New Project for SPARC Europe to Reform Rights Retention and Open Licensing Policies in Europe

From SPARC Europe:

SPARC Europe has been selected to deliver the first project sponsored under the Knowledge Rights 21 (KR21) programme. KR21 seeks to strengthen access to knowledge in particular through libraries and archives. It is focused on bringing about changes in legislation and practice across Europe that will strengthen rights to knowledge.

This is aligned to the SPARC Europe strategy and speaks to four of our strategic goals:

• Strengthen Open Access, Open Scholarship / Open Science and Open Education policy in Europe and align where possible;
• Advocate for open in research and education;
• Strive to enable more equity in Open so that all those who wish to publish and share research and education resources openly are better enabled to do so; and
• Promote diversity in publishing Open research and education.

SPARC Europe will lead research to develop a stronger understanding of rights retention and open licensing policies in Europe, with an ambition to reform the way institutions and authors manage their publishing rights to enable Open Access and access to knowledge for all. A key goal is to simplify the rights retention procedures, encourage the adoption of open licences, and better empower authors so that they and their fellow researchers, teachers and students can further benefit from the research they share.

By evaluating the copyright and open licensing policies developed and implemented by institutions, funders, and publishers, with a particular focus on how to support author needs, we will set a baseline against which to monitor future progress. We look forward to sharing out good practices to encourage more positive action in this area.

The review will ultimately produce an action plan and practical materials to better ensure that institutions and authors retain their publication rights whilst seeking to strengthen and update OA publishing policy and accelerate the adoption of open licensing through awareness-raising and the spread of good practice.

SPARC Europe will be supported in the project by experts in publishing rights and open licensing in Croatia, Spain and also by Great North Wood Consulting.

This project starts on 1 July 2023. We look forward to updating and engaging with publishers, funders, institutions and authors throughout the project.

Filed under: Archives and Special Collections, Companies (Publishers/Vendors), Libraries, News, Open Access, Publishing