The Ethics of Open Access and Copyright Infringement

Reference:

Covey, Denise Troll. The Ethics of Open Access and Copyright Infringement. Carnegie Mellon University. Http://repository.cmu.edu/lib_science. February 10, 2010. Accessed March 05, 2018. http://repository.cmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1074&context=lib_science.

The Ethics of Open Access and Copyright Infringement

This research article was looking at the ethics of opening research scholarly journals to be open access and the companies that hold the copyrights to them which can change and prevent people from being able to see the research articles. It also looks at the reason that many companies do hold the copyrights so close and take advantage of them. This article is trying to prove about how open access to all scholarly journals could benefit society and their research and learning efforts. The article also addresses how research is slow because they don’t believe that many researchers understand what open access is all about. The IAD framework is one of the methods that they chose to use towards their research.

Most recently they have been looking at governmental mandates and notable institutions (Covey, 2010). They presented a table that shows their research in all the different disciplines in their university.

They also researched and looked at the different ways they could even the playing field. One was by changing the fees associated with open access journals. I have read articles before about how changing the fees to these open access journals would increase the use of them. However, they have been having this discussion for years so does the research not stand up to the thought process to change those fees? They also address one of the biggest elephants in the open access journal research. They look at how professors sometimes break copyright infringement laws on their own works and make them open access. They also speak about how to their knowledge there has never been a fine or sanction levied against any university for copyright infringement from professors infringing on themselves. So, what keeps the publishing companies from suing these professors to keep them from breaking the rules and making their documents, papers, or research open access after it has been previously published? Below is a second chart that shows how many professors make their article open access.

In the end the article states the laws most likely will never change due to the financial implications that changing copyright laws can cause. Copyright laws are in place to help protect intellectual freedom and the people that are currently making money from these laws. Many of the publishing houses have made some changes and contributions to making some articles more open access friendly. However, this has been a discussion ongoing for years as mentioned above. The author ultimately attributes open access problems to civil disobedience. She believes that people don’t mean any harm they just want free access to most or all scholarly journals and the publishing companies to stop making so much money from them.

My belief is that open access is still a long way from happening completely. I believe that the copyright, trademark, and patents make the government quite a bit of money that they are not going to be willing to give up. I also feel as though if you sign a contract with a publisher stating that they have the rights to your material then you have given up the right to re publish the article in an open access form. I also felt like their definition of civil disobedience was not a satisfactory term. I feel like theft of ideas or using something that was put into open access is still theft. I am all about letting someone read an article but leaving it so out there in the open for them to use, borrow or steal is still wrong in my book and more than civil disobedience.