CIC universities on Author’s Rights and Publishing Agreements

Members of National Communication Association, my discipline’s primary academic association, have sometimes complained that their access to work they have published in NCA journals has in some ways changed since the organization licensed the journals to Taylor and Francis. In response to a growing trend across many disciplines for copyright ownership to shift from author and academic organization to a large for-profit corporation, the provosts of the CIC universities (the Big Ten plus the University of Chicago) have developed a draft proposal urging authors at their institutions to seek an addendum to their contracts with such publishers.

You can find a copy of the proposed agreement at the Penn State Faculty Senate site.

Related documents may be found on the web sites of other CIC institutions. Here’s is a link to the University of Illinois report to its Faculty Senate.

Some of the Faculty Senates at CIC institutions have, I believe, adopted this draft. Others are still considering it. The outcome of the shifting patterns in the political economy of academic publication will have consequences, sometimes hard to trace, for publishers, authors, libraries, readers (both on and off campus), and for the generation of knowledge itself.