If you are paid to write, you don’t own the content

This article misunderstands copyright practice and copyright law. Although in theory in law the employer owns writings created by an author in the course of their employment, IN PRACTICE universities have chosen not to exercise their rights, and have left publication decisions completely to their academics. Any attempt to change this long-standing custom and practice (often embedded within academics' contracts of employment) would cause major resistance. But even if such a change were to happen, there is a specific exception in UK copyright law permitting non-commercial text and data mining of copyright works. So I'm afraid my good friend Marilyn Deegan is incorrect in what she apparently said.

But Charles, I think the really interesting question is whether an attempt to change those 'long-standing custom and practice' WOULD cause 'major resistance'. I know many people think it might, but if the benefits to the circulation of scholarship were properly explained and understood, would it really? As scholars, can we not appreciate the greater good? With journal articles, we get no royalties or fees for our copyright, so it makes little financial difference to us if our university were to claim some/all rights, but it could make a very practical difference to the spread of OA (e.g. if the university were to insist on non-exclusive rights to make a digital version of the text available to all internet users globally). And if that is true of journal articles, are books so very different? (As an historian, I write books, and I work alongside lots of colleagues who care a lot about books. I know plenty of reasons why book authoring and publishing differs from journal articles. But in terms of the relationship to our employing universities, and our contractual obligations, it's the same, isn't it?)

PS, sorry, I should have signed the above: Aileen Fyfe (publicly visible is name hopefully now changed!)

Why should a best selling textbook's royalties go to a University and not the author? If it goes to the University then the author would have no real incentive to do the work and revise and update the book from time to time. A good up to date textbook can bring new students to the University and that is how the University can cash in too.

Interesting times. I tend to agree with Aileen on this one, and from the perspective of someone who both works in a Uni library and has written academic articles. OA monographs are going to become very much a feature of research in the future and the world is potentially going to change long term practice - but very possibly for the good.

And the difficulty is not just best-selling textbooks. Consider also the dream of every historian: the 'cross-over' book (academically respectable but also sells tens of thousands of copies). Virtually none of us will ever do it (see the figures in the 'Academic Book of the Future' report!), but we can all dream... And that is why books do seem more complicated than journal articles, because, just sometimes, academics do make money from them, and so giving them away for free seems more difficult. If there was a clear line between an 'academic monograph' and 'a book that might sell in Waterstones or to thousands of students', then persuading humanities academics of the advantages of OA monographs would be much easier.