategy”, which seeks to achieve free access to research work. The Strategy’s main feature is to make all research works or author accepted manuscripts (AAM) of such works, which are funded by the Coalition S members, freely accessible to the public. Coalition S plans to achieve this by ensuring that its members will only fund research under the condition that the resulting works (or their AAM) be published under the CC BY license. Coalition S has also already contacted over 150 publishers and encouraged them to amend their publishing conditions so that the works resulting from research can be immediately freely accessible as is described above. Coalition S emphasises that, in any case, the research funding agreement conditions override any possibly contradicting provisions in publishing agreements, which means that the Coalition S funded research works will be freely accessible to the public even if publishers do not agree to such conditions.
Coalition S organisations, such as Slovenian Research Agency, World Health Organisation, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, will implement the Strategy by 1 January 2021. The full list of organisations and their Strategy implementation progress can be accessed here.
The Rights Retention Strategy is an important step to achieving open access to research, which is crucial for technological progress and faster scientific discoveries. This can, in turn, help also in a battle against new and unknown diseases.
You can read more about the Strategy here:
- https://www.coalition-s.org/coalition-s-develops-rights-retention-strategy/
- https://www.coalition-s.org/opinion-rights-retention-strategy/.
The 43rd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (hereinafter SCCR) made substantial progress on the issues advocated by the A2K Coalition (Access to Knowledge Coalition), which IPI is a member of. This year’s session was the most productive on the issues of exceptions and limitations. James Love (Knowledge Ecology International), a long-time observer at WIPO, described the outcome and the impact of the public interest community as the strongest since the conclusion of the Marrakech Treaty, which brought global copyright exceptions for the benefit of the blind and visually impaired.
Today, March 17, 2023, a symposium on law in the information society is taking place in the golden lecture hall of the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana. Dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič will present copyright aspects of artificial intelligence at the symposium.
The third day of the 43rd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights is intended for discussion on the topic of exceptions and limitations to copyright, especially in connection with the right to research.
The 43rd session of the WIPO Standing Committee on Copyright and Related Rights (SCCR/43) is being held in Geneva from March 13 to 17, 2023. The Intellectual Property Institute has a permanent observer status at WIPO since 2022 and is also a member of the Access to Knowledge Coalition (A2K coalition).