C-change in GEES is only one project producing open material on Climate Change.
The OER Commons repository has recently been showcasing some climate-change material about ‘Climate Change and Ice sheets, within their ‘Recommended Resources’.
See them here:
Any thoughts?
For some of our OER Partners, there is a slight worry about ‘how’ their materials may be used (or mis-used) in the future.
They are happy for their material to be released, even under a ‘share-alike’ CC license….but still they worry that it might be re-used in a way that they feel could mis-represent their original intentions. This is particularly the case with some materials that are built on research into sensitive issues of ‘climate change’.
Some authors have suggested they might be more comfortable if we were to tighten up the CC license for these materials and released them under a ‘No Derivatives’ CC license, but we have tried to discourage this as we felt it was an approach that lay outside our ‘open’ intentions.
But recently another idea was suggested:
Could these materials be protected at all under the author’s ‘Moral Rights’ which allows the author:
“to object to derogatory treatment of the work or film which amounts to a distortion or mutilation or is otherwise prejudicial to the honour or reputation of the author or director”
This seems an interesting idea and certainly I think we should add a line to our ‘Back Page’ notes that specifically says that the author retains the ‘Moral Rights’ on the work……however, there are some examples of where these rights do not apply and these include:
“where ownership of a work originally vested in an author’s employer”
So we again return to the thorny question of who the primary copyright holder is. If we work on the principle that as the academic author was employed to write this material, he does not hold any copyright in the work, then he isn’t going to hold any ‘Moral Rights’ either. However if an institute’s IPR policy allows for the original academic author to retain (in part or whole) the copyright in their own works, then arguably they should also have the ‘Moral Rights’.
For further details on ‘Moral Rights’ in the UK see: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy/c-otherprotect/c-moralrights.htm
Any other thoughts on this?
I have just uploaded a new version of the C-change Copyright Clearance Schema, with a new worksheet which provides a working method to collate the copyright clearance for each item of OER in preparation.
This new worksheet was developed by University of Southampton with a little more attention from myself. It might not be quite there yet, but it is certainly a useful addition to our toolbox.
You can download it from the ‘Documents’ section or directly from: c-change_copyright_clearance_schema_2a
This was a very useful session that gave a good overview of IPR and copyright and I recommend it to anyone who wants to catch up on the basics of the law.
Even better, it is still available from JISC Legal here.
For myself, I now feel like I have a pretty good idea of the basics of IPR law, but still feel there is a need for more research around some of the more practical elements of the task of copyright clearance. In particular the nitty-gritty or actually undertaking the process of copyright clearance.
We are working it out for ourselves…as we go…but it would be nice to hear a bit more from others in the same position.
We have now had the chance to meet with most of the C-change partners and look at the proposed materials for release to OER and can see where some of the challenges lie.
There appear to be 3 main types of item that will need clearance:
Images
The biggest challenge is dealing with the liberal use of images in our materials. Some will be easy, as they were made by staff or ex-staff (ex-students work will most probably also be considered low-risk). For other images we won’t be able to easily provide an author or established copyright licence. Indeed, we know that some may well of been lifted without permission or acknowledgement from the web. With all these images, it will be necessary to either find their author and ask for permission or endeavour to find replacement images from known copyright cleared sources such as Flickr – Creative Commons or indeed the authors own images. In some cases, if it is impossible to find the author and the image is considered ‘low-risk’ it may be considered a ‘reasonable risk’ to go ahead and use some of these images anyway, but full efforts must be taken to show due-diligence before this decision can be taken.
Diagrams, Graphs and Figures
The most common challenge we face in the clearance of our OER materials is the use of diagrams, graphs and figures that have been taken from published research papers and are often the central item around which the teaching resource revolves. It is normal practice in this case for the copyright to be fully signed over by the author to the publishers with the author only retaining a few rights to use or publish this material. But in terms of our project – the copyright situation is quite clear – it belongs to the publisher and we must approach them to ask for permission before releasing them under an open CC license. However, we should remember that it is not the facts, data or research that is ‘copyrighted’ but only the representation of those facts in the form of the diagram, graph or figure. So, if possible, it is quite legal to re-represent the data held within a diagram or graph as long as you go right back to the original data and do not attempt to simply re-draw the diagram, which is certainly not allowed. Of course what is re-representing the data and what is re-drawing the diagram or graph could be a very hazy difference and on the whole where possible, it would be better to contact the publisher. In many cases the diagram or graph is simply too complicated for easy re-representation anyway. At least with these items, we normally have the advantage of knowing the source and the copyright owner.
