Authors Guild Gives Up Trying To Sue Libraries For Digitally Scanning Book Collection | Techdirt

OATP primary

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• Editor, BMC
• Editing an Electronic Journal
• What Does It Mean That James Bond's In the Public Domain In Canada?
• Authors Guild Gives Up Trying To Sue Libraries For Digitally Scanning Book Collection | Techdirt
• DFG anchored Open Access binding in funding | wisspub.net

Editor, BMC Posted: 11 Jan 2015 07:34 AM PST "_BioMed Central_, a part of Springer Science+Business Media, is the leading open access publisher of STM (Science, Technology and Medicine) research. Unlike traditional publishers, BioMed Central believes research should be free to access for anyone. Since it was founded in 2000, BioMed Central has successfully pioneered the open access publishing model and brought open access to the mainstream....In this role, you will be responsible for the performance and future success of a portfolio of journals within the BMC series. This includes overseeing and developing their content, driving their growth, and optimizing editorial standards and policies...."

Editing an Electronic Journal Posted: 11 Jan 2015 07:30 AM PST "In 1998 Neil Sloane—sometimes known as the Father of Integer Sequences [1]—started a free electronic journal which he called the Journal of Integer Sequences. In the first four years of the journal's existence, fifty papers were published. In 2002 Sloane decided to seek another editor, and I (influenced by Leonard Eugene Dickson's dictum [2])1 volunteered to take over. I have edited the journal ever since, assisted by an editorial board of eight colleagues. Our journal is entirely free for both authors and readers and is hosted on computers at the University of Waterloo [3]. We get about 100–150 submissions per year, of which about 50–75 are published. Editing the journal is rather time-consuming, and I estimate that I spend roughly one day a week on it. Here I reflect on some of the things I've learned while editing the journal for twelve years...."

What Does It Mean That James Bond's In the Public Domain In Canada? Posted: 11 Jan 2015 12:41 AM PST "On January 1st, 2015, the works of Ian Fleming entered the public domain in a number of countries. That means that the character of James Bond is no longer copyrighted in those countries, just like Sherlock Holmes has been for a while. But it doesn't mean that it's suddenly open season on that character ... The vast majority of nations are signatories to the Berne Convention, which sets the minimum copyright term at fifty years after the death of the author. Article 7(6) allows countries to establish longer terms, which is what the United States and European Union have done — in those countries, the base term is the life of the author plus 70 years. In the United States, it can be even longer than that. So while the Berne Convention is the international standard, Europe and the United States have effectively imposed a longer one. However, some countries, including Canada, have stuck to the Berne Convention's 50 years after death number. This means that authors who passed away in 1964 had their works enter into the public domain when 2014 ended. So, on January 1st, Rachel Carlson, Ian Fleming, and Flannery O'Connor's works are all no longer under copyright. In Canada ..."

Authors Guild Gives Up Trying To Sue Libraries For Digitally Scanning Book Collection | Techdirt Posted: 11 Jan 2015 12:35 AM PST "Back in June we wrote about how the Second Circuit appeals court totally demolished the Authors Guild's arguments against a bunch of university libraries for scanning their book collections digitally, in order to enable better searching of the contents. The lawsuit was against Hathitrust, an organization set up to manage the book scanning program for a group of university libraries. In 2012, a district court said that what the libraries/Hathitrust were doing was obviously fair use and the appeals court re-enforced that strongly. The Authors Guild is basically giving up in this case, saying that should the libraries change their practices, it may want to revisit the issue. But for now, it's giving up the case while 'reserving' its position. This is hardly a surprise. However, while it's given up on the Hathitrust case, the case against Google for basically the same thing is still ongoing. And, yes, it's so far lost there as well, though that case is on appeal and was just argued recently -- including making bizarre references to Aaron Swartz as some sort of proof that if Google scans books, someone may hack them and leak all those books to the world. We'll see how the appeals court rules in that case, but if I had to predict, I doubt this one will turn out well for the Authors Guild ..."

DFG anchored Open Access binding in funding | wisspub.net Posted: 11 Jan 2015 12:32 AM PST [From Google's English] "The German Research Foundation (DFG) since the mid-1990s, the development of digital information infrastructure for science. With the two funding programs 'Electronic publications'  and 'Scientific journals' important impetus for the promotion of open access in Germany were set in the past. Both schemes have now been converted into a revised and expanded support program called 'infrastructure for electronic publications and digital science communication'. The DFG Data Sheet 11.12 ( PDF ) informed about the objectives and conditions of the program. Is very welcome that the DFG linked this new program with a mandatory open access policy ..."