As the world is transformed by technical innovations, humankind tends toward an exponential increase in the amount of information that is being distributed. Basic office software can now allow anyone with a computer to present one’s ideas in an attractive, accessible format. Combining this level of professional presentation with the internet, one can publish one’s ideas for the world to see. In an open exchange of information, this may seem equitable for all parties involved, but often information is presented on the internet without proper considerations for the ownership or copyrights of said information. An additional drawback to the facility of publishing materials onto the internet is the reliability of the information being presented. It is for these reasons that it becomes necessary for any virtual source of information to document the rights associated with, and authority of, that source’s product.
My work with DList entailed several goals, including:
In addition to the above, I completed a few additional tasks, outlined here. My conclusion may be found here.
The final version of this task became a work flow of the submission process, from submission through selection verifications posting and retrieval. An additional task I performed as an extension of this was the creation of a Submission Tutorial.
All documents carry an implicit copyright without being registered, and this is especially true for webpages. Several of the documents I was asked to investigate were created in India and the UK, and so were not registered in the U.S. system. Each country has its own copyright law, both very similar to the U.S.'s. Unfortunately, though, neither country has a web-accessible database of held copyrights, so it was not possible to check these documents. A list of these sources along with their copyright status is available on my Classics page.
I found that almost all journals demanded copyright be transferred to them. In most cases, these publishers left some rights retained by authors, under which would be found the right to self-archive. In many cases, I found that the wording of the agreements was rather vague and I found it necessary to email the publishers for clarification. Of the 16 emails I sent, representing approximately 33 journals, only 4 responded, even after a second attempt.
Several of the self-published journals lacked any comment of copyright at all. The author agreements did not ask for copyright transfer agreements, nor what rights were retained by each party. Ironically, many of these same journals discussed copyright issues in their subject matter.
The final version of this work appears on 2 webpages. I had initially attempted to put all of the information on one page, but it quickly became too unwieldy. The first page is a Matrix of Journals, Publishers, types of copyright agreements and what sort of self-archiving is allowed. The second page is a Listing of Journals with excerpts from the Publishers' policies as well as pertinent URL's. The two pages work together to guide potential submitters to the policies of the journal they may have used. A disclaimer was added to each page relinquishing DList of the responsibility of assuring copyright compliance.
Each of the above standards has its individual advantages, but no single standard has yet established itself above the others.
An important note is that I have not found software designed specifically for harvesting Rights Metadata. Rather, each markup language is a format from which standard harvesters may compile this information. It is not yet determined which, if any, harvesters can handle Rights Metadata.
All of this information may be found at my Rights Metadata page.
The second task involved creating a submission tutorial that would guide a user through the Submission Process. For this project, I found it necessary to use actual DList pages within the Frames of another page. The Dlist pages were edited to disable all possible links, so that the user would not inadvertently leave the site.
Beyond the very practical skills taught to me during the course of my internship, I learned a lot about the nature of Copyrights. When I began this journey, I felt that the transfer of copyright from author to publisher gave the publisher to much control over works at the expense of authors. I still feel that this is a justifiable concern, but I have come to appreciate the need for Commercial Journals to retain publication rights to avoid losing profits on a work. Fortunately, many publishers have reached the conclusion that it is better to let authors retain more rights over their works, especially as regards sharing the fruits of their labors with colleagues. I have personally lost much of the apprehension I felt toward someday publishing my own work through these journals.
I have enjoyed this experience and feel that it has better prepared me for my future career.