Write it and it is yours or is it?

The subject of copyright was addressed earlier in this course. It generated great questions about what this means for students as researchers, writing papers or posting blogs or developing presentations.  

I found the presentation very interesting. I remember specifically a statement made by guest speaker, Melanie Wrobels who said during her presentation that "if you create something, you own the copyright" but "if you have ideas, don't share them" since ideas are not protected by copyright. The message is clear, if you have a good idea and want to protect it, write it down. If you don't write down your ideas, capture them on paper when you have them, they are not yours, at least not in the eyes of the copyright law. If you speak of your ideas to others and you don't document them, others can claim these ideas as their own, legitimately.

As my train of thought sometimes wanders, I started to reflect on the impact of open access and copyright. Copyright applies if you write, publish and share your work. Right. Authors always retain their moral copyrights. That seems fairly straightforward. But then, there is the issue of authors publishing their own works in open access sites, such as Academia.edu. and how it impacts copyrights for publishers. Should self-publication online be promoted, should authors be using open access platforms more, should use of these networks be restrained?

© 2008 Michael Brewer & ALA Office of Information Technology Policy, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Wecker (2014) presents a number of points of view on this specifically, in a recent blog article on sharing research on the open access network Academia.edu. Such points of view support it stating that it increases visibility of the author, the paper and the journals in which the paper is published, that it allows authors to track readership and that it increases collaborative work. Many well known journals, British Medical Journal and Electronic Journal of Comparative Law have gone the route of allowing authors to post their work on these open access sites while retaining, sharing or transferring their copyright, according to researchers Hoorn and Van Der Graaf (2006).

In my opinion, there needs to be greater flexibility in the current publication model, regarding where and how research gets published,  in this digital age.  Open access is the way to go. Researchers' work must be protected, journals must be recognized but at the end of the day, new research must also be widely shared to encourage scholarly dialogue and ongoing exchange of (documented) ideas! 



Hoorn, E., van der Graaf, M. (2006). Copyright issues in open access research journals. D-Lib Magazine. 12(2). Retrieved from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/february06/vandergraaf/02vandergraaf.html

Wecker, M. (2014, February 20). Should you share your research on Academia.edu?. [Weblog post]. Retrieved from https://chroniclevitae.com/news/345-should-you-share-your-research-on-academia-edu