There may in some cases be the possibility of using the known ‘Copyright Fair Dealing Exception’ of ‘Review and Criticism’ as a defence for using a known copyrighted diagram (an approach taken by some other OER projects). On the whole this may be more appropriate in the arts subjects where criticism and review are more integral parts of the teaching process than in these materials where the diagrams are used simply to disseminate the content of the data. So it may in some cases provide us with a way of getting around the rules, but is unlikely to replace simply asking for permission from the Publishers.
On the whole, the first course of action is going to be simply to ask the publisher who owns the copyright. We don’t know yet what there approach to the idea of their material being released on open licenses, but it is worth remembering that their ownership of this copyright may be open to challenge anyway, due to the fact that their agreement was with the authors and not their employers who would normally legally be the original copyright owners.
Whatever method of clearance is used, it is important to remember that we must always fully acknowledge and reference each use of a diagram anyway to prevent claims of plagiarism.
Maps
One further challenge that is coming up within our materials is the use and modification of maps. Maps are a central and integral part of the GEES teaching resources and their use is well supported in education, but they are still copyrighted material and in many cases the copyright and commercial value of their intellectual content is well guarded by the owners. They may therefore be considered ‘High Risk’ in copyright terms and special care should be taken. We (GEES Subject Centre) are currently trying to contact the OS to find out what their position is as far as the limited release of some of their maps in our OER and we will get back to you with any news.
However, it is not just British maps that we wish to clear. Dr Richard Jones in Exeter has a few Norwegian maps that he wishes to use – so we need to find out the best way forwards for these. We also need to consider what we can do in terms of re-drawing as some of these resources document the research which provides corrections to the original maps.
If you have any thoughts on the clearance of any of these, or other challenges, please do get back to me
Mike Sanders and Ed Bremner huddled around a pc for this Elluminate session on IPR for the OER programme given by JISC Legal on the 13th of October as part of the programme’s ‘OER Second Tuesday‘ events.
It was a useful review of IPR in the context of the OER programme and covered some of the ground that had already been done by Naomi Korn in her copyright day for C-Change, but also introduced us to some new ideas and concepts.
The session started with Jackie Milne from JISC Legal who talked about Upstream 3rd party IPR clearance and linked to their page at: http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/Projects/OpenEducationalResources.aspx
Liam Earney from JISC Collections gave some useful material including links to:
JISC Caspar templates at – http://jisc-casper.org/content/view/templates which holds the basic version of the ‘Rights Management Schema’ that will used as a basis for development for C-Change.
Naomi Korn – IPR consultant then gave us a good explanation of what the Copyright Commons Licenses do and how the OER programme projects might want to use them. Mike and Ed were glad to see that most of the projects agreed with the C-change choice of using the Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales license.
All useful information for Ed to take to the partners.
Yesterday, the C-Change in GEES project welcomed the IPR expert – Naomi Korn to a training session on copyright clearance for the C-change partners.
The session was hosted by Martin Reynolds and Dr Sandy Smith at the Open University in Milton Keynes on the afternoon of the 15th of September. The training was provided online via Skype by Naomi (in London) with the partners in person at the OU. Mike Sanders joined for a while (with SKYPE) from Plymouth and Sharon Gedye and Ed Bremner represented the GEES subject centre in person.
Not all of the partners were able to make it, but for the four who did, it was a great opportunity to really get a grasp of the job that lay ahead for the partners and to start understanding the task of clearing the copyright for our teaching resources.
Naomi started the day with a very useful overview of IPR and Copyright law with particular attention to the task of clearance of the 3rd party copyright in the materials.
She then led the group through a discussion of possible Copyright Licenses that might be used for the project, with a particular attention to those created by the ’Creative Commons’ movement, which is favoured by JISC. After some discussion the partners present were all able to agree on using the Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales or (BY-NC-SA) license.
This means that you are free:
Under the following conditions:
All the partners present thought it was a very useful day, but shared an element of apprehension about the amount of work the 3rd party copyright clearance could or would take.
The day also gave the opportunity for the partners to meet Ed Bremner for the first time, who will be shortly starting in post as C-Change in GEES Project Co-ordinator.
Ed assured all the partners that he would be happy to come and visit as soon as there were staff in place to undertake the copyright clearance.