In early 2009, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) hosted a meeting to discuss policy development for open access repositories. One idea from that meeting was that standardized language addressing the right of re-use and deposit for repositories could facilitate making scholarly content more widely available.
An ad hoc working group came together in late 2009 to explore the feasibility of drafting standard language for author rights that could be included in library content licenses. An article, “Model Language for Author Rights in Library Content Licenses,” providing background on the working group and the resulting language was prepared by Ivy Anderson on behalf of the working group and appears in Research Library Issues 269 (April 2010) and appears on our Background page.
Working group members are: Ivy Anderson (California Digital Library), Julia Blixrud (ARL), Kenneth Crews (Columbia University), Ellen Duranceau (MIT), Melissa Levine (University of Michigan), James Ottaviani (University of Michigan), Michelle Pearse (Harvard Law School), Tom Sanville (Lyrasis), and Kevin Smith (Duke University).
The language was supported by the ARL Reshaping Scholarly Communication Committee on April 28, 2010, and endorsed by the ARL Board on April 30, 2010. As organizations adopt this or similar language, information will be included on the “Adopters” page. Other activities regarding author rights in content licenses will be reported in the “Related Efforts” page.
The working group is now publishing the draft recommended license clause (see “Model Language” page) for public comment and discussion. We invite comments through the “Working with the Model Language” page. If you have questions about the project, please contact Ellen Duranceau at efinnie [at] mit [dot] edu or (617) 253-8483.
Where noted, content of this site is subject to a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.
Author Rights Model License Language 