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/.
On 23rd of November, 2021, the European Commission has published two reports in the field of copyright, as required by Directives 2014/26/EU (CRM Directive) and 2019/790 (DSM Directive). They are supported by two studies: Study on emerging issues on collective licensing management in the digital environment, and Study on selected issues relating to the application of the CRM Directive.
A new book “Law and Artificial Intelligence: Issues of Ethics, Human Rights and Social Harm” was published (Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of law in Ljubljana, 2021), the editors of which are prof. dr. Aleš Završnik and dr. Katja Simončič. The author of one of the articles is also dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič, LL.M., LL.M., who wrote an article on the topic of whether artificial intelligence can be an author of a copyright work.
Jožef Štefan Institute is organising GO-DIP workshop series, first of them coming on November 19th, 2021 is revolving around software IP and data agreements. The GO-DIP project aims to increase the competencies of knowledge generators and intermediaries. At 15.10 dr. Maja Bogataj Jančič, LL.M., LL.M. will be lecturing in the Workshop: Development of a checklist for model digital IP agreements. Welcome!
2nd GPAI Summit will occur from 11-12 November, 2021 in Paris, France. Leading international AI experts from civil society, academia, industry and governments, including ministerial-level delegates from GPAI’s Membership, will come together for GPAI’s annual event. This public-facing event will include reporting on the ten Working Groups’ study topics, including the reporting of Data Governance Working Group (DG WG). Public conferences will be broadcasted live on GPAI’s Youtube channel. Welcome!