The faculty of the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education (ACHE) are committed to disseminating the fruits of their research and scholarship as widely as possible. In keeping with that commitment, the faculty are encouraged to adopt the following protocol: Each faculty member grants to Arkansas Colleges of Health Education nonexclusive permission to make available their scholarly articles and to exercise the copyright in those articles for the purpose of open dissemination. In legal terms, each faculty member grants to ACHE a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license to exercise any and all rights under copyright relating to each of their scholarly articles, in any medium, provided that the articles are not sold for a profit, and to authorize others to do the same.
To assist ACHE in distributing the scholarly articles, as of the date of publication, each faculty member will deposit an electronic copy of their final version of the article in an open access repository or will publish in an open access journal that meets quality criteria. A fund for publishing such journals is established in the library. The Research & Grant Committee shall oversee this fund.
The Library will make scholarly articles available to the public in an Open Access repository. The Office of the Provost, in consultation with the Provost Council, Faculty Councils and the Director of Library Services, will be responsible for interpreting this protocol, resolving disputes concerning its interpretation and application, and recommending changes to the faculty. The protocol is to take effect immediately; it will be reviewed after a year by the Provost Council, with a report presented to the faculty.
The faculty calls upon the Provost Office and the Director of Library Services to develop and monitor a plan for a service or mechanism that would render compliance with the protocol as convenient for the faculty as possible.
Definition of terms in the protocol
In order of appearance:
Nonexclusive permission: After granting nonexclusive permission, authors still retain ownership and complete control of the copyright in their writings, subject only to this prior license. Authors can exercise their copyrights in any way they see fit, including transferring them to a publisher if they so desire.
Scholarly articles: Faculty’s scholarly articles are articles that describe the fruits of their research and that they give to the world for the sake of inquiry and knowledge without expectation of payment. Such articles are typically presented in peer-reviewed scholarly journals and conference proceedings.
Open dissemination / Open Access repository: Journal articles stored and made available on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful, noncommercial purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself.
Irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license: The permission granted may not be taken back; there are no fees associated with the permission granted; and the permissions apply worldwide.
Copyright: Copyright is a bundle of five rights:
the right to reproduce,
the right to prepare derivative works (e.g. translations),
the right to distribute,
the right to display publicly, and
the right to perform publicly.
These rights adhere exclusively to the copyright holder (the ACHE author of a scholarly article), until/unless the copyright holder transfers them exclusively (a complete transfer, after which the copyright holder no longer has the right) or nonexclusively (an extension of one or more rights to another party, where the right still belongs to the original copyright holder).
In the current system, for independent efforts, an ACHE author signs a standard publisher copyright agreement, which typically transfers copyright exclusively to the publisher, and in some cases grants back some rights. After signing such a contract, the author has transferred all five of the bundled rights, and the author no longer has any rights to the work except as described in the publisher contract, or as allowed for under US copyright law’s Fair Use provisions.
Not sold for a profit: ACHE could not generate a profit from exercising the rights granted, but could recover costs for a service related to the articles, such as printed course packs.
Authorize others to do the same: The copyright holder has the sole right to authorize others to exercise any of the five rights under copyright, and the right to authorize others to exercise rights. This language transfers the nonexclusive right to ACHE to allow others to use the articles in specified ways and contexts, such as other ACHE faculty members who want to use an article in teaching.
Final version of the article: The author’s version with any changes made as a result of the peer-review process, but prior to publisher’s copy-editing or formatting.